By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
Lifestyle Columnist

Mary was trying out her new phone in her new digs in Cologne a couple of weeks ago, and called us. Dave picked up the cordless, I was on the “regular phone.” Amazing: she sounded clearer and closer to me than he did.

We'd had postcards, but she told us more about her recent vacation trip with Rainer to Corsica and parts of Italy.

(I doubt if I even knew where Corsica was before they mentioned it, but when I saw it cradled there in the Mediterranean where the boot of Italy curves toward France, I assumed it was Italian. It's French. Of course, the German spelling — Korsika — that Mary uses, having collected maps from the German auto club ADAC, didn't help my perception.)

While there they took a boat trip to see Bonifacio, at the south tip of the island. The vista from the sea is spectacular, she said, with the old city hanging on the cliffs, and numerous turquoise grottos where land and sea meet.

Corsica is very mountainous and dry, Mary said. “It's supposedly the greenest island around, but it's still hot and dusty, very stony and mountainous, making the smallest of walks quite arduous.”

They drove up the island's west coast into which are carved graceful bays lined with winding roads, stopping occasionally to walk up a narrow gorge formed by a mountain river.

Back on the mainland: The Ligurian coast, Italy's coastline east of the Cote d'Azur, was crowded but picturesque. “Genoa is not that exciting,” she said, “one of biggest ports around. But the coast is pretty, mountainous, with pretty fishing towns. Everything is concentrated on the coast, and it's one of the few places in Italy where you can actually go out and walk. They are not much for walking like people in France and other countries.

“Then we city-hopped,” she continued, with Pisa early on, since they had heard the Tower of Pisa had re-opened. It had not, but this was Rainer's first look and he was as intrigued as tourists have been for centuries.

They spent a day each in Siena, Venice and Verona, particularly enjoying camping on Lake Como, then proceeded to Verona, the setting of the Romeo and Juliet story. She said she and Rainer got “the lostest” in Verona, where Dave and I visited several years ago only after a series of frustrating wrong turns.

Italy's autostradas are well-marked, but the moment you get off, you're on your own. The exit ramps “T” into the local roads with nary a sign suggesting which way to turn toward your destination. And the pouring-down-rainy day Dave and I arrived was a religious holiday, with no one to ask directions in our pathetic pantomime.

When Mary and Rainer (finally) arrived in Verona, the opera “Aida” was being staged in the ancient Roman stadium there. Huge cranes were lifting sets into place over those amazingly high walls. A crowd of 20,000 was expected next day.

Except for poor ventilation in their tent, they had pretty good camping along the way, she said, even in Venice. (She calls it Venedig, as Germans do.) “There was noise on the river, big ships going by all night, and a lot of bugs, but it was convenient. The campground was across the river, and a boat goes to Venice every 20 minutes.”

It was in Umbria that they had one of those magical experiences that no guide book can guarantee. The annual Spoleto music festival, parent to the South Carolina event, was underway. The town is small and medieval, Mary said, and jammed with people. “They couldn't even get into the church, and so they were doing a concert right in front of it.”

It was obvious there'd be no camping nearby, so they continued toward Urbino on the way to the coast, up a mountain, following a road their tour book said had a campground and a restaurant on it. They'd gone forever, with civilization thinning out to nothing, she said, and Rainer was ready to turn around, when suddenly there it was, a completely empty field with an old farmhouse nearby.

She knocked on the door, was assured this was indeed a campground, and asked why no one was there. Since the earthquake two years ago, nobody comes anymore, the proprietress answered. The campground is too far off the beaten track for tourists, and shunned by locals out of fear.

The site was near Assisi. You may remember seeing frescos crash from the ceiling of the cathedral in full view of TV cameras recording earlier damage.

“Our hostess had a restaurant too and cooked just for us,” Mary said, although she was required to serve them outside on the piazza, presumably because her house was not considered structurally sound enough for public use.

“She had nothing for vegetarians,” Mary noted. “Most of the stuff on her menu was wild. Rainer had noodles with rabbit sauce, and I had gnocchi with lamb sauce. There were two pheasant dishes, traditional in that area — it would be hard to be a vegetarian there.

“There was a huge wood stove inside, and Rainer was interested in how she did everything. She served huge portions, all the while complaining in Italian about how they have no business and how much better things used to be.

“But for us it was beautiful. We were so far up the hill, the air was different, clean and clear and crisp, and it was cool overnight.”

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