Library Notes
June 29, 2004
By Pansy Hundley, Librarian.
Our tour group was winding up things in Greece, almost ready for the next leg of our journey, the following week to be spent in Italy, seeing all we could crowd into that week.
Then what should we hear but this piece of news from one of the men who had watched the evening news. Our airline had gone on strike! Bear in mind that our reservations had been made months before – 26 of us and there we were. And we were scheduled to fly out on one of their planes the next day. So, we wondered there for a while if we might have to walk and swim part of the way to our next destination. But, thankfully, the strike was settled by the next day, so off we went, arriving in Rome on Monday afternoon.
We had a marvelous guide, named Marisa, who met us at the airport, directed us to the bus, and took us to our hotel. We bonded with her almost immediately. She had a good sense of humor and she liked us. We liked each other more as the week went by. By the time she said good-bye to us early on a Saturday morning as we started our homeward journey, Marisa came around and hugged everyone of us. That is so unusual. I asked her how many of her tour groups she did that to, but she was busy hugging and never answered. I would guess that the answer was "Not many."
We ate dinner in our hotel restaurant every night, except one, while we stayed there. This person that eats half a sandwich for lunch sat down to a five-course dinner every night.
That first night – the beginning – first came the cream of mushroom soup, and I hastily told the nice young waiter, just one big spoonful. Then came this little loaf made of crust on top and bottom, with spinach, cheese and who knows what else, in between the crusts. I ate a very small amount of that. Next came the young man with a luscious green salad. Now, I could have made the meal on that salad. Couldn’t pass up that salad or push it back. Ate it all.
In a few minutes arrived very tender sliced pork and long-g-g pasta. I again cautioned the waiter, very small portions. Part of that pasta went back to the kitchen. We sat, knowing that dessert was bound to arrive too. And it did – home-grown – oranges.
Took us an hour and a half to go through those five courses, all of us about to go to sleep. We finally finished, waddled out and proceeded to try and find the elevator we came down on.
We had that five-course dinner every night we were there. I quickly came to the point that I would cancel out a course or two, rather than waste the food.
I like nice, very soft, rolls when I eat them. All over Greece and Italy, here came these rolls by the basketful, so hard you could have taken a hammer to one, rather than trying to bite into it. Didn’t take me long to know that I didn’t care for any of those. Some of the bunch would talk about how good those rolls where, as they tried to get a tooth into one. I never did figure out how they could say they were good, when they were so hard, it was quite a job just to bite into one. Everyone to his own taste, I suppose. But, my dentist was a long way off and I didn’t want to break a tooth!!
We’ll begin to get to some sights next week. We drove by the coliseum on the way to our hotel, but I’ll tell you about that later. Let’s talk about a book right now. Jill Marie Landis, who has usually written romance novels in the past, has jumped on the band wagon with everybody else, and gone into mysteries. Something tells me that she will have some romance in there somewhere, however. "Heat Wave" is this book’s title and here is what it is about.
"Private investigator Kat Vargas once cared about someone so much it hurt. Once she lived a dream life with her first love and fiance’ – until betrayal followed by shattering tragedy ended it all. Kat has sworn never to get too close to anyone again. But now the peace and quiet of Twilight Cove is driving the straight-talking, no-nonsense P.I. crazy. Then a prospective new client shows up at the door. Moved by his stubbornness and sincerity, Kat takes his case, breaking a promise to relax, recoup, and rethink her solitary life.
Ty Chandler is desperate to locate the child he fathered nineteen years ago – a child he never knew existed until now. Although he’s no stranger to heartache, he is irresistibly drawn to the exotic, vibrantly alluring P.I. Their search not only leads them to Ty’s troubled, strong-willed daughter, but into each others’ arms. Though Kat courageously works to help Ty reunite his family, she’s terrified of confronting a painful secret of her own – one that will cost her the love of the only man capable of tearing down the walls she’s built around her heart. "
Now, what did I tell you? Looks as though we may still have more romance in this little ole book than mystery. Eh??