Re-Adjusting

October 20, 2003-Ick!
(photos:Meta-Panorama Palace marked with X,
Laundromat from hell)

No more weather reports from here! I give up. It looks like we’ll just have to put up with the mercurial weather of the season. At least we’re heading South and it seems to have warmed up. A bar breakfast was included with our room. We were told it was croissants and coffee. The croissants turned out to be packaged cakes and the flies were included for free. I’m glad we didn’t eat dinner there last night.

I feel a need to keep writing about black sheep. Karen Cimini has such a quest to see them that I feel compelled to mention each sighting. We hit the bonanza today. We saw a black momma with two black babies and a white one. I guess I just want to rub it in, but Karen also wanted to introduce us to a favorite of hers, profiterole. It’s a custard-filled puff pastry with cholcolate frosting poured over the top. We found some this afternoon on, of all place, the dessert bar of the Autogrille on the autostrade.

We skirted Rome and Naples and found our hotel Panorama Palace in Meta outside Sorrento. We could have driven up and down blind alleys all day and never found it. There were two signs indicating the direction to take, but then it seemed as if they gave up and decided if we got close enough we’d figure it out. We asked directions many times and found the hotel when we ran out of land. It sits right over the water and is aptly named. Our room looks out to the Bay of Naples. We can even lie in bed and raise the electric window shade. It all sounds so Meditrranean and romantic, but Naples is filthy and Sorrento is barely a step better. There were even hawkers at the tollbooths on the autostrade. It’s that different than what we’ve seen so far. We’re back to dog waste in the streets.

Our hotel is a twenty-minute bus ride from Sorrento, which is where the action is. It’s not as far as we thought it might be. Today was laundry day and we loaded our dirty clothes into a roll-aboard and bussed it to town. There are no Laundromats in Meta and only one in Sorrento. It took from 3 PM to 6 PM to do our wash. It was the Laundromat from hell. There were two washers and three dryers. One dryer was broken. One washer tried to attack anyone within reach during its spin cycle. The place was filthy but the company was phenomenal. We had a long wait with the limited facilities but had a rowdy bunch of beer chugging Australians for entertainment. One group was on a tour from Sydney and the others were a young couple from Brisbane. We reminisced and passed the time and were joined by a couple from Connecticut. We exchanged travel tips and went our separate ways.

A friend in Akron who gets these emails told us that the wedding announcement for Wendy and her partner was in the Akron Beacon Journal. I know it’s available on line. We haven’t seen it yet. It was a ground-breaking stand for the paper to take. As I understand it they wrote an editorial about it and have asked for reader responses. I’d encourage you to let them know how you feel. Please save copies of the announcement for us and any letters to the editor that might appear. We’re really proud and excited that the Beacon took this step.

Toby