Speaking the language of coffee should be enough to find our way around the country shaped like a boot and after all, how hard can it be to follow the highway straight down to the port city of Genoa and then drive along the coast to a little town called Varazze? Well, it proved a little harder than we thought. But long stretches of time where nobody dares to speak to each other lest it escalates into screaming that is what adventures are made of, or not?

Excited to finally make use of the fact that we could exit one country in less than the 7 hours of driving it took in Alaska to reach Canada, we got on the road heading south, armed with the printed out route from Google Maps and a topographical map on an ipad. Unfortunately, the ipad map didn’t have any town names on it and without internet-connection it was going to stay that way. A little disagreement between two navigators led us away from that straight route south and two hours of driving later (in pouring rain) we really didn’t know where in Italy we were. We stopped at a hotel hoping the receptionist would know English but unfortunately none of the three people there knew any. We got them to print us out a map by drawing pictures and pointing at the computer but since Google Maps would have sent us into the mountains, the friendly Italian explained to us an alternate route. I should really learn to understand “left” and “ right” in Italian. Thank God we got back in the right direction and arrived at our destination about 4 hours later than planned.

The next morning proved to be the exact opposite in mood and weather.  Beautiful sunshine illuminated a place just like I had seen in numerous watercolors. Lemon trees with ripe fruit and mandarin oranges completed that absolutely blissful picture. But even my little bit of coffee language was lacking. Ordering a “latte” got me a pot of milk since I had forgotten that little word “coffee” in front of it. But now, all is well. We stayed in Italy just long enough to drive along the coast to France. There was literally a view for a new painting around every corner and it more than made up for the drive in the dark and rain the night before.

Now we are staying with friends that know English and French and at least I know how to say “Thank you” in the local language.  We drink three espressos every day and are reminded of the country where lemons grow this time of year and the rain is just a faded memory and an adventure story on an artist’s blog.