I was excited to visit Rome again, if for no other reason than to see if my memory of being there in the 80's matched what it was like today.  The first day we decided to go to the US Navy base in Naples.  I wanted to show Mic, who is Danish, what a US base is like and of course, to shop at the commissary and BX.  We bought the tickets the night before and the agent spent a bit of time finding us both the morning and evening high speed trains, about an hour each way.  The regular train was just over 2.5 hours.  We had to be in Naples at a certain time to catch the military shuttle to the base, so we got up at the crack of dawn and headed out.  Once at the central station in Rome, we looked on the board, but couldn't find our train.  We finally asked an agent who told us that train left an hour ago.  How stupid could we be, we both looked at the ticket which clearly said departure 0730 AM.  It was now ...

My new landlords are the sweetest people.  They are a 'mature' couple, Edwin is 90 ish I think and Mary is younger.  Edwin gets around great for a man his age, but he is hard of hearing and quite frail looking.  When I moved in, I noticed my refrigerator wasn't working right, so Edwin called a repairman, who said the thermostat needed replacing.  The next day I noticed a horrible noise coming from the freezer.  I took the back panel off and could see the fan scraping and the plastic blades being torn up.  And it still wasn't cold enough.  My ice cream was melting and the items in the lower portion, like the milk, were warm.  So I called Mary and explained the noise and the temperature, and soon enough Edwin came to check it out for himself.  The noise was so loud that it kept me awake at night and you could plainly hear it all over the apartment.  When Edwin came in the front door, I said "d...