Today was a busy day….and it began with coffee and some tasty bakes of course—a mini torta caprese and and apricot pasticciotto— and I chased those delectable desserts with a ferry ride to Capri, which was filled with good conversation with a couple from Toronto, originally from India, who were traveling throughout Italy and had rented a car and were testing their driving skills (until they got to Amalfi, at which point, the speed demon hubby decided to park the car for the duration of their visit). I was traveling there to meet up with Carmen, the lovely human I met at the Chicago airport. She was traveling with two additional persons, Liz and Jade, a mother daughter team from Sheffield England. We started our tour of Capri with another boat ride, around the island and ooh lala, it was a beauty of a trip! We ate al fresco and traipsed around the town a bit and mused about how we could never afford to live there, let alone stay the night, but we also window shopped and I fell in love with a silver lame dress that cost 3000+ euros. No i didn’t buy it…for many reasons, one of which is that clothes like that no longer fit me because of all the bakes and I don’t have 3000 euros burning a hole in my pocket. Instead we all got Italian ices and secretly hoped to spot a famous person.

While travel alone is glorious in so many respects (sleep in and start your day with coffee and a danish? Check. Sip a limoncello spritz at noon by the sea? Check), it can grow quite lonesome. I love meeting new people and hearing their travel stories and I love equally eavesdropping on other English speaking travelers whilst pretending I’m anything other and hearing what they have to say. The long and the short of it? Women my age and older like to school people on where to go and where to not go in their travels as we clearly have the wisdom of the ages (hey, I called myself out in this statement, so don’t hate me). Young and newly married couples like to fight…a lot…about bullshit things that don’t matter like ferry times and restaurant picks and how he never helps with planning, etc. Older couples are out here to see the world through a new lens, and to complete feats of physical fitness (hiking and biking couples galore). Lots of mothers and daughters traveling together as well (which made me miss my Italy travels with my momma a bit). Again, the key is to act like you cannot understand anything that anyone around you is saying, then you get the good stories… and a whole lotta perspective.

This afternoon, the man at the pizza place (where I’ve started picking up my bottled water and mini bottles of Prosecco just beneath the stairs to my apartment…oh my god did I mention all the stairs?) asked me where I was from. I said America of course, then Minnesota and most people knew where that was or they were just trying to be nice. Then he asked “but where are you from really” as in where are my ancestral roots. I told him that my mother’s ancestry test yielded the possibility of northern Italian but that I was a mutt through and through (sorry dad!) He said oh no, I must be Italian because of my giant nose; he didn’t say giant but compared it to the famous Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, and his nose. Um, thank you? He said I have to be Italian because of my prominent nose and that he was sure everyone here would think I was Italian (sans the reality that I have demonstrated zero recall for the language after countless visits to Italy.) I’ve always been sensitive about my nose. My entire life. But I haven’t really thought about it in 10 years. While his comments could have triggered a call to my therapist, I actually was incredibly flattered…for many reasons (none of which had to do with the number of conversations I overheard in which foreigners talked shit about Americans, but we’ll save that for another post). He said mine was a nose to take pride in and that it would bring me good things in life….

After making my way upstairs to my apartment, carrying my giant and weighty nose with me the entire 200 steps, I readied my bags (I transfer to a hotel in Ravello for the weekend) and got myself together for dinner. My mother keeps texting and asking if I’ve put my toes in the water yet, which I had not, so I made a beeline for the empty beaches. Did I mention that never in my life have I seen it so busy here? It’s October and the town or towns are crawling with tourists. Hundreds disembarked from several teaming hyrdrofoils coming from the giant cruise ship in the harbor. There were people with long poles with little flags and ribbons and names of tour companies on them. “This line for the 6 hour Pompeii tour! That line for the 6 hour Pompeii tour with a free pizza at the end. This way for Amalfi town. That way for a date with your hot waiter.”

Back to the beach: I haven’t yet gone to the beach because I’ve been busy gaining weight from all the treats I’m eating so I sneaked down there when it was quiet, sun setting. There was a little plastic table of 5 men playing cards in the corner of a building on my way down. I dipped my toes in, took some photos and made my way back, noticing the men had moved 10 feet and I asked them why. They indicated their eyes were old and the light was better in their new locale and would I like to be dealt into their card game. They pulled up a chair for me and asked me to join. I said “there’s no money on the table, I’m not interested” and they all laughed and asked again for me to stay. In retrospect, I probably would have had the best night of my trip learning their card games and hearing their stories, but my belly needed food and my research was calling. They recommended a restaurant for me to try and said “tell them Johnny sent you!” I ended up going to a different restaurant, which was a fantastic experience, and which I’ll write about later because I promised my waiter Carmine that I would do a google review for him. Suffice it to say, I had exceptional service. Not that the service has been poor by any means, but the Italians cannot seem to understand why I am traveling alone and how my husband let me go on my own. And the number of times I heard “Italian men don’t let their women travel alone.”….I’d be rich enough to afford that silver lame dress I mentioned above. While I’m sure there are plenty of solo travelers out there, the waiters are all perplexed when they see me walk in. They have no idea where to put me…they want to hide me away from the outside or exterior tables that serve as marketing for the public. Apparently I’m not good PR, sitting there sadly alone with my single glass of vino and my 2 course meals. But at this restaurant, I was never made to feel that way. I was treated so very well. From the first moment where the waiter said “it is better to be alone than to be in bad company”, I was smitten with this place: locanda del marinaio. I had thee most tasty dinner and enjoyed every laugh, every awkward attempt to speak Italian, every time I got a waiter in trouble with management after chewing their ear and making them laugh and monopolizing their time away from other tables (let’s be honest, they were all Americans and far less interesting than me…a double dating couple wearing beer and tequila hats and shirts…to an Italian dinner, what?; a man and his wife who wouldn’t stop talking about all the fish he ate on the trip while his wife faceted the kids back home, a young lady who couldn’t hold her alcohol and broke her wine glass and told her mother all the tricks and pickup lines she uses to get the dudes…or at least that’s what I thought I heard when I was pretending not to speak English…which I realize wasn’t actually the message I was sending as I was chatting constantly with the staff. Yep, those were my scenes from an Italian Restaurant.