Give me Assisi or give me . . . . nope, just give me Assisi

It's Friday night, and Kim and I are snug as bugs in a rug sharing the fold-out at her family's place in Napoli.  This time we're staying with Antonio and Adriana, two fantastic, generous, happy people.  Like all Italians, they sound like they're fighting most of the time, when in fact they're agreeing, discussing, flirting, whatever.  I always enjoy encountering people who have been married for a long time and still make each other laugh.  Priceless.

After a couple of delayed train rides earlier today, we met Antonio in the Napoli Centrale station, where we proceeded to take two different metro trains, and then walk 20 minutes to their house in the pouring rain.  But that's not the sucky part.  The sucky part is that on our way from one metro train to another, we put our tickets into the reader/ticket-taker to get to the next train.  (Antonio had already purchased them for us.)  One of the machines wasn't working, and of course that's the one Kim and I use, so it didn't stamp our tickets properly.  

As we rounded the corner, there were men checking everyone's tickets to make sure they were stamped.  Since two out of three of us didn't have them stamped properly, they fined him 40 euro on the spot.  Forty euro!  And I think they were only fining him for one of us.  He explained and was incredibly nice to the man.  In fact, after arguing more politely than I've ever seen two Italians argue, they smiled and shook hands.  He shook our hands, too, even though Kim and I wanted to spit in his face for fining our Antonio.  Really the fine should have been ours, but of course he wouldn't hear of it.  Clearly we'll be dropping 40 euro somewhere in the house before we leave.  

So here's a rundown: Antonio met us at the train station, waited extra because our train was late, carried our luggage, paid a stupid fine for us, and escorted us home in the rain.  THEN, because my feet are bigger than his wife's, he gave me his nice, leather slippers to wear around the house.  We had an excellent dinner of pasta with garlic, parmesan, oil, and parsley, followed by a meatloaf thing with mozzarella, bread, pickled eggplant, vinegar carrots, wine, and fruit.  So now we're comfortable, dry, and de-crankified.

My lesson learned?  Clearly Genova, Napoli, and all of the other Italian cities can't compare to perfect Assisi.  These nice people, along with my family and friends, should all just move to Assisi.  It's just the best.