Noto, Sicily. May, 1988

Sicily is such a wonderful study in contrasts. The life-loving music and food that enhance day-to-day life. The solemn widows who wear black for the rest of their lives. I remember the trip that Nick and I took to Noto, southwest of Siracusa. Monumental buildings made of local golden stone, richly filagreed ironwork everywhere you looked. Jay and I were in Sicily for a day last year when our boat stopped in Messina, then on past the still active volcanic island of Stromboli that we saw erupting in flames in the dark night as we sailed by. Today’s stop is slated to be Portoferraio on another of Italy’s islands, Elba (of course there’s a Napoleonic museum), 12 miles off the coast of Tuscany, and in the same archipelago as the island of Giglio (where that ill-piloted Italian cruise ship ran aground last year. Yikes!)

Fontainebleau. July, 1972

This is the day I learned how to say “on strike” in French. Robert and I had traveled 35 miles south by train to Fontainebleau, as a day trip from Paris, to see the fabled château and the adjoining forest, formerly a royal hunting ground. Instead we were greeted with signs that read, “En grève.” As you can see, that didn’t stop us from posing on the famous “horseshoe staircase,” the site from which Napoléon Bonaparte bid farewell to his Old Guard in 1814 and headed into exile on the island of Elba. (Which is why Robert is holding his hand in Napoleonic fashion.) Thirty-four French sovereigns from Louis IV (“Louis the Fat,” just saying) in the 11th century to Napoléon III in the 19th resided in Fontainebleau at some time. And had we known upon the occasion of our thwarted visit that Patricia Highsmith’s talented Tom Ripley reportedly lived nearby, we might not have headed back to Paris as quickly as we did.

Fontainebleau. July, 1972

This is the day I learned how to say “on strike” in French. Robert and I had traveled 35 miles south by train to Fontainebleau, as a day trip from Paris, to see the fabled château and the adjoining forest, formerly a royal hunting ground. Instead we were greeted with signs that read, “En grève.” As you can see, that didn’t stop us from posing on the famous “horseshoe staircase,” the site from which Napoléon Bonaparte bid farewell to his Old Guard in 1814 and headed into exile on the island of Elba. (Which is why Robert is holding his hand in Napoleonic fashion.) Thirty-four French sovereigns from Louis IV (“Louis the Fat,” just saying) in the 11th century to Napoléon III in the 19th resided in Fontainebleau at some time. And had we known upon the occasion of our thwarted visit that Patricia Highsmith’s talented Tom Ripley reportedly lived nearby, we might not have headed back to Paris as quickly as we did.