From Sea to Shimmering Sea

Italy was on our minds when we boarded a plane late Sunday night at IAD. Lufthansa actually served a pasta meal at midnight, which surely violates some gastronomical law. By then Dan was already asleep, but I stayed awake until I saw the deep blue Atlantic’s whitecaps below. Having grown up beside the Atlantic, I have always loved and respected and feared its might. But in the light of a lemon slice moon, the sea of my childhood comforted me. I curled next to Dan and slept until the stewards were serving breakfast.

After a stopover in gray Munich, we boarded a tiny plane for Ancona, Italy, where the aqua Adriatic greeted us in sunlight. Tonight we sleep in a mountaintop hotel high above Sirolo, a city beside the sea that glitters and winks at us. We travelled twelve hours to get here and are still groggy from jet lag.

I packed too much, everything in plastic ziplock bags and cannot find what I need among all the bags squeezed into my luggage. Dan is calm and comforting. He always makes me feel better. That is why, among a myriad other reasons, I love him so. And we have much to be grateful for: we arrived safely; our luggage arrived with us; the hotel is charming if remote. Shut up and go to sleep, I told myself. Dan just held me as a thunder storm split the sky outside our balcony.

At dinner the first night, we checked each other to make sure we were clothed. That’s how out of it we felt. Three days have passed since our arrival. We have hiked, swum in the cold aqua pool, and slept fitfully, still trying to adjust to the time. Tomorrow we hear a lecture on Lorenzo Lotto, a Renaissance painter, and board a bus for Jesi to see Lotto’s work. Our Hotel Monteconero will remain our home base for two more days.

My only regret: not getting closer to the Adriatic, to feel its waves wash me as I have done in the Atlantic. I collect oceans, their salty residue against my skin, their taste when I dive beneath their surface. From the hotel brochure, it appears that one can climb down a path to the sea, but the path is treacherous, almost straight down in places. The Italian park service has put up a sign warning about it. If we were staying longer we would take a van to Sirolo, which we have studied through binoculars and determined that it is an Italian Ocean City. Tacky the way most beach towns become with a hundred households set up on the sand, sheltered by umbrellas. So the Adriatic shimmers below our balcony, close but out of reach.