Tourist brochure perfect.

Fortunately, I have just the plan to keep things from getting overly quaint and predictable. "Let's stay at the Pink Palace tomorrow," I say.

Valentina raises her eyebrows. "Sounds romantic."

"It isn't," I tell her.

I first met Valentina in Innsbruck (where she goes to university) and we've been traveling together ever since. Though our love affair is just over one week old, it has already consisted of several canonical romantic experiences: hiking together through the mist in the Italian Alps, walking the canals of Venice at sunset, taking the night train down the Adriatic coast to Brindisi. This morning we sat together on the lifeboat deck of a ship that took us down the Albanian coastline to Corfu -- a Greek Ionian resort island that features historical Venetian fortresses, Byzantine churches, British palaces and a French-styled esplanade in its colonial Old Town district. We strolled the narrow streets this evening until we found a tiny family run restaurant that gave us a sumptuous introduction to moussaka and yemista and choriatiki.

Unfortunately, I'm beginning to fear that our experiences have been too easy -- that our moments of romance have been pleasant without being distinctive. Since I don't want all these blissful moments to mix together into generic memories, I've decided to throw a wild card into the equation.

"What's special about staying at the Pink Palace?" Valentina asks me.

"Well, that's just it. All I know about the Pink Palace is rumor and reputation. I've heard that it's kind of an ultimate party hostel for college-age travelers, but it has a mixed reputation. Depending on who you talk to, the place is either party paradise or Sodom and Gomorrah revisited."

"And why does that make you want to stay there? You're not in college and I don't much care for partying. Plus we're traveling together, and this sounds like the kind of place where single people go to meet other single people."

"And that's exactly why I think it'd be an adventure."

Valentina, who (as an Italian) was raised with much less an appreciation for irony than I, is not convinced. "Adventure? Inside a youth hostel?"

"Not an adventure adventure; kind of an un-adventure. Going to a place where we don't really fit in and seeing what happens. It's called 'slumming.' It's a very American pastime."

"This is how Americans entertain themselves?"

Since I don't have the time to explain the ironic middle-class appeal of, say, square dancing or gangsta rap or monster truck rallies, I decide to keep things simple. "Yes," I say. "This is how Americans entertain themselves."

Curious by nature, Valentina relents. The next morning, we take a local bus across the island to Agios Gordios and check into a room at the legendary Pink Palace.

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