This blog will take you to places you’ve always wanted to see and to some you may only have heard of. Its purpose – to immerse you in extraordinary tastes and colors, smells, sights and experiences, infecting you, or perhaps aggravating, an already serious case of wanderlust.
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Italy – Naples – A New Life Begins
Those Trevi Fountain coins turned out to be a terrific investment – I’m on my way back to Italy!
A few things have changed. I’m married to Mike from Toledo – hitchhiking companion for much of the summer following my year at the 
University of Grenoble. He’s a newly sworn-in Foreign Service Officer assigned to the U.S. Consulate General in Naples. I can hardly believe I have another shot at Italy.
The U.S. still has regular trans-Atlantic crossings and we can choose between airplanes and ocean liners. Not a hard decision. We travel on the U.S. Export Lines SS Independence. Food service is non-stop and dinners are many courses. Our table mates are intent on getting their money’s worth and order all of them. Normally this would not be a problem, but I’m a bit queasy. Hmm. Could pregnancy be the cause?
We climb the rock of Gibralter among the monkeys that call it home. We stop in Majorca and I endure my first and only bullfight. We have a day in Tangier. Very exotic. But I can hardly wait to dock in Naples.
It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful setting. The multi-hued city rises, layer upon layer, up its hills from the blue of the Bay of Naples, 
with the 12th century Castel d’Ovo to welcome arriving boats. The mirage-like cone of Vesuvius hovers in the near distance.
Once off the boat, reality sets in. The city engulfs us with noise, smells and a chaos that tests all the senses, more of a shock after serene days on the ocean liner.
Naples is home for the next two years. And I have a lot to learn.
England and the End of a Year – What Next?
This amazing year is rushing to a close. In a week I have a boat to catch in Southhampton. Until then Anne from London, who, you will remember, just managed to get me safely over the Alps in her Deux Chevaux, offers me the floor of her tiny London flat. I gratefully accept – funds are running low. Once I figure out the tube I’m set. After a year it’s a relief to communicate in English again. Getting around is a lot easier when people understand what I’m saying – most of the time.
I crowd the fence with hundreds of others, standing on tiptoe to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Watching them, it’s easy to picture queens and princes, horses and carriages, tiaras and ball gowns – a fairy tale world inside these walls, one that I will glimpse one day.
Big Ben’s familiar chimes announce the hour from Parliament, and Westminster Abbey is close by. The organist is practicing as I walk among the graves of Dickens, Kipling, Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy, and touch the effigies of kings and queens. There is Elizabeth I and not far away, Mary Queen of Scots. Goose bumps. They ran out of room here in 1760 with the burial of George II. Monarchs must now rest in peace at Windsor.
I sit on the clipped grass of Regent’s Park, an oasis in the middle of everything, to eat my cheese sandwich and watch the swans glide by on its pond.
A tube ride away is the Tower of London with its bloody history, now home to the crown jewels guarded by Beefeaters in costumes unchanged since the Tudors. Walking through all this history, seeing it, touching it. . . .
I’ve been careful to conserve enough to buy the cheapest ticket at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane to see My Fair Lady. It’s the original cast, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, and my first- ever experience of professional theater. The costumes, the sets, the music (I already know most of the words), actors who wisk me to that other London – just magic.
I say goodbye to Anne. On my way to Southhampton I have my first unpleasant hitchhiking experience, but the driver stops, lets me out of the fancy car and I arrive unscathed.
The me sailing for New York on the Holland American Line is very different from the me who sailed to France a year ago. The people I’ve met, borders I’ve crossed, food I’ve tasted, things I’ve learned, adventures I’ve shared – they’re all to blame. There’s a hunger inside me now, and far from satisfying it, this year has only increased my appetite. Wanderlust thrives. And I want more. Somehow.
Home from Another Realm
I’ve been traveling. Not across borders, at least not national ones, but definitely to another realm. My destination – the mountains of Pennsylvania and the writers’ retreat owned by The Highlights Foundation. My goal – the privilege of spending a week with Patti Gauch, editor for 29 years at Philomel. My eight fellow writers come from both coasts and have worked with Patti before. Some are published, a few are about to be published, and some are not quite published yet. They represent the extraordinarily broad range of literature called ‘children’s’ – from cuddly and reassuring to edgy and disturbing. I fell in love with Patti last November at an SCBWI weekend workshop and was over-the-moon when a cancellation allowed me to join them. They know what to expect of the week. I am about to learn.
To begin with, there is the retreat center. From the desk in my very own cabin, I look out over woods erupting into spring. Fridge stocked with drinks, coffee maker, Queen Anne armchair, wood paneling, quilt covered beds, front porch with glider, and 
walls exuding inspiration from the hundreds of writers who have worked here.
There is the ‘barn’, where we have our own meeting room and dining room. Open 24 hours a day, it also happens to be the home of the Ice Cream Freezer with tubs of four flavors (plus Magnum bars) and a table with other writers’ essentials (chips, coffee, fruit, candy bars). And speaking of yummy, the chef and his staff outdo themselves in serving wonderful (and healthy) meals, cheerfully meeting our group’s various food requirements. At our five o’clock 
sessions, when we critique each others work, they serve us
wine and appetizers.
But, of course, the real reason we have come is to spend time with Patti.
Whether we write for seven-year-olds or seventeen-year-olds, she showers her decades-long experience on us as she hones in, sentence by sentence, on every missed opportunity to engage our readers – and gives praise when we succeed. Her schedule is grueling. She takes each of us for daily 40-minute sessions, the first at 6:30 a.m., going over her extensive notes on our work and discussing where to go next. After breakfast she leads an hour session on an aspect of craft, with exercises and discussion. More individual sessions follow during the morning and after lunch. At five, two of us read pages we have worked on and Patti and the group give feedback. Following dinner together, we meet from eight to nine and Patti guides us as we look at the work of other writers, seeing examples of how they do it. Then she retreats to her cabin to read our revisions until midnight or so. Such generosity.
Leaving is hard. We have supported each other through authorial and other crisis, laughed a lot, become involved in the stories each of us is bringing to life, and written more intensely than we ever could have on our own. Patti has helped me see where I must take Mukisa, my young Ugandan, and how to make Africa come alive for my readers. At our last session she gives a personal goal to each of us to help in carrying on with our own stories, and we know she truly cares that we succeed. She has nurtured us in the very best way. We vow to stay in touch.
And then one of our group offers to host a week with Patti next May!!!! Hands pump the air. We’ll be there!
In other writing news – my YA Viking novel, Thora’s Hammer, is a quarter-finalist in the Amazon Break-Out Novel contest.
Spring Is . . . . . . . .
I can’t help it. Spring has gotten to me. Click on pictures to enlarge.
Spring is horses shedding winter coats, in grazing muzzles to restrain their greed for sugar-packed new grass.
Spring is sugar snap pea seedlings pushing up through compost, courtesy of Saga and Fru Hest.
Spring is annual forget-me-nots, weeds really, spreading everywhere. But who can resist that blue?
Spring is flame azaleas getting ready to ignite.
Spring is the feathery fantasy of foam flowers. .
Spring is floating clouds of apple blossoms – landing pads for bees.
Mostly, spring is ferns unwinding from winter, straightening their spines, pulled from curled hibernation by the sun, just as I am.
What is spring to you?
Italy – Venice – Is This for Real?
Venice – my last stop in Italy. Bittersweet days. Italy has gotten under my skin and I dread seeing the end of my time in this
San Marco Square
fantasy world, this Disneyland for adults. Still, Venice is the perfect finale.
I’m unprepared for the reality of the city despite the pictures I carry in my head.
The Grand Canal
The Grand Canal more than lives up to its name. I squeeze aboard the vaporetto that will take me to the Venice youth hostel on the island of Giudecca. Tourists, locals and freight – all float to their destinations. No cars here. We glide out onto the canal and my jaw drops as we pass one grand palazzo after another rising out of the water. Impossible to comprehend a whole city built on wooden pilings many centuries old.
People have lived in the marshes that are now Venice for 10,000 years. There was already an important city here when the reputed remains of St. Mark the Evangelist were spirited out of Alexandria, Egypt in 828 and placed in the new basilica named for him. His 
symbol, the winged lion, became the symbol of Venice, feared and respected throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. By 1400 Venice was the richest city in Europe, largely due to its near monopoly on trade with the Muslim world and the powerful navy that protected its holdings. It flaunted its wealth, building the elaborate public and religious buildings that proclaimed its status as an empire. La Serenissima’s wealthy citizens did the same. And now it is all mine to wonder at.
Among its treasures are the four gilded bronze horses, brought to Venice in 1204 following the sack of Constantinople. Copies prance on the portico of St. Mark’s Cathedral – the originals are within.
Though its piazzas and the churches are stunning, I find the real Venitian fantasy world as I get lost wandering its narrow streets.
Off the main tourist drag, I have the city almost to myself, the loudest noise the lapping of water against ancient foundations.
Those coins I threw into the Trevi Fountain in Rome to ensure my return? They’d better work!!!
Next: Last stop – England
