It's where I met my wife!

by Robin Green
(Toronto, Canada)

Hi, this is Robin I lived in Rome as a kid for two years - ages 9-11 - and I still remember the shock I had on my drive from the airport to our hotel in downtown Rome (we stayed at the Hotel Santa Prisca - this was in 1970) when I realized that people drove cars (albeit small ones) instead of chariots, and wore suits and dresses instead of togas. My father had taken his sons to see Ben Hur a few weeks before we had left Canada, and for years had been telling us Roman and Greek myths and all about gladiators, so I had assumed that's what we would find when we got there.

I also remember the amazement of watching a man at a restaurant eat a peach with a knife and fork.

I think what made Italy the most memorable for me during the two years I lived there was the food - especially the pasta. The school I went to (St George's English School) had a cafeteria that served pasta just about every day, and I loved every meal I had there. Whenever we went to a restaurant I would get Tortellini con Panna or Spaghetti alla Carbonara. Carbonara is now one of my kids' favorite recipes and I make it for them at least once a month.

Thirteen years after my first trip to Italy, I went back for 3 months to travel as a university student and to get the last credit for my BA at the University of Toronto summer program in Siena. During my travels I met a cute American student who was doing the 2-month Eurail Pass trip. We met up in Padova and did a day trip to Venice the next day, got lost on the way home (got on the wrong train) and wound up in another town where we couldn't afford the only hotel, so had to sleep on the lawn of a used car parking lot.

27 years later we're still together but sadly have never been back to Italy together, although we've visited France, Ireland, Costa Rica, Africa, Japan, and the Caribbean together. I'm hoping to do a trip back to the Toscana area in the next year or two, if we can just scrape together the money for it - a month living in the Tuscan countryside would be my dream vacation!

Maria's reply: A really lovely story, thank you so much for sharing and I really hope you make it back to Italy in the not to distant future.