The Alitalia crew is very attentive, and the food gives a preview of Italian eating. Business class is virtually empty; Dan moves across the aisle and we each have our own row. I begin to feel better about spending the extra money; the coach section of the plane is filled with a soccer team having a boisterously wonderful time.  In Rome, there is just a short layover before our leg to Genova. Virtually an entire planeload of passengers is herded onto a bus, where we stand in cramped quarters while they finish readying the plane. When the word is given, it’s a mad dash to one of the two entrances to the aircraft. We’re almost the last to board, but manage to find enough room for our carry-on bags. A short while later, a second busload of people arrives. Now things get really crowded in the overhead bins. Alitalia is starting a 1 carry-on policy, but apparently they’re not enforcing it just yet. The flight is just about an hour long, and aside from the feeling of being on a cattle drive, is pleasant enough.

In Genova our bags appear almost immediately. Come to think of it, they were pretty quick off the plane in Lisbon as well. Wonder if this is using up our travel ‘luck’. We run into Marcos at baggage claim; he has arrived on an earlier flight. Marcos will be staying at a youth hostel, but won’t know exactly where it is until he checks in at the opening reception. We share a cab to our hotel, which is supposed to be relatively close to the Aquarium where the reception is already underway. After shelling out thousands of lira, we check in, take our bags to our room, and investigate the best way to get to the Aquarium. The men decide that a 15-minute walk is no problem. I disagree but am outnumbered. Somehow, wandering the streets of a strange city at night, with one of the party carrying luggage just doesn’t seem particularly wise, especially since we’re not really sure where we’re going and don’t speak the language. However, we set out and have our first encounter with the massive construction project going on all over Genova as it prepares for the G8 summit. Marcos speaks a little Italian and asks two women for help finding the Aquarium. They tell us that we’re not in the safest of neighborhoods the way we’re walking and are nice enough to lead us around and get us on the main street that will take us down to the water. The 15-minute walk is now 30 minutes old.

After some wending and weaving, we find the entrance to the Aquarium and have some spumonti and some hors d’oeuvres. Dan finds Brad, his boss and Jim, the vet from California, and after a while we decide to take a cab back to the hotel. We’re back on the street, no cabs to be seen. Jim goes back to the Aquarium to tell them there were no cabs where they said there would be lots of them, and they call one for us. Not quite as many lira this time, but I’m glad I bought a little exchange rate calculator. My brain can’t do the math quickly enough, and I like to know that the 3000 lira I pay for a gelato is really only about a dollar and a half. It does take one aback to discover that the smallest amount you can withdraw from the ATM is 100,000 lira.

We meet in the bar for a quick drink with Brad and Jim. I opt for a club soda, and then leave the boys to their business talk. The hotel room is quite elegant compared with the beach resort of Portugal, although it is quite small. We now have BBC, CNN and MSNBC in addition to Eurosport on the television. Italian, German, and I think some French language shows as well. Here the fan doesn’t go on unless you run the heat. It’s cold enough outside not to need air conditioning, but it’s noisy with the windows open. Also, there are no screens, so you get little flying friends when the windows are open. So, we leave them open until we’re ready to sleep, and the room stays cool enough until morning, and try to eliminate the flying things.

Dan has to be at the meeting at 8:30; he sets his watch to beep beep beep at 7:00. I stay in bed until 8, then shower and go downstairs to check out the Italian version of breakfast. A more formal setting, although it’s still a buffet. However, you get table service for coffee and tea. Not as much hot food, no baked beans (bummer), but fruit, cold cuts, good cheeses, great bread. Besides, I really don’t need to eat much.

I take a city map from the hotel, get pointed to the ATM and start wandering. The streets are brick; the sidewalks don’t always exist. Central Florida doesn’t prepare one for the hills. All the walking, step classes and elliptical machine workouts don’t begin to give you the strength you need in the calves and shins. I’m still sore from the Algarve, and the hills here are just as bad.

First, I wandered the main street down to the ‘downtown’ area. Lots of expensive shops. Fancy name brands. Shoes (ugly shoes) for 300,000 – 400,000 lira. Old buildings. Mosaic sidewalks. Marble columns. Learn not to use banks as landmarks – there’s one or two on every block.

The map wasn’t a lot of help, but then again, I’m the sort of person who can get lost in an elevator. Between the winding narrow streets and the hills, it’s hard to keep a landmark in sight. But, I learned to know and love the monument of the man on his horse in the piazza in front of the hotel.

Next trip out is in the other direction, looking for the street full of old buildings. Lots of alleyways between the hotel and the street. Also, there are numerous underground passages. These are nice, because they usually have a sign on the entrance telling what streets they will connect with. Via Roma becomes my very good friend, as does XX Septembre. The streets don’t seem to keep the same name for very long, so these two names mean I’m in familiar territory. I only head off in the completely wrong direction once. But, since the street ended, I just turn around and follow it back to the other end. I’d love to go back once all the construction is done; it is really hard to appreciate the magnificence of the architecture when everything is covered with plastic and scaffolding. A couple of the buildings have edifices painted on their coverings, which make them a whole lot more attractive.

I find a tiny mart near the hotel and buy a liter of water. According to my handy dandy calculator, it was about 61 cents. The one in the mini-bar is about $3.50. I have a granola bar that was leftover from one of the plane snacks instead of a full course lunch. Dan pops into the hotel room during his lunch break -–he says it is about a 25 minute walk to the conference center. At 3, I go back downtown for a Nutella gelato. It starts to rain on the walk back, but not hard enough to be a problem.

I go down to the lobby bar around 7:30 to wait for Dan and his colleagues. They didn’t get finished with their workshops until after 8; I order a salad at 8:30 and am served just as they arrive. Pedro, who just happens to be Arlindo and Elió’s boss at Zoomarine, has invited them to dinner. I quickly decline that invitation and order some pasta. Pedro doesn’t show up until 9:30. Knowing it would be a late night for Dan, I have the bellman walk me up to the room and let me in so that I can leave the room key at the front desk. In Europe, it’s one key per room, and it’s a massive one at that. No chance of sticking it in your pocket when you leave. This way I won’t have to get out of bed to let him in when he returns. It’s nearly midnight when he does.

Now it’s Sunday. After breakfast, I decide to check out the Museo Chiossone up the hill. It’s an Oriental museum set in a park complete with ponds, waterfowl and waterfall. Although the sign says admission is 6000 lira, the man at the table hands me a blue ticket that says ingresso gratuito. My high school Latin hasn’t completely deserted me; I say grazi and head toward the exhibits. All the literature is in Italian, as are the graphics. The museum is a collection of what appears to be primarily Japanese art and artifacts. Everything from pottery to Samurai regalia. I move through a lot faster than the Italians, not being hampered by reading all the signage. Smiling old men with lapel badges point me up and down the stairs to make sure I don’t miss any of the exhibits. As I exit, the entry man points to the table and says, ‘souvenir’. I see some paper flowers and tiny Samurai helmets. "Origami," I say. He smiles and says, "Origami." So, our common ground of communication has been in a language foreign to both of us.

After depositing my Origami in the hotel room, I strike out in the opposite direction from yesterday, heading up the hill. There’s a huge castle at the top of the hill, but it is much too far away for walking. I do discover a synagogue, however, and take the slight detour to take some pictures. Since it’s Sunday, most everything is closed. I try to take the back route downtown, since I could never find the street that looped back up to the hotel once I was there. I had been reading street signs on the wrong side of the road; the names were all different on either side of XX Septembre. Given the twists and turns, however, I decide that my tried and true ‘retrace your steps’ method is the most promising for roaming the streets. I head toward the Ducal Palace, which is where our closing banquet will be held tonight. Like everything else, it’s under renovation. There’s a gift shop, a bookstore, an art exhibit, and a coffee shop inside, but I don’t see where we will have a banquet for 100 people. I imagine the conference folks will know.

I find a bar/snack shop that’s open and manage to communicate that I’d like a sandwich. This sets me back a whopping 2500 lira, or about $1.80. I also find the Italian version of the German chocolate egg with the toy inside to give to our four year old neighbor, Zach, who has been charged with making sure nothing is left on our porch or in the driveway while we are gone.

That night, a group of us head back downtown for the banquet. A group sets off with bold determination, and they seem to know where they are going. Based on the map, they were right. However, the construction creates a ‘you can’t get there from here’ situation, and I manage to convince our group that if we head away from the destination around the fence, and then loop around through some archways where a saxophone player with a sign about his three bambinos was playing this afternoon, we’d end up at the palace. The saxophone player has gone back to his family, but I remember the mosaic sidewalk under the arches, and we find ourselves at the entrance to the palace. No signs, but there is a representative of the group pointing the way down to the cellar, or Cisterne, where the dinner will be. Italy is no different from Portugal with regard to smoking; people are puffing away right under the no smoking signs; there are ashtrays everywhere. That’s one thing I won’t miss when I return to the states.

Dinner is a buffet of all sorts of Italian dishes, from raw fish to carpaccio to lasagna, risotto, and who knows what else. "Eat and don’t ask" is my motto. Dan’s mother has been in the hospital with diverticulitis; he calls his sister and finds that she’s ok and has been released, and then calls and talks to her. It’s now quite late.

Monday is our last day. It’s raining. I go to the little mart and buy a bag of pasta as a souvenir. There will be a tour of the Aquarium in the afternoon, so I decide to take the slow route via all the little shops on the winding road down to the conference center. Apparently Monday is late day for the shops; almost all of them are closed as I walk by at noon. The market by the wharf is in full swing, however, and I check out all the stalls of fish, meat, vegetables, and of course, that shopping staple, T-shirts, before going to the conference center.

The Aquarium tour takes us through the exhibits and behind the scenes. It’s a very nice place, and I believe it’s the largest in Europe. Afterwards, we walk back up the shopping street and find that the shops are now open. Still haven’t seen any shoes I like. I do buy three wine bottle stoppers, though.

We start to pack when Brad calls and says he has dinner reservations for us, plus Jim, Geraldine, a vet from Brussels, and Fiona from Hong Kong, at 7:30. We meet in the bar and take a cab. Brad will take a separate cab with Geraldine who is staying at a different hotel. The driver stops and points in the general direction of the ocean and says the restaurant is ‘that way.’ There’s nothing remotely resembling a sign; Jim knocks on a door where he sees someone working and shows him the paper with the restaurant’s name written on it. The man points across the courtyard, so we head in that direction. It’s cold, windy, and starting to rain again. We find the restaurant, and, although we’re early, the hostess gives us a warm welcome and tells us she will bring some appetizers and would we like something to drink. There doesn’t seem to be a menu; she tells us we would like some antipasto, a pasta course, and then some nice fish. We say ‘fine.’ The waiter brings a large platter with two fish on it; we point to the one we want.

There are some bits and pieces of various types of seafood – shrimp, octopus, and clams in an antipasto salad. Genoa is famous for pesto, and the pasta with pesto is wonderful. The fish arrives cooked, and the waiter skillfully divides it up for service, along with vegetables and potatoes. The hostess says she will call two cabs for us, and points us to the point where the cab will be, since there’s no place for cars near the restaurant. A cab arrives, and we’re told to get in; Brad and Jim will wait with Geraldine; we leave with Fiona who is freezing. Not surprising, since the wind has picked up and it’s really beginning to rain. We discover the next day that the second cab didn’t show; Jim went back to the restaurant and they called for another, so they ended up waiting out in the cold for about thirty minutes.

We finish packing and set the alarm for the ungodly hour of 04:30 so we can catch the 7:00 am flight from Genoa to Milan. For future reference, should you need to get an early flight out of Genoa, don’t hurry; nobody shows up at the airport before 6 am. The plane is delayed about fifteen minutes, but since we have a four-hour layover in Milan, it doesn’t really matter.

Nobody shows up at the Delta counter until 9 am in Milan, but when they do, they’re ever so efficient. We finally have an opportunity to fly Business Elite, which means they have special lines, and offer you lounge privileges. First we hit the duty free shop. This time, I’m prepared with the liquor store prices from home so I can tell if I’m getting any good deals. I buy a big bottle of Amaretto, and some Courvoirsier, and we get a bottle of wine for Zach’s parents. Then I get to find places to put them. One bottle fits in my carry-on suitcase, but the other two are in my backpack, which means I’ll be bearing their weight every time we have to walk somewhere.

The flight from Milan to New York is great – even the video games are working on the personal monitors. Dan plays Tetris and we both give some trivia game a whirl. We’re very good at Science and Technology and terrible in Sports. We watch Oh Brother Where Art Thou, enjoy the decent food, and even manage to get some sleep. Not a lot, but for me, sleeping two or three hours on an airplane is a real tribute to those fancy seats.

Business Elite concierges meet us at the baggage claim and go into great detail on how to proceed through customs and immigration, and where the nearest lounge is. What they don’t know is that our connecting flight is an hour later than they show on their printouts. It turns out to be more like two hours later. At least we can use the business lounge. There’s a computer with an Internet connection, so Dan checks his email, and I check out a couple of websites. We finally board the plane, which is full to capacity since an afternoon flight had been cancelled. It’s Delta Express; no frills, but we did manage to grab an exit row, so we have some extra legroom. We’ve now been traveling about 24 hours, and even I can sleep most of the way home.

The delays create a backup at the baggage claim; too many planes arriving at once. But, our bags are in the first batch once they finally start coming round the carrier. There’s a shuttle bus waiting to go to the parking lot; the car starts, and we’re home around midnight local time, which would be 6 am Genoa time – the next morning. Our neighbor has turned on the air conditioner, so the house is pleasant. Everything looks just as we left it almost two weeks ago. I remember to turn off the timers on the lamps so we’re not awakened at some unbearably early hour. We leave our suitcases on the floor and crawl into the familiar comfort of our king-sized bed. Tomorrow will be soon enough to face the empty refrigerator and the full laundry hamper. As a matter of fact, it probably wouldn’t hurt to leave the refrigerator empty for a few days, and spend some extra time at the Y. I’m already looking ahead to Rome. After all, I still have thousands of lira. I can already taste the Gelato.

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