How I misspent my European vacation

My trip to Italy was perfect -- except for the part where I couldn't stop worrying about money, my children and the state of my marriage.

By Ann Bauer

Read more: Italy, Marriage, Vacation, Tourism, Motherhood, Life

May 16, 2008 | Last summer, I was at a party where the conversation turned -- as it so often does among writers, artists and journalists -- to travel. In this crowd, people talk about Shanghai and Vienna and Puerto Rico (pronouncing it Pwer-toe, rolling the "R" knowledgeably) as easily as I might about Iowa or Wisconsin.

My husband, John, mentioned a backpacking trip through Spain that he took with his former wife, with whom he lived for a year in Barcelona; and though he is a software developer rather than an official member of the literati, this resulted in his being drawn cozily into the group. There was a long discussion about Basque food. Then a drunken filmmaker with a malicious glint in his eye turned to me and said, "So, where's he taken you?"

You know those playground bullies who could size you up immediately and figure out exactly which insult would hurt most? This guy was like that. We'd only just met, but he'd found it. My secret shame: I'm a writer who hasn't traveled much.

Sure, I've been all over the United States, and there was a study abroad program when I was 17: three months in London. But that was more than 20 years ago, and I'd returned to Europe only once as an adult, visiting Cambridge, Leeds, Edinburgh and Amsterdam. Compared with the crowd I run with, this is like summer camp at the Y.

They've mucked their way through Central America and the Far East. They've shopped in Moroccan markets and worked in clinics in Africa and slept with Thai hookers, both female and male. Many of the people I know prioritize travel above all else. I have a friend -- now in her 50s -- who confessed to me once that her need was so incurable, for decades she'd been booking trips she couldn't afford to places all over the globe, then calling her elderly parents in a panic when the money ran out and begging them to bring her home.

Meanwhile, I was messing around with the kids I started having at 21 and raised alone after my first husband bugged out. Scraping and saving, putting away what little I could for their college funds, taking them on Montana hiking vacations and tours of D.C. museums and driving trips along Cape Cod all the way to Provincetown. I loved all this, don't get me wrong. Still, I couldn't help lusting after my friends' adventures overseas.

Then along came this wonderful, well-traveled, bilingual man who cannot help the fact that he went to France and Egypt and Antarctica while I changed soiled diapers and went to school conferences and plays. And he wanted to raise those kids together: one who has autism and one who is going to college in the fall and one who is still in eighth grade. Now there isn't any money to travel. Not for me, and not for John, who -- until we met -- would think nothing of dropping $3,000 on a weekend motorcycling trip.

A few weeks after that party, however, we received a small, unexpected inheritance. It was found money, John said, and despite the bills and the kids and the leftover debt from his former spendthrift life, we should blow it all.

"I'm making reservations for Italy," he warned. And I, feeling the delicious thrill of the finally initiated (I, too, could be impetuous!), said, "Go ahead."

That was back when the euro was around $1.30. By the time we left, in mid-March, it was $1.56 and climbing. I tried not to worry.

But it was hard. There had been a crisis with our older son, and I'd spent most of February transferring him from one group home to another. Twice, I had wondered aloud if we should postpone the trip; John insisted the cost to change the tickets was prohibitive. Besides, he said, I needed this vacation more than ever. He would take care of everything, reading every word of "Rick Steves' Italy 2008" -- the guidebook that came highly recommended on NPR -- and planning. All I had to do was relax.

And for a couple of days, I did. Everything was perfect, from the flight out to the hotel in Rome. I spent my 42nd birthday on a rented Ducati riding through the hills of Umbria, a strange and glorious landscape that is a mixture of palm trees and firs. This, finally, was in keeping with my image of a writer. Hemingway and his Paris, Somerset Maugham and the South Pacific, Susan Sontag and ... everywhere.

Then things began to go wrong. It started with a tiny incident: a pot of tea we ordered from a small cafe near the Coliseum. The posted price was 3 euros, but when we stood from a small patio bench to pay, the barista charged us 8. "You sit," she said and waved toward the bench. "Is 8."

A few hours later, we left Rome bound for Orvieto, a storybook mountain village we'd ridden through the day before. We had to run for the train. Ten minutes into the hourlong trip, a conductor stopped to check our ticket and found it unstamped. The fine: 40 euros, though the station man had marked it clearly with that day's date.

By the time we arrived in Orvieto the sun was setting. What had looked the day before like an inviting cobblestone town with castlelike buildings and winding roads now was murky, a little forbidding. We towed our luggage through empty streets. The hotel that had been recommended was closed for renovation. Finally, we located a back alley place and showed the desk clerk our Rick Steves (guaranteed to take 10-20 percent off any listed price), but he only repeated his offer: 30 euros more than the book's high-season rate.

It was dark. The next train out wasn't for two hours. John shrugged and handed our passports and credit card to the man.

We went next door to a wine shop and picked up a bottle of Orvieto Classico, the citrusy white wine with notes of banana, kiwi and lime for which this region is famous. In our hotel room, John poured two glasses while I brought up our bank account online. It was Day Three of a 12-day trip and we'd already gone through 40 percent of our allotted funds.

"I budgeted before the euro went up," he pointed out. "Also, things cost more than the book said. So we're here; we'll just charge the overage and figure out how to pay it off when we get home."

In theory, I saw his point. You get to Italy once, maybe twice, in a lifetime; it doesn't make any sense to cut corners while you're there. Those people at the party we'd attended weren't worrying about mortgage payments while they were tramping through Marrakesh. And John had told me on our second or third date that he wanted to go everywhere -- see everything -- no matter what the price. I wavered.

Next page: That night, I awoke at 3 a.m., violently ill