Our nights were spent lying awake on the floor contemplating my job, the antics of the nuns and the

Pasta! Vino! Hill Towns! Coins in the Fountain small luxury hotels in dorset will transport you to Italy where you can find out what it's really like to live the expatriate life. It s all here in the story of a couple who said NO! to middle age boredom and made a dash from a small-town in Oregon to cosmopolitan Rome when the author went to work for the United Nations.  In between actually working there were Italian weddings to attend, music to be heard, a close-up with the Pope, travel with the wine club and country weekends in Umbria where the Etruscans still seem to be lurking about. small luxury hotels in dorset A brush with the Italian medical system, an auto accident with the military police, a fall in the subway, interactions with their excitable small luxury hotels in dorset landlord and helping pick grapes at harvest time all became part of their daily adventures. And of course there were many new friends like the countess with her butt-reducing machine and the count who served as a model for statues of naked horsemen.
Taking up early retirement unexpectedly the author's husband met strange vegetables in his valiant efforts to learn to cook Italian-style. When not struggling in the kitchen he played golf on a course where the rough featured snakes and unexploded bombs and crewed on a sailboat that came close to disaster on the way to Greece.
Part memoir, part travelogue to off-beat sites in Rome and elsewhere, you will be amused and intrigued with the stories of food, friends and adventures. You, too, will want to run away to join the Circus small luxury hotels in dorset (the Circus Maximus, that is). And before you depart Rome, you will never forget to throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain to ensure a return to beautiful Rome and enchanting Italy.
small luxury hotels in dorset Glenn and I sat on the sofa while the movers carefully packed our final purchases and remaining clothes in layer upon layer of white paper. The rest of our material goods were already in a shipping container waiting to be transported "home," a concept that after so many years in Italy had taken on a somewhat uncertain meaning. Geographically it was to be a small town near Seattle but in my heart I knew home would always remain Rome. We now favored pasta over potatoes, stylish clothes and strappy sandals (for me, anyway) instead of gray fleece and tennis shoes, and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano rather than beer. Our conversation was peppered with Italian words when we couldn't recall the English equivalent, and visits to our once and future Pacific Northwest home were remembered for the dreary weather and excruciatingly slow drivers.
My work contract was completed and family small luxury hotels in dorset beckoned.  Glenn was content small luxury hotels in dorset to give up the charms and challenges of Italy for a more settled life but I was anxious. Losing my friends, work and country, however temporary it had all been, was a large dose of change to manage at one time. Already starting the transition, we moved out of our home for the last six years when the rental contract small luxury hotels in dorset expired. We were now perched in an apartment on the Aventine Hill, house sitting while the regular renters were on leave in Quebec.
When the movers departed they presented us with a bottle of prosecco in thanks for the business. While we sipped we tried to look into a cloudy crystal ball (in reality our smudged wine glasses) in a vain attempt to see the future. We soon gave up, turning back instead to thoughts of the events that had shaped our lives. Immediately coming to mind were those of the first months in the Eternal City on our initial Italian sojourn. It began on the same Aventine Hill.
I sprang up from the floor where I was lounging on a deflated air mattress and rushed into what was supposed to be our dining room in the echoing, still-empty apartment. Why was Glenn shouting? I found the answer when I saw my normally mild mannered husband small luxury hotels in dorset hanging out the window yelling at a group of nuns in their crisp black and white habits as they dumped wheelbarrows filled with garbage onto the open space behind our building. They looked up briefly. Then, paying small luxury hotels in dorset no further attention to the outraged foreigner, they finished their work and swished off toward an unseen convent.
It was Saturday morning. To our great surprise, I had gone to work for a branch of the United Nations a month earlier. We stayed in a hotel on the Aventine Hill for the first two weeks after our arrival small luxury hotels in dorset in Rome and then in a new colleague's apartment for another two weeks while he was back in California. Now, at the unsettled beginning of the second month of a planned four-year stay we were tired and cranky from sleeping on the living room floor on a bed of flattened cardboard cartons that originally held an air mattress, a few dishes, pots and pans, two folding chairs, an old card table and some clothes. These items comprised our air shipment, meant to tide us over until the shipping container arrived by sea a couple of months later. The air mattress we hoped to use over the cardboard had slowly and irreparably deflated, paralleling small luxury hotels in dorset our naïve enthusiasm for the whole adventure of a move to romantic Italy.
We had been desperate to find a home. The hotel was expensive and my settlement allowance was running out. The American Embassy located apartments for its staff, small luxury hotels in dorset but my new office offered no assistance. The rental agents we contacted from newspaper ads had nothing satisfactory to offer, nor did the few ads on an office bulletin small luxury hotels in dorset board. Word of mouth eventually led us to another agent, a disagreeable American who made her living finding apartments for greenhorns like us with minimum effort on her part. She insisted that we take the bus to the apartments she suggested, leaving us scrambling to find buildings in unfamiliar locations and waiting until she drove up at her leisure and parked her car on the sidewalk. Worse, after she signed small luxury hotels in dorset us up we began to hear stories that circulated in the gossipy expatriate community that was welcoming small luxury hotels in dorset us. One story in particular made us especially cautious about the woman: Several years before our arrival Marge invited a client for lunch at her own apartment that was filled with cats and their untended litter small luxury hotels in dorset boxes. After a microwaved small luxury hotels in dorset meal of Fettuccine Alfredo , she announced that she had an appointment and left, locking him inside. He was trapped with the cats. After waiting an hour, he managed to signal a neighbor on an adjoining balcony who reluctantly let him climb over the railings to escape an unknown fate.
We weren't subjected small luxury hotels in dorset to such dramatic events but then Marge hadn't shown us anything livable either with her numerous dark and dilapidated suggestions. At the point when we were getting agitated she finally produced an attractive solution that we later heard was yet another apartment where she had resided. Our proposed new home had large windows small luxury hotels in dorset on both long sides of one wing of a small building. It also came with a telephone, a bonus as it often took a year to have one installed at that time just before cell phones became available. Best of all, there were two balconies small luxury hotels in dorset on one side and a sunny terrace small luxury hotels in dorset opening small luxury hotels in dorset off the master bedroom and living room on the other. The outdoor spaces were the real attraction small luxury hotels in dorset for migrants from our cloudy home near Portland, Oregon.
We nodded to Marge in agreement. The next day she and the owner came to my office after work to present two contracts, both in Italian. The only part Glenn and I could read was the rental rate. The first document showed the low, legally allowable, amount. The second small luxury hotels in dorset was for the remaining, exorbitant, amount. I signed as the breadwinner, handed over a pile of cash to our new landlord and another to our agent. After we shook hands, we were given a bunch of huge keys, the type one would expect to be used in an old monastery or castle dungeon. The place was ours. Before Marge walked off fondling her commission she offered some advice: "Always buy De Cecco pasta."
Early fall, it was still hot. I tried to focus on a remark by the ancient Roman orator Seneca: "Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind." Well, I always wanted to have a change of place, and now my wish came true. But sometimes mental exhaustion was a more common sensation than new vigor as my brain tried to get organized to meet the dramatic change in my life.
Our nights were spent lying awake on the floor contemplating my job, the antics of the nuns and the difficulties of getting settled. Packs of incessantly barking dogs left behind when their owners went on vacation provided a background to our thoughts. Adding to the noise, eerie sirens like those in World War II movies split the night air. We squirmed on the flat, sweaty air mattress while considering our decision-making skills small luxury hotels in dorset – deciding to leave secure jobs for a flight into fantasy. Mamma mia ! What had we done to ourselves?
Life was routine until mid-life when the author small luxury hotels in dorset decided to get a law degree. After graduation from Lewis Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon a chance meeting led her to run away to the Circus (Maximus) – actually to the United Nations office next door where she worked as an attorney in the HR department and entered the world of expat life in Rome. After four years she and her husband returned to the U.S. But they missed life in Italy with its wonderful food and wine, endless history and their numerous friends. The gods smiled and another opportunity came along. Six more years in Rome, again working for the UN, followed. The many happy and sometimes fraught experiences are the subject of her memoir, Coins in the Fountain, published as an e-book. She continues to travel, having fitted in over 100 countries small luxury hotels in dorset in between many journeys to Italy where she always tosses a coin in the Trevi Fountain to ensure another visit. While her suitcase is cooling off she writes for Travel Belles, an on-line travel magazine, blogs, works on her novel set in Rome and volunteers for arts and literary organizations.