December 3, 2020

When my mother was, want to say 75, she’s an artist, my mom. And we said, “Let’s go to Paris.” And then since we were so close to Belgium, why not go to Belgium and eat at least 10 pounds of chocolate each? So we did stay at a small, little boutique hotel in the, and I might be mispronouncing it wrong, but the 8th arrondissement which is the artist district in the upper district. And it was a wonderful little neighborhood. You could hear opera singing going on in one apartment. You pass by to get to our little boutique hotel, you could see a gentleman repairing violins. But we had so much fun in Paris.

We were always laughing. No matter what map my sister and I consulted if the Notre-Dame was … you made a right, we would automatically make a left. Five miles walking later, we realized what we did and we turned around again. But I think I included in there a picture of the elevator. It was the smallest, little elevator on the planet. And there’s the four of us squeezing into this elevator. I’ve never seen an elevator this small. It took us so many trips to go up to the fourth floor and back with our luggage using this incredibly small elevator. But it was a beautiful boutique hotel. It had breakfast which was unusual in the hotel, in the wine cellar. So you didn’t have to run out to the boulangerie and get your bread and get your cafe. You just walked right down. And being Italians, we do have this great capacity to procrastinate. So it was perfect that they had the breakfast down there as well.

The hotel in Florence, we’re talking about a disaster or whatever. I went with my cousin, Liz. She was 20. I was 19. So of course, you had to blow dry her hair, or cure your hair before you go down to dinner. And we had the converter. But obviously, we used too many things at once. And we blew out the electricity on the fifth floor of the Florence hotel. I will not tell you what hotel that is in case they still want to hold us liable for that. But it ended up working out well because we ended up getting a better room on the sixth floor.

But as soon as all the lights went out the first thing I heard was my name. My two aunts yelling at me thinking it must’ve been my fault. I was like, “Well really. I’m insulted.” But anyway, that’s when we went to Northern Italy, all the way down through Rome. And then Pompei, Napoli which starts getting southern. But all of my great travels, my memories come from all the craziness or the Caprio cyclone effect that has been caused by my family wherever we have gone. For me, it’s always been a joy doing family vacations and staying at small places.