At a cafe overlooking the sea in Sorrento

Hmmm.  Where's the waiter?  I wonder if he thought I just wanted to sit here and enjoy the breeze?

Went up to the little glass-walled room/hut (hut does not give the right impression) where the waiters were congregating.  The lead waiter snapped to attention, "What can I do for you?"  And then he offered me a seat on the forbidden balcony -- the first waiter had said only hotel guests could sit there.  But, I know my place and went back to it.  I asked for a glass of wine, and as one of his sub-waiters went off to fetch it,  I specified, "Red."  He nodded and smiled, as in 'of course'.

He set it down: "Chianti."  And boy, it's delicious!   I usually don't like chianti, but maybe it's because I only ever drank it in places like the Cheesecake Factory and it had lots of fruit and stuff in it.

Oh yeah, so earlier today I sat down at an outdoor cafe (nowhere near the same category as this place) on the crowded little street near our hotel and ordered a latte macchiato (very careful to add the last word, after my glass of warm milk at the Hilton) -- when I added on the macchiato, I looked around to see if any Americans were around to witness my worldliness.   There are Americans all over here, but I rather like it, as they've regained their exotic status for me.

Except the one lady a few tables down, who is going on about how she's been on antibiotics since she was 25.

"Why?"  her friend asked in a rapturous sort of whisper.

"Acne."

"Acne?"

I didn't hear the rest of it.

Anyway, while waiting for my latte macchiato glass to cool off a bit, I decided the table and chair set-up was too uncomfortable, so yanked my chair a bit.  The table thumped down a couple inches and coffee spilled.  Everyone around me looked over.  I smiled and shrugged.   A few minutes later, I decided it'd be nicer to sit with my legs not crammed to one side, so I moved my chair again, and this time my whole glass tipped over and all the coffee spilled out onto the tablecloth (which I checked -- it was real cloth).  This time I bowed and said, "Thank you."  Again, everyone stared, but with no expression, like they were sheep that just happened to be looking over to see if I were some rambler they could advise the cows to trample.