Rainy days always bring out my wistful side. Today I am thinking about rainy weather in places I have visited in the past. Joe always says that one of his favorite days ever in Italy was a day in Orvieto. It poured all day and was just nasty, but it forced us to see every tiny museum and church. To sneak into cafés for an espresso every time the skies opened up. To buy new scarves and hats to steel ourselves against the cold, gray day, and to thoroughly enjoy a long, lazy lunch at a cozy trattoria.

One day I wandered the rain-slicked cobbles of Saint Emilion alone, enjoying the slapping sound of my wet shoes on the narrow lanes. Smoke curled from the chimneys and the honey-colored stone buildings were washed shiny and clean. When I dipped in to my favorite lunch spot there, I added my dripping umbrella to a colorful pile of them at the door. The red wine tasted exceptional in that weather. It was a beautiful day.

On the day I took a fjord cruise from Bergen, Norway the weather was grim–windy, rainy, cold. But, the weather actually enhanced the mystical and ancient feeling of the narrow sheer cliffs with their waterfalls plunging toward us. The color of the tiny red and white houses and simple churches were amplified by the deep gray background. At the end of the cruise the cup of hot chocolate from the ship’s galley was one of the best things I’d ever tasted.

In Vilnius, Lithuania it rained every day we were there. All of my memories of that city are padded with gray clouds and raincoats. But still we had a wonderful time there and my rain-slicked memories are all happy ones.

The moral of this story, I guess, is don’t make vacation plans based on possible weather conditions and no matter what the skies do, just be open to all the wonderful possibilities rain or shine.