Mary Anne Benedetto Celebrates Boomer Lit Friday

Welcome Boomer Readers and Authors,

Join in the fun-Boomer authors participating in Boomer Lit Friday offer excerpts from a variety of boomer-related books. Blog hopping will give you just enough of a taste of these books to either whet your appetite for more, or perhaps silently decline. Come along with us and visit for awhile! Jump to http://www.boomerlitfriday.blogspot.com to sample the goodies. Please don’t hesitate to comment, and we’d love it if you would "Like" the Boomer Lit Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/BoomerLit. 

Today I am once again featuring a few lines from From Italy with Love & Limoncello. This is a true story--a travel memoir about four boomer women embarking on an unguided tour of Italy. The girls have finally connected in the Rome airport and are, at last, on their merry way by train to Florence.

We had to laugh because our luggage was located just behind our seating area, and each time the train rounded a slight curve in the track, all suitcases rolled to one side of the train. At the next curve, they all rolled back to the other side of the train. It just seemed comical to see our luggage traveling back and forth. I was amazed that with a load of sixty-six pounds, mine could even roll at all. Statistically speaking, it was heavier than the weight of the average nine year old child!

All was peaceful until the conductor arrived to see our tickets. Laura's ticket had absolutely vanished. She frantically searched her handbag, her carry-on--even her McDonald's bag. The ticket was nowhere to be found. Did she drop it when we were juggling luggage? Calmly, Marianne left her seat to assist in the search. 

The conductor, very annoyed, said to Marianne, "YOU talk to her!" Marianne looked through every possible nook and cranny. We reasoned that she must have had her ticket when she boarded because she readily found the seat number that matched her ticket. It had to be here somewhere! 

Suddenly, all was well once again as Laura reached into the pocket of the seat in front of her, where she had placed the ticket for safe keeping. "This is what I always do on Amtrak," she said. 

It's so easy to become disoriented with insufficient sleep and being deposited into the center of a foreign land! Eventually, the conductor with the stern expression returned to see if there was still an issue with Laura's ticket. He grinned from ear to ear to learn that the elusive item had been located.

Thanks so much for stopping by. We hope that you will travel with us throughout our Italian adventure! A visit to http://www.awriterspresence.com will present you with links to all formats of the books from which excerpts have been featured on this particular blog during Boomer Lit Fridays. 

And while you are “Liking” Facebook pages, I would be honored if you would “Like” my author/speaker page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mary-Anne-Benedetto-Author-Speaker/223368327805649.

Huge blessings for a fabulous weekend!

Mary Anne

Celebrate Boomer Lit Friday Again!

Welcome! We are once again celebrating Boomer Lit Friday, and we’re switching gears from the fictional Never Say Perfect to a nonfiction Boomer travel memoir entitled From Italy with Love & Limoncello.

We hope that you will leap on over to http://www.boomerlitfriday.blogspot.com to visit several Boomer sites which feature book excerpts. Please don’t hesitate to comment, and we’d love it if you would "Like" the Boomer Lit Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/BoomerLit. 

From Italy with Love & Limoncello:

Description: What happens when four Boomer-age non-Italian speaking women embark on an unguided tour of three regions of Italy? Add miles to the soles of your shoes as you visit Florence, Greve, Sorrento, Capri, Positano, Pompeii and Rome with Mary Anne, Laura, Sharon and Marianne. Whether you are returning to this intriguing country rich with history and magnificent beauty or visiting Italy for the first time, traveling with these women will offer unique insights and stories of international incidents never to be duplicated by a typical tour guide!

Today’s excerpt picks up at the airport in Rome, where I have just arrived on a direct flight from Charlotte, N. C.  Laura, Marianne and Sharon have already landed at least two hours ahead of me because they were flying directly from Newark. We need to connect…now. Remember, this is a true story and not another airport scene that was formulated in my imagination!

Hmmm...I'm looking all around into a sea of strange faces and don't see the girls anywhere. Where could they be? For just a brief moment, I feel minor panic. I'm in a foreign country, everything around me is chaotic, and I have no idea what all of the gibberish is that is being uttered around me. I can't just hail a cab and go to our hotel because we are going to catch a train to Florence as soon as we connect with each other. This is getting slightly unnerving.

It’s similar to imagining landing in the midst of a crowd after having disembarked from your flying saucer and finding that you are on an alien planet. Nothing looks remotely familiar, and the people on this planet cannot communicate with you, nor you with them.

I take a deep breath, move over to the side of the room...away from the crush of human traffic and luggage going by and retrieve my World Mobal phone. What were those peculiar dialing instructions? Will I even have service on this phone in this location? Is it reliable? Were we crazy to plan this on our own? Marianne and Laura have traveled to Paris and Venice before, and Sharon has been to Ireland. I've traveled extensively throughout the U. S., but the only foreign lands I've ever been in were Canada, Mexico, Grand Cayman, Bermuda and Jamaica. What if I can't find them or reach them by phone? Do we even know what to expect without a tour guide to direct us?

A visit to http://www.awriterspresence.com will present you with links to all formats of the books from which excerpts have been featured on this particular blog site during Boomer Lit Fridays.

Have a great weekend, y’all!

Mary Anne