There Will Be Another Boat

In Italy, only mongrels eat in public. Well, mongrels and also my wife and I. We did our honeymoon in Amalfi, which is on the southern coast. It's where the laces would be on “the boot”. Beautiful place. My wife's description: “This is how I pictured heaven.” I highly recommend it makes your bucket list.

We planned a day trip to Capri, a small island off the coast. We bought tickets the day before. We looked online at the tourist attractions. We bought a map of the island and sort of set up the day. The only thing we didn't do is set an alarm. Yeah.

The boat leaves at 9, we woke up at 8:30 and it's a 20 minute ride to the dock. Before this starts sounding like a word problem, I’ll just cut to it and say: “No time for breakfast”. So we speed through town on our rented moped, with no showers and no idea if we'll make it. We got to the dock, parked “al italiano”(wherever I want) and ran to the boat. The boat that we saw wasn't even our boat. Our boat hadn’t docked yet. When it did, it was going to unload first so we had 10 minutes at least to grab breakfast.

We walked across the street to a little cafe and ordered 2 cappuccinos and 2 croissants. As the guy is making the coffees, I ask him if we can take it to-go. He looks befuddled, so I point to Styrofoam cups and say “take away”. I wasn't sure if he spoke English. I spoke zero Italian. He figures out what I’m saying and replies with a laugh, “Oh no my friend. You can sit at any of these tables outside. They are all my tables. Please, sit.”

I responded, “I understand, but we have a boat to catch and we are already late. I don't wanna miss that boat.”

He put his hand on my shoulder, smiled as big as I'd ever seen a guy smile and said, “There will be another boat my friend. Sit down and eat”

Great advice from an Italian cafe owner: “There will be another boat.” Enjoy your food. Enjoy your time awake with your spouse. There will be another boat. Don't rush. This food, right here, this is the main thing right now. Sit down, slow down, eat the food and enjoy it.

What else do I rush through? What other joys do I sacrifice or skip for the sake of my precious schedule? What would life be like if I sat and ate all my food instead of cramming bites into my trap while on hold or between clients? Just sitting and enjoying.....Hmmm.......this could alleviate a lot of problems.

By the way, we did not listen to him. We took our cappuccino’s across the street, burnt the crap out of my tongue and ate the croissants to the jeers of the general public.