You know you’ve read too much historical fiction

You know you've read too much historical fiction when you still imagine traveling by boat will be like something out of Titanic. I had images of walking out onto the dock and up a wooden gangplank, people running aboard at the last minute, crowds waving goodbye to loved ones with white handkerchiefs floating in the breeze as people on the boat lean over the railing to call one last farewell. Clearly I've read too many novels and so has Jess because we both had the same vision and we both got a good chuckle at how silly we were. The "Gare Maritime" or Boat station in English was much like a modern day airport with a food court, souvenir shop, money changer, and pain in the ass customs officials. I'm actually still really annoyed at the woman who decided to put my exit stamp on the last page of my passport- you know the page with all the US government endorsements on it- what an idiot.
Any way we had a joke going off our very antiquated ideas, it actually started the night before as we were discussing travel in the time of Henry James or Jane Austin. You know you go by train or the mail coach (shared transport) and you arrive at a city and set up lodgings and you usually have letters of introduction so you can make friends with people already situated in the city so you could go to all the best parties, and young ladies always had a chaperone but still tried to sneak in some time with the dashing young hero anyway.
With Lonely Planet listing off hotels and the internet to inform you of events or put you in touch with people living in a certain city you don't to have much advance knowledge of a place or even an acquaintance in a town to travel these days and a chaperone is unheard of. But the spirit of travel is still the same, strangers in strange lands will almost always be willing to help one another out, even if it is only directions to the nearest coffee house, and make fellow travelers feel welcome. While chaperones are a thing of the past for adult women, most women still don't travel alone and when they are single they still give a sly smile to the dashing young man across the restaurant. So while the times have changed and our manner of traveling has too the spirit is similar.
So with that in mind I was given a mission before I got on the boat: Find a nice elderly lady to be my chaperone and get myself a handsome young man.


*Please note that while I technically failed I did, to some measure at any rate, achieve both objectives within two hours of arriving in Italy. I met a pleasant British lady who I thought was going to be my chaperone (at least until we reached the city center) but she found a dashing young man to give her a lift and ditched me. Then I was approached by a young-ish man who followed me down the street to tell me he thought I was beautiful- alas he was the greasy guy working at the local pizza place.