Serendipity happens, Part 2

(Don Dale 2006 photo)

Sometimes when you're traveling, memorable things occur by happenstance.

The image above is one more illustration of just that. It happened on a 2006 trip to Europe with my friend Mark. I've mentioned Mark before. He was one of my successors as news director at WTVR TV, many years after I left the station. One of the best compliments I can pay him is that he's a great traveling companion, and by that I mean that he is content to stick together on days when that suits us both. Or not.

We had dinner one evening in Florence at an overpriced restaurant complete with an arrogant waiter and food that fell far from living up to expectations. In a region of Italy where almost all of what we ate was fresh, exciting, delicious and memorable, the evening could have been a regrettable experience.

But it wasn't.

Serendipity made it special.

That's Mark on the right in the picture. We were seated next to three people, three generations, of Florentines. The grandmother has her arm hooked through Mark's. That's her son on her right, and across from them is her granddaughter.

I don't recall how the conversation began. Perhaps it was just a matter of saying hello. Neither Mark nor I spoke anything more than phrase-book Italian. The grandmother knew no English at all. Her son spoke a few words of our language, but the granddaughter's English was passable.

When the grandmother learned that we were Americans, her face lit up -- for reasons that were never clear, she really liked Americans -- and she began a conversation that her granddaughter had to struggle at times to translate. Mark and I talked about our journey to Florence, Sienna, London and Amsterdam. The grandmother told us that they were celebrating her granddaughter's birthday. The conversation was difficult, but that didn't stop us. We all tried our best, chatting amiably and enthusiastically, if inefficiently, through our meal.

I have often wondered why the grandmother was so enthusiastic about chatting with us. I wondered too if the granddaughter -- whose special evening it was -- ever resented what she might rightly have seen as an unwelcome diversion. But as we paid our bill and prepared to leave, both Mark and I expressed our true appreciation for their company.

You can never tell when something memorable will happen on a vacation. Sometimes the day will go by and nothing out of the ordinary happens. At other times, there are sweet surprises. That night in the summer of 2006, serendipity brought us into the company of three interesting people and added one more pleasurable memory of our stay in Florence.