{"id":92,"date":"2012-10-28T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2012-10-28T10:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=92"},"modified":"2012-11-06T08:54:56","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T13:54:56","slug":"stuck-in-italy-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=92","title":{"rendered":"Stuck in Italy\u2014Really?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>[Post by Eugenia Clarke, the fictional heroine of the Eugenia Clarke mysteries by Victoria Weisfeld]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993300;\">I glimpsed a magazine story headline the other day: \u201cStuck in Italy for Thanksgiving,\u201d and it started me thinking. In my opinion, the only place to be on Thanksgiving Day is at my brother\u2019s house, eating turkey, enjoying the vegetables from his organic farm, trying to decide, pumpkin or pecan?, and watching the Redskins on TV. But if you don\u2019t have a family cornucopia like ours and if Grandma has taken off with her boyfriend to St. John . . . Italy will do! Like everyone else who travels, I\u2019ve been stuck at airports more times than I can count. And I\u2019ve sure been stuck in D.C.\u2019s Beltway traffic. (Pause for lengthy string of obscenities.) But \u201cstuck\u201d in Italy? How is that even possible?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993300;\">I say this even though my most recent Italian adventure had some pretty dark moments. Last month I was in Rome researching an article and was mugged. My fault, wasn\u2019t thinking. I didn\u2019t follow the mounds of advice I\u2019ve dished out to my readers like mashed potatoes on Turkey Day. I ended up with broken ribs and stuff (don\u2019t ask!), which meant I couldn\u2019t fly for a while, so <em>technically<\/em> I was stuck, but I made new friends, met a man (do ask!), and spent a couple of weeks staying out of sight and out of the reach of the mafia freaks who wanted to finish the job\u2014something I accomplished only imperfectly, I\u2019m sorry to say.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993300;\">Safe home in Virginia now and back to the gym, my yoga class, and starting some intensive lessons in Arabic. Enough to get me past the stage where my brain just shrieks \u201c<em>foreign language!<\/em>\u201d and pops out a word at random. Could be Greek, German, whatever. It\u2019s a language stew up in there sometimes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993300;\">Even under the incredibly trying circumstances&#8211;recovering from my injuries, looking like hell, my nerves a wreck, the meds&#8211;Italy was a fabulous place to be, and I did finish my article on deadline. Do you see me patting myself on the back? The piece is about \u201ceverything new\u201d Rome has to offer. You can read it in the March issue of <em>My Mapps,<\/em> and you\u2019ll find The Eternal City still has awesome surprises up her fashionable sleeve.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993300;\">Happy\u2014and safe\u2014travels.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993300;\">P.S. I hope to tell you more about my Rome adventure\u2014someday!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>[Note to readers\u2014<\/em><strong>My Mapps<\/strong><em> exists only in Eugenia\u2019s world, where deadlines are reasonable, the copy-editing actually helpful, and payments are prompt.&#8211;vw]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Post by Eugenia Clarke, the fictional heroine of the Eugenia Clarke mysteries by Victoria Weisfeld] I glimpsed a magazine story headline the other day: \u201cStuck in Italy for Thanksgiving,\u201d and it started me thinking. In my opinion, the only place &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=92\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}