Coins In The Fountain with Judith Works

When the author and her husband began to stare boring middle age in the face, they knew that something needed to happen. And...something did happen when a chance meeting in Portland, Oregon turned into a four-year contract with the United Nations in Rome. They ran away to the Circus (Maximus), dropping into a new lifestyle where boredom was long forgotten. Marcus Aurelius’' Meditations provided Stoic advice as the husband confronted strange vegetables in his struggle to learn to cook while the wife navigated the peculiarities of working in an international environment. In between, they made new friends, met odd characters, ate marvelous food and survived adventures including a collision with the Carabinieri and a near miss in the subway. 

 

When the contract was over they threw coins into the Trevi Fountain hoping for a return. Back in the U.S., this time in Washington D.C., they longed for vine-covered restaurant terraces where lunch-time pasta had just been made by nonna, fields were filled with red poppies and the pleasures of history were on their doorstep. Fate stepped in again to provide six additional years of a dolce vita. Now there was time to make further explorations of the Italian scene including more luscious food, wedding rituals, music, friendship with a mysterious count and his wife with her butt-reducing machine, the surprises of travel in the South including a near-sinking of a sailboat when the husband was crewing, and visits to evocative Etruscan country not so far from Rome.The coins they threw in the fountain at the end of their Italian intermezzo ensure continued visits to beautiful Rome.