Traveling - easy; planning - difficult

Planning a trip to Rashid proved to be quite difficult. We could fly to Cairo and go by land transportation (bus or hired car) north to the Mediterranean. Alternatively, we could fly to Athens, island hop east, and then catch a ferry across the sea. The ferry ride alone would take 24 hours. Another option was to fly to Rome, take land transportation south, and then catch the 24-hour ferry. It looked bleak. It seemed that a trip to this place was for people who had several weeks and no schedule -- not my daughter and me at that time.

As much as we hated to let the dream go, we decided to visit Italy and Greece instead.

Twenty years earlier, we had dipped into Torino, Italy. At the train station, while Ronda (age 10) sat on my suitcase to protect it, I stood in line to buy train tickets out the next day. In that brief period of time, a young man propositioned me, and a lady from America recognized my shirt and started a conversation with me. I said "no, thank you" to the young man and allowed the lady, Donna, who had dual citizenship in America and Italy, to help me through the ticket buying process. Stepping down from the train with a young child and luggage in a strange city was a frightening ordeal, knowing that 24 hours was not enough time to learn the language. Within 10 minutes, however, I was becoming acquainted with a very nice and helpful person. Whew!

Donna bought our tickets for us, pointed out a restaurant for our dinner, walked with us to an excellent hotel, and promised to send a cab for us the next day. Her Italian mother was ill, and she was spending a month in Torino with her aunt. We were to have lunch with her aunt's family. Everything went swimmingly -- the dinner was wonderful (I especially loved the dessert cart), the bed was comfortable, the cab came on schedule, and we spent a few delightful hours with her family. This included a bold red wine that they made in their basement, lunch, and a walking tour of the area. I remember drinking my first ever cappuccino and the delightful good-bye kisses from Donna's cute male cousins.

So we had enough information about Italy to return. And who needs information about Greece to want to visit it? We planned to land in Rome on my birthday.