Mom and Michele left the next morning. We met for breakfast. Their bus left at seven thirty. Rebecca and I gave them an envelope for Giovanni with a tip in it. Rebecca sent him a not saying that it was all for him. We’d already given a tip to Elzo and she was worried that Giovanni might think he had to share this. Rebecca worries about things like that.

We then had to re-check in with the front desk. We’d made reservations to stay for two more days after the tour, but we had to re-register so that we could get new electronic room keys. Our tour group keys would soon stop working and we wouldn’t get into our room.

With the change of key, we noticed a big change in the way we were treated. Suddenly, we were real guests of the Hotel Leonardo Da Vinci. When we’d been with a tour group, they’d always herded us into the back of the breakfast room. Now that we were real guests, we could sit right up front next the buffet table. We discovered that night that the Vinci even had turndown service. They actually put candy on our pillow. We clearly weren’t in tour land anymore. We were back to being real people.

Our plan for the day was see if we could get to a little nearby town called Frascati. Frascati is a town in the hills that the Romans go to to get away from the heat in the city. It was also the next nearest location for a Buon Ricordo restaurant. I started this story mentioning that my wife and I are collectors. For us, it isn’t the having, it is the searching. Collecting forces us to do things that we normally wouldn’t bother to do, such as finding our way into the Roman hills.

Since we were now real hotel guests, the people at the front desk were extremely helpful. We showed them the page about the restaurant in the Buon Ricordo catalogue. They called the restaurant to make sure that they were open for lunch and made reservations for us. Then they gave us direction on how to an Italian would go to Frascati.

The first step of the journey was a long subway ride. We would actually be going to the end of the line. At the end of the subway line, there was supposed to be a bus station where we could get tickets for Frascati.

On the train, Rebecca was careful to assume crossed arms to protect her purse. The train was crowded at first, but only for a few stops. After we left the middle of town, the crowd thinned. It got thinner and thinner as we kept going. Unfortunately, only people left on were the scary looking ones with lots of earrings and tattoos. By the time we reached the end of the line, the only other person with us in the car was a teenager with bleached, deranged hair and a nose ring.

On such a ride, you notice the noise. These trains are loud. Their windows are open because of the heat. On short trips you don’t notice the noise as much. After thirty minutes, it was deafening. The station at the end of the subway line was large and open. It seemed so quiet aftr the train ride. When we got off, we could barely hear each other talk.

Like the subway, the station was underground except for a central plaza that was open to the air above. We followed the signs to the bus station section. Not knowing what we were doing, we came to a ticket counter and asked for two round-trip tickets to Frascati. He must have understood my Italian because he sent us down to another window. This time, the man behind the counter gave us four tickets. I guessed that it as one to get there and another to return. We paid him something like three dollars. Now we had to find the bus.

We didn’t see any bus schedules around so we had not idea when the next bus was. Along the underground corridor, ramps led up to the buses on the surface. Our tickets didn’t have any numbers on them. They seemed to be buniversal tickets that would work on any bus. We found the ramp that said Frascati, and walked up.

We were on a cement pad with a few benches. The other ramps led to other pads that lined up across the tarmac from our own. There wasn’t any bus at our pad, but there was a schedule. It seemed to indicate that buses to Frascati left every half hour. Other city names were there as well. Was it all the same bus or did we have to get on the same one? We didn’t know. There were about a dozen other people waiting for a bus.

Whenever I am traveling on my own, I am never quite sure if I’ve gotten the directions correctly. I understand enough of the language to think I know what I am doing without ever being certain of it. Of course, our directions from the hotel had been in English, but then I worry about what is being lost in the translation. However, once we were on our own, everything was in Italian.

A bus showed up. Everyone else got on it. We got on it as well. We got on up front by the driver. We showed him the ticket and asked, "Frascati?"

He nodded, but he didn’t make a move to punch the ticket or anything. Not knowing what else to do, we sat down. The bus pulled away. I thought that we were on the right bus, but I wondered what would happen if we weren’t. The bus was filled with all different types of people, old ladies with their shopping, students with their books bags. As the bus pulled away, they all started dialing their cell phones. They were all relaxed because they knew where they were getting off the bus.

When we travel on our own, I worry about stuff like this. I’m always watching where the taxi driver is going to make sure he heads in the right direction. In this case, I was watching where the bus was going. I knew that Frascati was about fifteen miles away to west. Were we heading west? Could I read the street signs? Were there a lot of stops before we got there? Would we know when to get off?

The bus stopped almost immediately before getting on the highway. Only one person got on. It was the teenager with the hair and nose ring that had been in our subway car. It was nice to see a familiar face on a bus full of strangers.

Rebecca doesn’t worry about where we are going or how we get there. In the marriage division of labor, that is my job. She mostly trusts my language and navigation skills. Getting turned around trying to find the Metro the other day didn’t seem to shake her confidence. She was enjoying the scenery as I struggled to understand the highway signs. I found myself wishing that I’d thought to buy a map of Italy so that I knew what the road numbers meant.

Soon I saw that the signs indicated that we were heading to Frascati so I could realax that we were heading in the right direction. The bus made regular stops every few miles. People got on and off. Soon, we were out of the city and you could see the hills that we were headed toward over the fields and vineyards that we passed. We were out of the city, but the roadside was still dotted with new and old businesses, restaurants, and houses.

Soon, we began to winding up into the hills. We were not in a hill village, but a serous town. Most of the homes and other buildings we passed looked relatively new. These were the summer homes for the people in Rome. Soon the signs indicated that we were in Frascati, but the area didn’t look like the center of town. As we got into town, the bus stopped more frequent, but at first no one got off and only a few people stood up for the next stop. Were most people staying on the bus for other towns, or was the center of Frascati up still further ahead?

I told Rebecca that we were in Frascati. She asked if we should get off the bus. I said that I didn’t know. We were about to get off when I saw a sign that indicated that the town center was still ahead. We stayed on for several more stops. Finally, we came to a plaza that looked like it was the center of town. Most people stood to get off. We followed suit.

For the whole ride, no one looked at our ticket. We still have four identical, apparently unused tickets. Ddid anyone even worry about bus tickets here or was public transportation essentially free?

Once we were in the middle of Frascati, our next step was finding the street with the restaurant. We’d expected a small village, but Frascati was clearly a large town, miles across. We decided to see if we could find a map of the town. A tourist shop on the plaza had many maps of Rome, but none of Frascati. Nothing was in English. The area clearly served Italian tourists. We still had time before our reservations. We decided to wander around the plaza area and see if we ran into the restaurant or the street.

After a little wandering, it was clear that we weren’t likely to run into the restaurant without doing more walking than we wanted. The business area went on and on. Frascati was built along a winding road up the hillside. After looking around the plaza area, we had to go either up the hill or down. Rather than climb unnecessarily, we asked at a grocery store. No one in the We showed them the page about the restaurant in our Buon Ricordo book.

The girl behind the counter gave me directions. I repeated back to her what I understood. She seemed to be telling us to go down the street, and turn right at the second street. Then we were suppose to wind our way down the hill until we came to it. What wasn’t clear was how far we were suppose to wind our way down the hill. I didn’t ask. If it was miles than we should have gotten off the bus earlier. I didn’t want to know.

We followed the directions that I thought I’d heard. Taking the second right did take us winding down the hill. The traffic zoomed past on the narrow lane. We made one turn and I was looking down the hill at all the other turns when Rebecca got my attention.

The restaurant was right in front of us. We had been less than five blocks away.

As we walked in, we were in the lobby of a beautiful hotel. The floor was gleaming white marble accented with brass fittings. The floors were dark rich wood. The dining room was in the back, with large windows facing out toward the view down the hill. You could just see the buildings of Rome shining white in the distance. We were early for lunch and we were directed down the stairs to a lower dining room. It too was beautiful.

We had a wonderful meal with wonderful service. The house speciality was Pollo Romano, Roman chicken. After our experience the night before, this could have meant chicken innards, but it turned out to be very much like chicken cacciatore, only with bell peppers. This was the most normal house specialty that we’d had thus far.

We only made one mistake in the meal. When they asked us to order wine, we ordered our typical red wine. We knew that Frascati was known for its wine, but we didn’t know what to order. After sitting there for a few minutes, it was clear that we’d made a mistake. Everyone else ordered "Frascati freddo," cold Frascati wine. It was a white wine served in a champagne bucket. We were the only ones in the restaurant who didn’t order it. We don’t normally like white wine, but I suspect that we would have liked this wine. We resolved that we would have to come back to Frascati on our next visit to Rome just to get the wine.

We got our plates after the meal. Then we asked in Italian if we could buy more. We wanted to surprise Mom and Michele at Christmas. We’d asked at other restaurants and they had all said no. This restaurant surprised us: they said yes and charged us about ten dollars per plate.

After getting putting all four plates in our day bag, heading back up the hill to find our bus. The plaza where we’d started was only three blocks away. We didn’t know the bus scheduled or where to catch the bus, but it seemed like a bus to Rome should be easy to find. After all, all roads lead to Rome.

Back in the plaza, a bus was ready to leave. We went to the driver and asked, "a Roma," to Rome? He shook his head and seemed to point to the empty bus next to his as he drove off. We waited alone by the empty bus. We noticed a crowd waiting across the street. The crowd was in the same general direction as indicated by the bus driver.

We walked across the street as a bus pulled up to the crowd. The sign on the front of the bus said Roma. We started to get in the front showing our tickets to the driver. He stopped us and indicated that we were supposed to entered in the rear door of the bus. As we got on, we saw why.

All the other passengers lined up, punching their tickets in a meter in the back of the bus. When our turn came, we punched our tickets. It put the time on them. We’d solved the ticket mystery. It was just like the subway system. The ticket was good for seventy minutes after punching it. Since we’d gotten on the front of the first bus, we hadn’t seen people punching their tickets in back. The first bus driver assumed that we’d already punched our tickets on another bus.

Now, I worried where the bus was going. We were going to Rome, but were we going to the same subway terminal that we’d left. The route looked the same, but when we got to the bus terminal, it looked different. We’d left from a big bus, subway station. This just looked like an empty parking lot.

When we got off, we saw the walkway down to the station. We walk down the stairs and we recognized where we were. Leaving the station, we hadn’t realized that it was so invisible from up above.