Un Caffe Perfetto

The first cappuccino. Place of choice: Pizzeria Bar Piccadilly. 3:00PM

Forget that I had only gotten three hours of sleep on my eight hour flight overnight. Forget the five hour time difference (now six), and forget that I had just grabbed a newspaper from someone that I couldn't read. Forget it all--I didn't care.

I didn't care that I was sleep deprived or that I was stuck in another time zone. I didn't care that after 10am you aren't supposed to order a cappuccino (besides I was still stuck in the time zone where it WAS 10am!) I didn't care about any of that--I just wanted my cappuccino.

The lovely Italian man behind the bar cringed as I asked, and I could tell all he wanted to say was: You stupid American girl, we don't drink cappuccino after 10am! But I didn't care. No. No one was going to stand between me and my first cappuccino. No one one was going to deprive me of that dome of foam that would sit delicately above the rim of the mug. No one was going to deprive me of the warm milky mustache that I would form with my first drink of that wonderfulness. No one was going to stop this cappuccino from happening.

As I took my first sip, "Delicious," I thought. Simply...Delicious. I mix matched it with the one and only slice of pizza in Tuscany that had no cheese, but it still went down the way I remembered it going down all those times two years ago.

And it wasn't just in that first sip that I fell over taste buds with joy. No, it was in the entire process. As I had heard the machine begin, I almost jumped the counter. I nearly gave up all senses as I got a fresh whiff of the brew. I almost dove over the register at the first splash into the mug. I almost cried as it was placed teasingly in front of me. I almost fainted as I passed my Euros over to the young woman who had to suffer through watching me salivate from across the cafe. And that dome...oh that dome was so perfect that I almost bought another. I almost double fisted cappuccino. Oh...that cappuccino...that first cappuccino...it was perfect.