Grandma's Plan

     Our eight-year-old granddaughter recently spent four non-stop days with Charley and me. Here are her

interests:  reading, crafts, cooking, games, softball, surfing, tennis, dancing, music, shopping, movies, fashion, and lots of things I've left out. Since we only had four days, we tried to cram in as much as possible.

     We picked blueberries and baked muffins, shopped for school clothes, had a pedicure, saw a Smurfs movie.  She dived under four-foot waves and rode her boogie board (left her surf board at home), had a shoot-out with me in bumper boats, played tennis, went to a church fair where a magician transformed a white handkerchief into a bunny and she spent $1.10 on gifts for her sister and herself.

     Our "quiet" time was spent on the computer searching for instructions to make patterned duck tape into a purse.  The instructions were too complicated, and she'd already made the easier projects.  Family photo albums provided some amusement and time for me to wash my hair.

     My plan for grandchildren's future visits is:  I WON'T HAVE ONE!  We can sit on the deck and our amusement will pass by:  butterflies, squirrels, chipmunks, hummingbirds, robins, mockingbirds, sparrows, seagulls, hawks, possums, and maybe even a fox or a deer.  Books can provide our adventure, shared chapter by chapter, before eyelids droop at 9:00.  We can walk to the beach and along its length. We can arrange flowers we've picked from the garden, feed the birds, and cut herbs. We can make up our own recipes while the car stays in the garage.  Or we can sleep in the shade.

     This is sounding too much like a plan again!

   



   

Morning Walks on the Island of Ischia

     Sidewalks on roads hugging hillsides on Ischia, Italy, exist as a brief nod to the tourist, then disappear. Charley and I include a mandatory three-to-four-hour walk each day we travel, but it can be death-defying.
     One of our routes includes the main thoroughfare into the town of Forio.  We climb wooded paths over  the hillside behind our hotel and follow a road along the cliffs.  Our work is rewarded at the scenic

overlook.  Below us lie wide, sandy beaches, vineyards rising up the mountainside, and the bulls-eye fort in town across the Bay. From our perch, we wind down one-lane cobble-stoned streets that lead through a tunnel.  Since I can hear the traffic coming in either direction on the stones, I wait for silence before starting through.  Charley has charged ahead and waits in the shade of a cafe at one of the beaches.
     When I catch up with him, we proceed to the most difficult part of the walk.  We arrive at the main cog and cross to face traffic.
     In Italy, crosswalks are mere suggestions.  Mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles weave around pedestrians trying to get to the other side. Waddling widows in black take their time and receive deference. Charley decides that since crosswalks are meaningless, he'll cross where he pleases, including blind curves. He grabs my hand and holds his free hand up like a traffic cop, defying two lanes of traffic to stop or hit us. Our luck has held so far.

      The rest of the thoroughfare has no sidewalk until we reach the harbor.  Trucks loaded with cement or tour buses with faces frozen in glass whiz past at 45 mph.  We flatten ourselves against stone houses. The space between my feet and the traffic lane is six inches.
     Charley walks ahead, using a sideways pushing motion away from us.  He is certain that motorists coming out of the curves will see him swishing and make NASCAR moves in the fifty feet before we become decorations on the side of local buildings.
     In front of one market, a car is heading to claim a parking space.  It is the same space where Charley is walking.  "Hey, stop!" he yells to the female driver, who slows to within three feet of his upright palms.
     Out jumps Nana, with her grocery bag.  "Quoi?  Quoi?" Nana says.
     In other words, "What's your problem?  Don't you know my daughter owned a moped when she was six?"
   
   
   
   

"We Do Not Have Crime Here"

     "Oh My God," yelled Dee, stumbling into the suitcase she'd left on the floor.  She'd flown
overnight from Miami to Venice, transferred to Naples, and taken a seventy-five-minute ferry ride to the island where she'd taken up residence.  "Where's my TV?"
     She darted like a chicken without a head around the living room/dinette/cooking space.  "It was right on this table when I left for the States.  And where's the cable box?"
     She dived under the tablecloth that hung from the TV table.  "Damn!  He got the computer, too!"
     Dee ventured upstairs to her bedroom.  Everything was still in place, but her clothes hung at odd angles in the closet.  They'd been slashed.
     Of Italian heritage and fluent in the language, Dee refused to be a pushover.  She dialed 1-1-2 for the Carabiniere (state police) on the island.
     "Carabiniere," someone answered.
     "I'd like to report a robbery in my home," Dee said in Italian.
     "Not possible.  There are no robberies on Ischia.  Everyone's door stays open."  The phone went dead.
     Dee came out of her apartment like a boxer out of her corner.  She went down the whitewashed steps to the street beneath her apartment and wound down to the marina.

     "Taxi," she yelled.
     The driver deposited her at the Carabiniere Station.  Dee explained what had happened and filed a report.  "We'll come in the morning," the officer said.  "This is a very serious charge - we do not have crime here."
     "And you've never heard of Mafia in Napoli, either," Dee said under her breath.
     Two twenty-year-olds appeared in uniform the next day.  They stood open-mouthed, staring at the closet where Dee's clothes hung in shreds.
     "There is no crime on Ischia," one said.
     "I know who did it," Dee said.  "I filed a report last winter.  He rents above me and put his cable dish on my terrace while I was in Florida.  I pulled it down when I came back and he told me I'd find my apartment gone this spring.  Check your files, you'll find my report. There was a witness."
     "I'm sorry, Senora, we have no proof."
     After they left, Dee spun on the heels of her Birkenstocks.  This time she told the taxi driver to drop her at the island's newspaper office.  She supplied the reporter with her police report and photos from her closet and TV table.  "I will not be intimidated," she said in her final statement that ran on page one.
     The following week, Dee had the creepy feeling someone was stalking her. She whipped around and snapped a photo with her phone.  The tenant who rented above her was in the photo.  She continued to the fruit stand to test melons.  When the alleged robber began yelling at her across the cherries, she snapped
another photo.  This time he was in snarling position.
     She called a Neapolitan lawyer who worked for the American Embassy.  "What happened next?" I said.
     "Nothing.  Italians talk and talk but they don't do anything.  The landlord's a strong-arm lawyer on the island.  Even the state police are afraid of retaliation.  It's standard practice to cable-poach, but that tenant never offered to pay me a dime and he put the dish up without my permission."
     At our hotel, one of the waiters called Charley a "Neapolitan at heart."  We'd taken it as a compliment till we found out the Neapolitan heart is made of straw.
   
     

A Dispute in Italy

     We left Barcelona overdosed on Spanish history, bizarre structures, tapas, crowds, Gaudi, and Miro. Next stop:  Naples.

     Over the years we have fallen in love with southern Italy.  Life is exuberant and loud.  Neapolitans are brash, grabbing life as it comes and squeezing tight, as evidenced by the antics of twosomes on scooters or in passionate embraces whenever the mood strikes.  Neapolitans have ruled and been ruled, many times. They know in the course of human events, cultures are fleeting.  The sea lies in front of them, with Vesuvius behind.

     Men gather to discuss world events, local problems, and familial disputes.  Their voices rise, as their hands move up and down in prayer position.  Sometimes they squeeze their fingers together, pointing inward, as if they'd burned themselves.  For hours they stand there talking and yelling, yet nothing seems to get resolved.

   
     The three-quarter-mile road to our hotel on the island of Ischia was under construction for eighteen months.  The hotel owner was in a dispute with his neighbor, who shares the driveway, as to who should pay to fix the road.  Meanwhile, guests could either walk up the hairpin turns high over the Bay of Naples or wait at a staging area for the hotel to retrieve them.

     Last year, we noticed stones from the wall along the driveway tumbling down the hillside. Walkers could become ghosts, swallowed by gaping voids that delineated the sides of the promontory. "This is a prestigious hotel and I don't understand why the owners can't negotiate a settlement," I said to Charley.  "They're a member of a chain that must demand inspections."

     "You'd think they'd have paid off the neighbor," Charley, the pragmatist, said.

     "There has been a dispute as to who owns the part that needs fixing," the hotel manager told us.  "They won't accept our offer."

     This year, a new rock wall appeared where the driveway had been disintegrating.  The neighbor constructed a ninety-degree angle where the property divided.  The walls create such a narrow turn that taxis can't make it through.  Unless they're in Lilliputian cars, hotel guests must wait for shuttles to bring them to the hotel.  I could hear the neighbor saying, "Gotcha!"







   

   

   

   



   

Flamenco on the Island of Mallorca, Spain



Manolo de Cordoba, Madrid
Photo his own

     Picture Ichabod Crane from Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: "tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves...and his whole frame most loosely hung together."  Add oily hair sticking to his ears and narrow head and Ichabod's snipe nose.

     That is the figure that spun in front of us during a flamenco show at our hotel.

     Except that this male wore black tights and a shocking pink ruffled shirt under black vest and twirled a pink neon cape.

     We shouldn't have been surprised.  The hotel was billed a "five-star" on Mallorca, but was more like a Holiday Inn.  Housekeeping had shoved twin beds together to form our king, so one of us was continually falling through the crack at night. When we used the sink, pipes gurgled in the shower and water rose from its drain.  There were four computers available for guests to use (with accompanying coin machines), but none of the four worked.  The front desk gave me refunds.

     Ichabod continued to twirl in front of us, like a whirling dervish.  He accompanied three very talented female dancers,  who changed for each number from gold spangles to red ruffles to blue fringe to yellow satin. Their feet pounded the stage in a blur. Finally Ichabod stopped twirling and toppled toward the audience, obviously dizzy.  Someone in the front row caught him.

     The music muffled my laughter.  In Ichabod's final moment of glory, he threw his head back while his arms shot straight toward the ceiling.  As the music faded, we watched his long appendages creep down his torso and over the thin hips to his thighs.  The seductive pink cape slithered with them.  Fortunately, it was only a few steps to the bar.

Mallorca, Spain

We flew nonstop from Dublin to the island of Mallorca, Spain.  A transport was supposed to meet us at the airport to take us up the coast to our hotel.  After we retrieved our bags and exited the luggage area, we scanned the signs.  No "Carey."

We waited fifteen minutes.  There was a cluster of people in the middle of the terminal.

A man in a dress shirt and tie came toward us.  He displayed a nervous smile.  "Are you Carey?" he said in almost - English.

"Yes," Charley said, no smile on his face.  "Where have you been?"

"My name is Juan Lopez," he said, extending his hand.  "I've been waiting at the meeting place."

"Meeting place?  What meeting place?  We've never been here.  We got our luggage and came through the nearest exit," Charley said.  I was trying not to giggle.

"In the middle," Juan said, pointing.  "Where everyone meets."

"Except all the drivers who came down here, near our luggage," Charley mumbled.

We relaxed by the pool and walked the wide promenades along the beach for two days.   A guide was going to drive us across the island on the third day.  "Hello, remember me?  I'm Juan," he said.

Juan drove us to a winery in Santa Maria, as well as an olive oil factory and Saturday market in Soller.  He never stopped translating. One hand went up in the air off the wheel, a finger pointing out the correct pronunciations. "Here, 'Macia' wine, it's pronounced 'Mathia,'" he said.  "The Spanish 'S' is a 'C' on Mallorca, but is pronounced like a 'TH.'"  I kept my gaze focused out the window.  We were going seventy mph with a one-armed driver.

"Limoneros," Juan said, pointing to thousands of acres of lemon trees in the plateaus.  "Cabras, goats," he said, pointing to the hillsides.

For lunch, Juan drove us up hairpin turns to a restaurant two kilometers above Porto Soller.  The view was spectacular. After lunch we wound down along coastal 'S' curves ('C' curves in Mallorca, pronounced 'TH' curves), past villages crumbling off cliffs and Hollywood stars' homes. On a 'TH' curve in Deia, Juan took both hands off the wheel to demonstrate the round shape of potato cakes covered in chocolate   "There, in restaurante," he said.  "Famoso," he added.  I didn't give a rat's ass about potato cakes.  I just wanted Juan to get both hands on the wheel .

In Valldemossa, Juan explained that "shopping" had made the town famous with a French woman.

"What kind of shopping?" I said.

"I forget how you say his name in English."

"You mean a man brought his French mistress here and made the town famous hiding out?"  Charley's imagination was having a good time.

"No, not hiding out. Shopping," I said.

"No shopping, living, no hiding out.  Shopping," Juan said.

"You just said no shopping," I pointed out.  "And why would he bring her to this small village to shop?"  I could think of better places to get a designer collection!

I opened my guidebook.  Turns out Chopin ("shopping") had brought his mistress, French writer George Sand, to live on the coastal mountainside.  Sand described it as "the winter from hell."

Valldemossa, Majorca, Spain

Notes from Dublin

We started in Dublin, a five-plus-hour overnight flight from Boston.  By the time we got our drinks and dinner on board, read a few pages of a novel, and closed our eyes, we were landing...at 7 a.m. local time or 2 a.m. Boston time.  Which gave us all day to explore, except that we couldn't see straight, were lightheaded, and our hotel room wasn't ready.

So we grabbed breakfast and sat on a comfy sofa in the lobby.  By the fire.  Yes, in Dublin in June they needed a fire.  When my eyes rolled back in my head and my mouth hung open with drool slithering down my chin, Charley returned to the front desk to beg for our room.  By noon we were in.

We didn't bother to unpack.  I would never have found anything I put away, anyway.  Instead, I peeled down my slacks, tore off my jacket, and crawled on all fours across the bed covers like an animal.  Charley wasn't far behind.  We stayed there for four hours, till we got hungry again.  So much for our first day in Dublin.  After a spectacular dinner of fresh fish, we found our way back to our lair.

The following morning brought sunshine and temperatures into the seventies.  Ashes smoldered in the fireplace.  We dug through suitcases to find tee shirts and shorts.  For four hours a guide walked us through Trinity College, the Temple Bar section, Dublin Castle, and two cathedrals. Guinness Storehouse had to wait till the following day, with its free sample of ale.  We got our own pints at lunch and headed back for...what else? A nap, but not before we'd fallen in love with Dubliners and their city.  

Nothing in two weeks of travel that followed would top the time I spent in an apothecary there...James Joyce's apothecary, to be precise, where he'd chatted with neighbors who later appeared as characters in his novels.  China shaving mugs with lather brushes sat on wooden shelves along the walls.  Lime soaps, Joyce's favorite, remained stacked in glass cases.

Five members of the James Joyce Club sat on wooden benches behind the counters. They were reading from The Dubliners.  Twice a week they read, until they finished. Then they'd select another of Joyce's novels. I stood and listened.

"Come in, come in," the man on the end said.  "Sit with us."

He was stout with a bulbous nose but slid his haunches over so I could fit.  I listened to the flow, since I'd missed the entirety of the story (they were on the last chapter), and I'd never read the book.  My companion took his turn reading in a deep, sonorous voice that commiserated, then laughed, with the priest who was the protagonist.

When he stopped, he handed me his copy.  "Would you like to take a turn?"

I'd studied Joyce in college and had taught English in high school.  I figured I couldn't flub up too badly, although my voice was missing the brogue.  I began reading and continued through the ending.  "Great job!" my companion said, as I passed his book back.

The rest of them clapped.  Too bad it wasn't for me.