Nick awoke at 3 A.M. in pain, with a very swollen and painful ankle. In the morning, it was worse. Since today's trip was mostly on the bus, Nick decided to go along.

The plan was to drive along the shore from Sorrento to Positano—a UNESCO world heritage site, considered Italy's most beautiful coast line. Alas, a storm earlier in week had collapsed part of the road, so we had to skip Positano and take a steep route through the mountains in the day's rain and fog.

So we went to Almalfi and took a boat trip along the coast. We stopped for lunch at a hillside restaurant. As we were getting a little tired of pasta, we were glad lunch consisted of an organic green salad, swordfish, and tiramisu. Nick ate both desserts.

Then we stopped in Ravello, also a steep hillside town, famous for its international summer classical music festival. Nick limped along to the town square and bought a cane to help him back to the bus stop. By the time we were back in Sorrento, one of us was very green from the bus ride and the other couldn't walk.

That night was Festa Della Pasta. Guido demonstrated how to make many different pastas and their sauces. For dinner we ate pasta fagioli, pasta with pesto sauce, and cannelloni at the hotel. We realized that the pesto was seasoned as Barbara makes it, but all the other pasta sauces along the trip had almost no garlic.

We told Guido about Nick's sore ankle and he called a local doctor who came right to our hotel room to look at the problem. She prescribed three prescriptions including a powerful NSAID, which we picked up at the only open pharmacy. Nick woke up during the night, still in pain, but by morning the pain was gone and the swelling greatly reduced. We were relieved.