First morning back in Agropoli. Against all odds. I’m a bit reluctant even to mention the fact, fearing the Fates, who have been so generous, will misinterpret my words as hubris and send us a big dose of retribution. No, dear Fates, only profoundest gratitude. Back in 2010, when we first came to this beautiful place to live with these incredible people, I opined that it was a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experience. Every time we’ve been back since—ten now—we have told each other several times, “We need to really savor every minute of this, because it will probably be the last time.”
But not yet, it seems! Despite some serious obstacles.
Once again ‘our’ little apartment at the Villa Astone was not available, still under reconstruction after some water damage from leaking pipes. It seems that things were progressing nicely till late February when the two Ukrainian workers doing the work understandably left to be with their families and countrymen during these tragic times. And Italy is having some of the same issues with labor supply as we are, despite an eye-popping unemployment rate among young people here. Their replacement workers in skilled labor tend to come from eastern Europe, their unskilled, especially agricultural, labor from North Africa. So procuring replacements for our Ukrainians is a problem.
Thus we were very disappointed; the apartment we lived in at the B&B Miglino last fall was, we assumed, only possible because we were here off-season in this little beach resort. And we left it at that. But our dear friends here had no such reservations—were even a bit hurt that we didn’t ask, though they now understand why. As Katiuscia Miglino told Sandy, they consider us family, and money not remotely the main consideration.
So here we are! Tough journey for two our ages, but we handled it with some aplomb, I must say. Once again we stopped over in New York for a couple of days to break up the travel and, more importantly, to see daughter Amy and fiancé Vito. And a special treat, Vito’s parents, Kelly and Mario, are there from home in Venezuela and we had a wonderful dinner with them and beautiful daughter Melanie. On Wednesday we were scheduled to depart JFK at 4:15pm and as usual gave ourselves extra time to arrive there and run the gauntlet, all without a hitch. There was one comical moment at Security when the TSA agents had to deal with our braces on various joints. We kept the little metal detectors busy! ITA Air boarded in fairly good time, but then we sat. And sat. For five hours! First some sort of technical glitch with a fuel valve that finally required the combined skills of three technicians, and then—and I dreaded this because we faced the same problem with a large tour group several years ago—because there’s a fairly tight schedule for flight crews on these international flights due to strict limits on how much air time they can spend. Some years ago regulations were passed after crew fatigue was implicated in two fatal crashes. In the best case, the flight itself is eight hours, so ITA had to call in another crew and that took some time as well. Thus our 9:25pm departure.
The flight over was incredibly smooth, making our way through passport control and claiming luggage efficient, as were making our way to the train station at Fiumicino airport, buying tickets, and traveling the 30 minutes to Rome Termini, the main train station. Sweet Sandy had made all kinds of arrangements for this trip, among them reserving seats on the Freccia Rossa high-speed train from Rome to Agropoli. Which we thought was perfectly shrewd since it gave us almost three and a half hours lead time in case our flight was delayed. But sadly, 3.5 minus 5 does not yield a positive number, in either sense of the word. We checked in with a kind, helpful agent of Trenitalia to see if the ticket price could be transferred to a later train; she explained that it could not but booked us on an intercity leaving 30 minutes thereafter, a train which was not quite as speedy but still very rapid and comfortable. This glitch cost us 80€, pretty minor in the scheme of things. Three and a half hours later, dear friend Fernando La Greca, my twin by another mother, met us at the Agropoli station with ecstatic hugs and much laughter and took us north to Paestum, ten minutes away, where we claimed our little Lancia Ypsilon, the other godsend which is making this stay practicable, oddly enough. We have rented through Hertz for years and of late specifically through Hertz Rome at Fiumicino, spending the night at a comfortable little B&B in nearby Ostia and driving south the next day after resting tired old bodies. Typically for two months we pay about 1600€. But this year the cheapest rate we could get on two months’ rental from Hertz was about 7,000€, totally beyond our budget. And pure gouging, in my opinion. Our cute little flivver from here locally is not cheap by any stretch, but it’s a lot more reasonable than that. Hence the train ride south.
So we made our way back from Paestum to Agropoli and to the little frazione of Moio and up the northern flank of Monte Tresino to Asparagus Lane for joyful, excited reunions with the Miglinos and a tour of our new quarters, if we so choose. To explain, there are two apartments here on the third floor of this large villa, and this fall we stayed in the eastern one since its sister was being furnished at the time. Now the western one is complete and Katiuscia and brother Ivan were proud and happy to show it to us. It is a stunner, beautifully appointed with gorgeous views from the front and side terraces. What a luxury to have such an option! Both apartments are beautiful and comfortable, and we will be overjoyed to stay in either, naturally, plus there are some minor advantages and disadvantages to each, so for a few days we’ll just settle into the Magpie’s Nest, as I hereby christen the new apartment—we have a garrulous magpie couple nesting in the oak tree in front, plus there are two old bipedal magpies temporarily nesting behind and happily clacking away—and then decide where to live.
Speaking of which, today is a day joyfully devoted to some very mundane matters such as groceries, wi-fi, cash, cappucini, cornetti (our local croissants), and just allowing creaky old bodies to recuperate. And with a bit more of our inexplicable good fortune, along about Sunday we’ll start planning our first adventures in this blessed land, grazie mille a Dio.
