In Defense of Spontaneity
A winter ramble through northern Italy
Odd perhaps, bringing this one up in the middle of a July heat wave, but the principles remain the same throughout the year. And right now, with the mercury rushing up the tube, a snowstorm doesn’t sound so uninviting!
One of Glinda's favorite song verses runs, "How can I ever miss you, if you won't go away?" In the same philosophical ballpark, how can anyone experience the serendipitous heights that travel delivers without the humdrum beat of repetition in their everyday lives?
And unless we're ripping off disguises in telephone booths, everyday life by definition involves stability, restraint, and prediction. Assembly lines, factory whistles, office cubicles, time cards, weekly reports, coffee and bathroom breaks. Alarm clocks, school lunches, bus schedules, grocery lines, chicken pot pie on the dinner table. Not to mention laundry?
Which brings us to a curious observation—you'd think that travelers with a mere few weeks of escape each year would smash their daily rhythms, throw off the shackles of planning and organization, and dance headlong into the paradise of their dreams.
But judging by social media and a raft of conversations we’ve overheard, just the opposite happens:
What's the precise time of day we should visit the Louvre?
How many minutes will we need at monument #5 before cutting out to museum #6 on day 4 of our visit?
Is it acceptable to order cheese on spaghetti bolognese in a Copenhagen café?
How do we reserve a taxi from the airport two months in advance, or do we have to take a train?
How much will dinner cost in Paris at Amelie's Favorite Foreign Bistro for a party of five with tax and tip, and do they allow children?
For example:
When we returned from Kerala in southern India, friends were horrified that we'd reserved a hotel in Fort Kochi, a house boat two hours south in the backwaters of Alappuzha, and a colonial retreat five hours upland in the tea plantations of Munnar—without a thought for how we'd get from one to the next. Weren't there any English-speaking bus tours available? Why didn't we just take a cruise?
Things are a little more complicated today, but for a half-century, our policy has been to reserve flights, first- and last-night hotels, and punt on the rest—all of it. That was how we could leave Bruxelles for a casual drive to anywhere and end up two nights and 965km later on an ultra-romantic ferry from Copenhagen to Oslo.
It was also how, back in the late 1990s, another all-time favorite trip came together out of Milan's Malpensa Airport.
In those days, we rivaled the proverbial church mice for poverty, but cobbled together every available penny and drove out of the airport east with no plans or destinations—into the worst Italian snowstorm in a century. There were so many highlights to that lunatic adventure. A few of the more memorable:
Venezia
Splurging on Elizabeth Taylor's favorite suite at the Gritti Palace took 80% of our hotel non-budget on the first night. The next morning, a bitterly cold Piazza San Marco boasted a population of just two humans (that was us) amid the horde of pigeons. Never seen before or since.
Venezia
Christmas lunch and our first Bellinis at Ernest Hemingway's favorite, Harry's Bar. In the cloakroom afterward, Ben and the honeymooning Elton John mixed up overcoats, then eventually traded back. A seriously nice man (Sir Elton), as long as we're name-dropping.
Mantua
On another late night, the sign in the main square flickered Pizzeria/Hotel, but the door was locked, and five grizzled old pensioners were playing cards inside. When we finally got their attention, one of them cheerfully pulled a sheet of plywood away from a staircase and took us up to an unheated room that had never been slept in. The next morning, his daughter berated him for renting when they didn't even have their license. But she still made us cappuccini and sent him around to the bakery for cornetti.
San Gimignano
We arrived late at the height of the storm to find all but two hotels closed and exactly one room left in the entire town. The room turned out to be a gorgeous, ultra-baroque suite overlooking the main square, rented for a pittance because it was supposed to be closed for renovation. The definition of serendipity—and all we had to do was beg.
San Gimignano
The next morning, Ben played catch with an insistent dog and her favorite chunk of concrete while her owner fixed our second flat tire in 24 hours. The first had occurred on a much-too-remote mountainside outside an olive oil pressing station. The paisani were racing out to a New Year's Eve party, but insisted on changing it for us first. The second occurred on New Year's Day and brought out an entire football café to commiserate and wake up the only sober repairman (and concrete-chewing dog) within 100km.
The Meal Of The Century
In a snowbound mountain village (to this day, we have no idea where), the owner of a small, supposedly closed Trattoria started a roaring fire in the hearth and cooked lunch for us and another lost couple. Our introduction to pappardelle with wild boar and bucatini with pigeon sauce. Not a lot of options, but some of the most delicious food we'd ever tasted.
Firenze
The storm abruptly vanished. Glinda got herself hooked on the unique, local version of lasagna fiorentina. On the lawn of the venerable Forte Belvedere, a massive Henry Moore sculpture positively glowed in the tranquil bosom of the snow-free, ultra-blue heavens.
The Best Part…
The best part of the trip was that we never had to wonder again if either of us could roll with the punches. It didn't hurt that we were crazy about each other—that never hurts—but every looming catastrophe somehow dissolved into an exercise in serendipity.
So much adventure!
So much fun!