Rome 1

So we went to Italy.

Yesterday.

(No, just kidding.)

Obviously, it's been a while since I've updated this thing with any serious intent. Fortunately, I did document the trip while it was happening, which means I can now transcribe the entire thing to my actual journal.

Over a period of time, of course. Perhaps years.

Let us start at the beginning.

We went to Italy. There was rhyme and reason to this; my mother wanted to go to Italy in April of 2006 to attend a Suzuki Convention, but was leery about doing so all by herself. I was hit by an idea. Not a brilliant idea, but nonetheless. I had never been to Italy. The Guy had never been to Italy. A friend of his lived in Italy. Let us go to Italy. We could keep Mom company. We could see things. Cultural things. Italian things.

Relieved, Mom decided she would go after all. This was in early 2005.

At the end of May 2006, two weeks before her departure, Mom called me to ask if I could help her reserve a hotel for the conference.

This is not the sort of thing that bodes well for a trip.

We haven't traveled with Mom a lot; the last time was to Lake Tahoe before we were married, a sort of family get-together that included me, Mom, my sister, and my sister's then-boyfriend John. (Not to be confused with the current boyfriend John, who is a different beast altogether. Unless you're my grandmother. In which case it's just easier to pretend they're the same person.) This would be the first time that Mom and the Guy and I traveled together, without any distracting companions. All of us together.

It's odd how these things turn out. For some reason, I had always been under the impression that Mom was the organizer in the family. When Dad was alive, we used to go on regular family trips. Road trips through the US (Dad was obsessed with road trips) where we were all piled into a car and forced to go for miles at a stretch to visit the World's Largest Ball of Twine (Cawker City, Kansas) or the Mystery Spot. (Santa Cruz, California) were notable for the fact that Mom managed to keep Dad from getting us killed. On trips abroad, we always had a place to stay and an itinerary, the successful implementation of which was often due to Mom's insistence to Dad that he stop arguing with the security guard and get back in the car.

As I say, I always thought Mom was the organizer in the family. "What do you mean, you don't have a hotel?"

"Oh, I thought I would just see what happens," she said vaguely. "But it will be very busy in Turino. There will be many people, do you think? So perhaps it will be best if I have a hotel in advance. Otherwise maybe there are no more hotels."

"Mom," I said. "What exactly do you have planned for the rest of the trip? Do you have places to stay? Do you know where you're going to go?"

"It is Italy, Yuhri. Everywhere I go will be interesting. I will find something to do."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"If you help me with hotel in Turino," she said hopefully, "I will have one place to stay."

It's funny how childhood memories can deceive you.

"So you're planning on just ... bumming around Italy?"

"I do not like the word 'bumming,'" Mom said. "Yuhri. It will be an adventure."

The age of 32 is too late for a woman to discover that her mother is a wannabe gypsy. I've always claimed that Sako came by her vagrancy honestly. I just hadn't realized it was from Mom.

April 12, 2006, 8:00 AM

We left at 7:00 to catch a flight at 11:00 AM.

...except we didn't.

Well, this bodes well. The person who was supposed to get us to the airport has failed to show up. Apparently, he has flaked. He can't be reached on his cell phone. This is still okay, since I built in an extra hour into our travel plans, so we've got at least half an hour to leave the house before I'll start getting worried, so I went online and found some long-term parking lots and made a hasty reservation.

Except they want a printout of the reservation notice, and for some reason, the printer that was working perfectly last night suddenly doesn't accept print jobs.

The husband is upstairs, raging indiscriminately at his friend, at Windows, and at the world in general because now he has to do IT on the silly printer. Ho hum.

April 12, 2006, 9:30 AM

The prospective ride called to grovel in apology. He overslept. The husband, having regained his temper and his equanimity, was willing to forgive.

The stupid printer finally let us print stuff out at 8, which was pretty much the time that I had made reservations for long term parking for. Yan drove fast. We got there at 8:15, which turned out to be just fine for an 11 am flight. Except that the long term parking place told us that we would not want to park there, because there a cut off time on pickups from the airport. In other words, if we parked there, we wouldn't be able to pick up until the next day. Our return flight arrived at midnight, the same time as the last shuttle. WELL, OOPS.

They sent us to a new place, which was not that far away, as it happened. We got lost anyway. At 8:45 we got on their shuttle, which took 30 minutes to get to the airport. The Delta line was empty. Security line was empty. We got there with time to spare, and then sat around picking our noses (so to speak) until we took off.