Italy - Combining business and pleasure

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In July 1978 I had a business trip to Camp Darby, Italy near Pisa and Livorno to inspect and accept 77 ammunition bunkers into the Air Force inventory. I decided to take Linda along and add a few days vacation to the trip.

We drove down on Saturday, stopping just south of Lucerne, Switzerland at a nice hotel on Lake Luzern. Then it was over the Alps to Lake Como and Pisa, Italy where we climbed the Leaning Tower. We arrived at Camp Darby on Sunday afternoon.

There we met my Corps of Engineers counterpart, Mike and his wife Betty. We would become lifelong friends.

Most of the weekdays were spent on the job, but in the evenings we enjoyed going to restaurants on the beach in Tirrenia. The first evening we ordered pasta, and were informed by the waiter that we had to order at least four courses; the antipasto, the pasta, and a main course, and dessert. Dinner took four hours to eat; and this was pretty much the same each evening.

We departed on Saturday and stopped in Portofino for the night. Our hotel was right on the waterfront. The owner informed us that the King of Jordan had previously stayed in our room. I thought that he must have been traveling incognito as a poor student, because our room wasn’t up to royal standards.

Sunday we drove to Genoa and tried to find parking, driving to every level of a parking garage just to find every spot taken. We were still charged for the effort.

We headed north, driving over the San Bernardino Pass as the tunnel under it hadn’t been built yet. We continued through Switzerland into Germany. By then it was pretty late and I was tired so I let Linda drive. I woke up to find her driving 90 mph, which is ok for the autobahn, but still to fast for us. Anyway, we finally made it home in one piece.

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