Trouble in Paradise

Oh, The Indignities of Travel . . .

The e-mail message I sent from Rome was brief: Bring Colace.
The reply from New York equally succinct: Relief is on the way!

If this isn’t the most effective communication in the history of the Internet, I’ll eat my cappello.

So what’s the story behind these messages between the Old Country and the New World? Isn’t Italy  famous for great gelato and naked statues? Pizza and piazzas? Pizza in the piazza? What does Colace have to do it? Aspetta, my friend, aspetta.

First of all, when the travelers in question are not twenty, Colace is not the only indignity. It begins with the irony of the luggage. You can lift less, but you need more. Your little kit with aspirin and toothpaste has slowly evolved into a bewildering assortment of items.

Glasses for reading, a pair for TV, so that with your sunglasses you have three pairs to lose; your contact lenses, their case(s) and solution(s); your prescription medicines plus the painkiller of your choice, maybe that new stuff you rub directly into your forehead. Or wherever.

You need shampoo and a good conditioner (your hair is dryer), gel or spray (it’s unruly too), and something fairly serious for sleep. Don’t forget the tweezers for geezers, because you’ve taken to sprouting hairs in places other than your eyebrows. Not really all that attractive.

If you’re a woman . . .

You can add a shitload, you should pardon the expression, of creams and cosmetics because even a “natural” look requires foundation, blush, eye shadow, mascara, eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, lip liner, and  —you can’t survive jet lag without it —a concealer. You don’t use each of these every day, and you may go without makeup a lot of the time, but you will need some of these things at some point, so how the hell do you know which not to take?

And then there’s the shoes . . .
I knew a lot about Italy before this trip, and love the Italians, many of whom seem to be my relatives. They are nice people. They encourage me to speak Italian, which must be painful to their fine Italian ears, and I love their lasagna alla Bolognese.

But Italians have no concept of convenience and this, too, can lead to indignities. Take the cobblestones. Please. For Americans, they are impossible to walk on in anything resembling nice looking shoes. So you pack your clodhoppers. Then you notice that the only other human being in Italy with shoes as ugly as your own is the nun in a cathedral, the one with a mustache and hideous haircut that only a Mother Superior could love. There was one other example of really bad shoes. But when I looked up with a glimmer of hope, it turned out to be a man, bearded and begging for Euros in the streets of Bologna.

Before you tell me that I am full of the same, trust me on this: all Italian women, unless they are ANCIENT, wear good-looking shoes. They are genetically engineered with both the desire to possess good leather and the ability to walk in fabulous shoes in impossible conditions.

I wanted to announce to the world that I have cute shoes too! But the truth is that I’m not young enough to wear them for actual walking. I might as well admit that, though, because you can’t travel without revealing your age. Yet another indignity! First it’s your passport for the nosy clerks in the hotels. Then it’s your international driving license, which you forget in the glove compartment of your cousin’s car. Oh well, now the relatives know why you can’t wear cute shoes when sightseeing.

But about the Colace. . .
Thinking about the beauty of Italy, which is pretty close to paradise, is almost enough to make me forget about that nasty episode of the Colace, which I may add is an absolute must in Italy where the diet has lots of pasta, prosciutto, and formaggio and precious little fiber. So I better get this over with.

Suffice it to say that during my trip I got to know various and sundry bathrooms intimately, giving new meaning to the phrase Fleet Week. Talk about indignity! Some people do these things for pleasure? Are they out of their minds? Anyway, when everything settled down and I just needed a little help, I was forced to do one of two things:

1) Attempt to explain to a pharmacist, in Italian, what the hell Colace is. It’s not exactly a laxative, you see. And I know from experience that if you ask for a lasativo you will get a high-octane product that will knock the you-know-what out of you, which makes sense given the local diet.

2) Send an e-mail to a friend who was meeting us and ask her for help. Indignity was not an issue here: we been through worse things in the past. Don’t ask.

The decision to go for number two, so to speak, produced the infamous “Bring Colace” e-mail, so the solution to my problem turned out to be just a click away.

I have to go now — and, hopefully, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and the next day — but I’ll be back soon with more about my travels, travails, and anything else I think you need to know. And this from a woman who complains about Too Much Information!

 
Okay, you don’t have to tell the Blogoshere about your bathroom problems. . .
But we’d love to hear about your travel experiences.

Stacey? Suzan? Other people on the go?