This is my breakfast on Sunday morning in the refectory of the Monastery of St. Benedict, in Norcia. A bowl of milky coffee and a cookie (there was more available, but I was really sick with a sinus infection, and had no appetite). It makes me so happy to see this place again in this image.

(You might wonder why my glasses show up so often in these VFYTs I take. It’s because I’m near-sighted. I can’t see well in the distance, but up close, like when I’m taking a photo with my phone, I have to take my glasses off to see clearly. I tried bifocals, but hated them.)

Here’s lunch on Monday, at the restaurant Nautilus in the Italian city on the Adriatic coast. It was our pasta course: tagliatelle with seafood — clams, octopus, calamari, shrimp. Four of us shared this, plus a deliciously fizzy local white wine. After this, we had a big platter of lightly battered and fried seafood. I could have eaten a bucket of that octopus. Good times, good times…