Wherefore Art Thou Roaming, Ruby?
Somewhere between moving to Sicily, turning 40, climbing an active volcano, collecting countries like mildly irresponsible refrigerator magnets and eating enough cheese to concern a cardiologist, I stopped writing about any of it. I have also been trying to keep a garden alive (having apparently crossed the threshold into old-lady activities), keep my employer happy with my 'cross-the-pond output, hosting a variety of loved ones, keeping both of my furry men alive and fed (both the canine and human variety), eating my weight in Mortadella and earning my WSET Level 1 Award in Wines (which is largely useless but extremely fun at dinner.)
This is poor behavior for someone with a travel blog.
In my defense, I was busy doing the traveling. Also working. Also occasionally unpacking a suitcase before filling it again. Every time I thought about updating Ruby in Roam, I imagined giving each place the thoughtful, sweeping treatment it deserved. Then the list grew longer, the blank page grew more judgmental and suddenly I had accumulated roughly a year and a half of life with no reasonable way to explain it except perhaps through a limited documentary series.
So this is the highlight reel. The stories I never wrote, the places that made me cry, the meals that made me sing praise to the Almighty above and the travel companions that made the lack of sleep worth it.
Ireland was waiting for me
Ireland was my 40th birthday trip, and I wanted it to feel important without trying too hard to make it important. Somehow, it did.
My entire family and E's family came, although my parents endured a flight delay of more than 24 hours to get there. By the time everyone arrived in County Mayo, we had already earned the first Guinness. Mine was in Dublin, and it was everything Guinness had spent several centuries promising me it would be.
The landscape got me first. The green hills, stone fences and sheep were more beautiful in person than they had any right to be. Ireland in summer still seems to be debating whether it would prefer to be chilly or rainy, which is perfect because gloomy weather is my jam. When the sun breaks through, it feels less like weather and more like a personal communication from heaven.
My grandpa always wanted to visit Ireland and never got the chance. Family documents led me to County Mayo, where his side likely came from, so being there made me feel close to him. We stayed in a beautiful house attached to an old church from 1856. It was beautiful, slightly creepy and, because Ireland understands hospitality at a spiritual level, had a bar inside it.
We filmed most of the second horror movie in an ongoing franchise starring my nephews and niece. At one point my sister and husband yelled at the children for filming in a cemetery. I was one of the children being yelled at.
At Connolly's in Hollymount, we met Seamus, the town taxi driver, who was about eight Guinnesses into his shift as a local character. When my sister-in-law asked what happened if someone called him for a ride, he pointed toward his car and said, essentially, "Do you need a ride? Let's go." Later, when E left to get pizza and I was stranded with my delightfully overserved father-in-law, Seamus offered to buy me dinner. He returned with a bag of Tayto crisps. Reader, I accepted.
We went to the races in Ballinrobe. On my actual birthday, I checked sheepdog herding off my bucket list, watched sheep shearing and fed baby sheep. That night I cooked dinner while the whole family drank wine and danced in the kitchen to Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. There are sophisticated ways to enter a new decade. This was better.
The most important stop was a tiny square foot of Irish land I had once bought my grandpa from one of those cheesy websites. He loved the certificate and kept it on his wall. The company helped me locate the plot, and my family drove there with a stone bearing his name. After we placed it, a snail appeared and crawled onto the stone.
I have always felt that Grandpa talks to me through animals. Usually he sends a frog, but the Irish scheduling department apparently had a conflict, so a very determined snail stepped in. It stayed there with us. I wish Grandpa could have made the trip himself, but in that moment it felt as though Ireland had been waiting for both of us.
Italy kept happening
Living in Italy means that a quick family visit can include the best mozzarella of your life and an emergency bathroom incident involving a black sock. These are the travel details Condé Nast consistently refuses to cover.
In Puglia, I visited my sister and her family in Manfredonia, ate extraordinary mozzarella and found my favorite gelato in Italy so far (lemon cream, yummmm). The pebble beaches were gorgeous until I attempted to exit the water and dragged myself ashore like an elephant seal with poor core strength. My sister had naturally selected a beach that required a hike, so I had arrived pre-exhausted. My nephews had arrived over-sugared, thanks to me. Hence the sock. Typical Shewey family material.
I also stowed away on my brother-in-law's quick trip to Rome. I spent the days with my sister and nephews, saw the Pantheon, the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, and crossed Vatican City off the country list. The Sistine Chapel was beautiful but, if I am being honest, more crowded, dimmer and smaller-feeling than I expected.
Michelangelo remains safe from my criticism; crowd management does not.
The Forum was my favorite because the ruins let you imagine people moving through the city instead of simply staring at a famous ceiling with several thousand close friends. A food tour through Trastevere was the other clear winner: Roman street food, wine at every stop and two 11-year-olds happily joining us with Lazian grape juice served in Sicilian wine glasses. Their palates are refined. Their aunt is a bad influence. Both things can be true.
America briefly gave me autumn
In October, I flew back for my cousin's wedding in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It was my first international flight with my nephews, and we spent most of it playing seat-back games, watching movies and proving that I am a 40-year-old woman only in the legal sense.
My sister rented a car at JFK because she is unwell. I have adapted to Sicilian driving, where lanes are more of a gentle suggestion, but I lived in New York and still refuse to drive there. Her position was that anyone who can drive in Italy can drive anywhere. Technically, we survived, so she now considers herself vindicated. (If you're reading this sis, you are actually a good driver ;)
Massachusetts gave me foliage, boots and clam chowder, three things hot Sicily had made me miss desperately. We saw Plymouth, followed the Revolutionary War through Boston and threw tea into the harbor. Mine blew back in my face, which felt like an appropriately American protest: confident, symbolic and poorly assessed for wind direction.
Then came Salem and my full Hocus Pocus pilgrimage, followed by Florida, my childhood home in Bronson, visiting my favorite Sumter County girls, Grandpa's grave and Halloween with my nephews at their first haunted house. I also saw my Florida friends and briefly lived as though we were back in our 2012 dive-bar-hopping era. Our stamina has changed. The commitment to the bit has not. I highly recommend having such good friends who have seen it through every type of rise and leg of jean fashion (low rise? high rise? skinny jeans? boot cut? we've been there with each other in the trenches, through it all).
A work trip to Naples, Florida, finished the American leg. On my way back to Sicily, I booked a room at the TWA Hotel during a long JFK layover, supposedly for a nap. Instead, I wandered around staring at the flight-attendant uniform displays and the Twister room because the place was everything my 1960s, mid-century-modern heart wanted. Sleep is temporary. A perfectly preserved airline fantasy is forever.
Winter was cheese with a view
Amsterdam happened because my other brother-in-law had a conference and my mother-in-law was going. I announced that joining them would be my Christmas present, and E, who is alarmingly supportive of my schemes, told me to go.
Amsterdam was hauntingly beautiful. In Italy I worry about being hit by a car; there I learned to fear the bicycle. I took a wine-and-cheese canal cruise, got day drunk with my brother-in-law and learned that saying "green" in Dutch requires more phlegm than I possess. We visited windmills, watched wooden shoes being made and toured the Anne Frank House after I reread her diary. That visit was devastating and deeply important, especially after marrying into a Jewish family. The greatest gift of the trip, though, was time with my mother-in-law and the chance to know each other better.
December brought a work trip to Chicago, a late night with coworkers, an expense tab that had not yet reached its limit and the phrase "challenge accepted." A good friend joined me for the second half of that trip, and we pursued anything that looked as if Christmas had thrown up on it. I took almost no pictures except one of her broken umbrella and another of her drying herself under a Macy's bathroom hand dryer. A sign of a good trip, probably.
I carried tins of Garrett Popcorn home for our American and Sicilian neighbors. Those $12 gestures turned into lasagna, a toddler's birthday party, New Year's Eve fireworks, homemade pizza, vegetables from the garden, a boat trip that I believed would begin with a hospital trip and friendships I will cherish forever. Our neighbors have wildly outperformed us in the gift exchange. We won for sure.
Then came Chamonix with E, my sister and her family. They skied. Eric and I, who do not ski, pursued the mountain activities that involved lower odds of a knee injury and higher access to melted cheese.
I cried while standing in the snow with a warm raclette baguette and mulled wine. Snowflakes caught in our hair, the village looked unreal and for a minute life felt suspiciously like a movie made for women who own decorative blankets (I own one that looks like a burrito, does that count?) We booked a spa day, sat in a hot tub surrounded by snow and went snowshoeing with a French guide named Olivier, who interpreted a three-hour tour as an opening bid. At the top, we drank wine and ate cheese in a chalet. Exercise of this nature is tolerable when it has a dairy-based conclusion.
From Chamonix, E's conference carried us through Bern and Kaiserslautern. We looked out over the river toward Bern's Bear Park and celebrated Switzerland by ordering Indian food through Uber Eats. Living in southern Italy has taught us to treasure modern conveniences and every cuisine that is not Italian, which feels treasonous until the tikka masala arrives. I even got another one of my famous multi-hour German solo hikes in.
Luxembourg gave us Vianden Castle, Victor Hugo and scenery that looked faintly haunted in the best way. Then E, my resident World War II encyclopedia, led me through Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge. We ate at Le Nuts, stood near foxholes still visible in the earth and traced the places he knew from Band of Brothers. The next day we drove to Haguenau, France, completing a pilgrimage that had also taken him to Currahee in Georgia. The river looked much wider on television. Standing at a site where something so important happened is almost too much to put into words (hence, why I'm having a hard time doing that here).
Seeing those places beside him made the history feel immediate. The towns still display gratitude toward the American troops who liberated them, and the landscape holds the cost of that freedom quietly. I left thinking about the Greatest Generation and the ordinary young people who became heroes because history gave them no alternate assignment.
Sicily became even more like home
Meanwhile, Sicily continued doing what Sicily does: producing beauty, chaos and stories at a rate no single blog can reasonably process.
We took fuzzy Elton west for Easter and stayed on an olive grove in Menfi with a wood-burning hot tub. We walked among the ruins at Selinunte, ate above the sea in Sciacca and introduced our desert rescue dog to the Mediterranean. The moment his paw hit the water, he transformed. He ran the shoreline, chased waves and barreled into the sea as though he had discovered a missing part of himself. His first ocean was the Mediterranean because apparently the dog is now more sophisticated than I am.
We watched a wheel of Maiorchino cheese hurtle down the stone streets of Novara di Sicilia during a tradition that dates back centuries. We visited Marzamemi, drank wine in the square and bought tuna products with the seriousness of art collectors. Our French friends came to visit, and I allowed myself to be persuaded up Mount Etna. It was a six-hour trek, and I would like the record to show that I survived but do not recommend. 1 star. Etna is alive and she does not want humans up there.
Each deserves its own Postcard from Sicily, which is my new way of saying, "I promise I will write more before another calendar year escapes."
The passport remained in full use
A work trip returned me to Chicago, which I used as an excuse to revive an annual cheese-festival tradition with my best friend. We stayed in Burdett, New York, attended the Seneca Lake Wine and Cheese Festival and wore custom shirts because we respect tradition. The vineyards sloping toward the lake reminded me of Germany. There was too much cheese, too much wine, never enough laughter and exactly enough Cheeto Puffs.
From there, I headed to Phoenix for parental time with my sister and nephews and the usual Southwestern diversions: steaks, guns, cacti and escape rooms. You know, a classic family visit, depending on your family.
Milan was a very special trip with my sister. I can't even remember the last time her and I went on a trip where it was just us, so this was a long time coming. Milano brought the Duomo, The Last Supper, the opera, vintage Valentino, Gucci sunglasses and my WSET Level 1 Award in Wines, earned alongside my sister. Apparently I can now identify grape varieties with slightly more authority while wearing designer eyewear. Personal growth takes many forms.
Then Greece: Crete, Santorini and Naxos for my friend's 40th birthday. The food was the freshest and perhaps the best I have ever eaten, which no one in Sicily needs to hear from me. We drank raki, learned that Greeks are built differently, sailed around Santorini, swam in the Aegean and lived out every Mamma Mia fantasy available without actually joining a musical commune.
Naxos was my favorite. It felt real and unpolished in exactly the right ways. One night, beneath twinkle lights at a tiny villa, eating beautiful food and drinking local wine with friends, I cried again. This has become a recurring travel expense. Greek coffee also became my favorite coffee, and after having my cup read in Naxos, I have decided it is the only acceptable source of life advice. Screw self-help books. From now on, I will be consulting the coffee grounds.
Finally, my cheese-festival best friend invited me to work remotely during her trip to Ireland, which was to turn into a full UK tour (which has quickly become one of my favorite locations on planet earth). Obviously I said yes. I rode a horse on a beach (named Bambi), held two owls (Forrest and Pepsi) and a hawk (named Ruby), visited Galway, Lahinch and Ennis, drank Guinness on a Guinness-sponsored trip and had high tea at Dromoland Castle (just ONE time in my life, I want to run down castle stairs like this one, with a long, flowing cape. I'll have a secret I'm harboring, hence my quick pace. The candelabra flickers onto the stone walls as I make a sharp turn into a hidden corridor. "Oh no," I gasp. "What have I done?" - excerpt from a very nonexistent novella, penned by yours truly).
Was there too much Guinness? Contractually, I think not. I was just doing what I was invited there to do.
From there, we took an obscenely early flight to London. An hour after landing, I was on Cecil Court among antiquarian booksellers, trying not to cry over old editions and shopkeepers with perfect accents. I found a special English literature treasure for my sister and nephews, a 1940s Winston Churchill cup for E and a lucky sixpence from an antiques dealer who later called me "a lovely American girl." I may have floated out of the shop.
At the Savoy Grill, we ordered every appetizer, champagne, oysters, caviar, Beef Wellington, sticky toffee pudding and a Chilean red. I sat there wondering how the backwoods Florida girl had become a woman discussing vermouth rinses in Mayfair while wearing a silk Burberry scarf she had purchased because she is grown now, allegedly.
Glasgow began, as sensible trips do, with a taxi directly to a tattoo parlor. My friend and I now have matching wine-cork tattoos: champagne for me, red wine for her, with coordinates for Savannah, where our friendship became permanent over a glass of wine at Ruth's Chris after fleeing a catastrophic St. Patrick's Day girls' trip. About 35 percent of the attendees got along. We were that 35 percent.
Scotland gave me Highland cows, haggis I actually liked, Loch Lomond, whisky in Luss and some of the kindest people I have met anywhere. I heard an older Scottish man use "rat-arsed" in the wild, completing a linguistic bucket-list item. Travel expands the mind doesn't it?
So where have I been?
Apparently, everywhere. More importantly, I have been with the people I love.
The year and a half looks excessive when reduced to flights, countries and glasses of wine. What I remember are smaller things: a snail on Grandpa's stone, Elton meeting the sea, my parents wearing strangers' hats in an Irish pub, my nephews pelting me with snowballs, a broken umbrella in Chicago, a bag of Tayto crisps presented as dinner, my friend and I making a music video on our last night in Glasgow (world premiere coming soon) and our Sicilian neighbors turning popcorn into a family abroad.
I used to think I needed enough time and distance to understand a place before I could write about it properly. That is how a travel blog becomes an archaeological site. So Ruby in Roam is coming back in smaller pieces: one destination story and one Postcard from Sicily each month, with a recipe I have learned here and a wine I have discovered because apparently I needed another reason to discuss cibo and vino.
There is plenty left to tell. Fortunately, I have notes and photos still to share.
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