Running Away From Rome (Part One)

Looking forward to leaving the sweltering heat and humidity of the 'Burgh and traveling to Maine later this week.  My friend Dolly hosts an annual lobster fest at her family home that I have been wanting to attend for years.  This year it looks like the stars have finally aligned and JB and I will get to go and eat lobster and sit on Dolly's front porch.  She grew up literally across the street from where the lobster fishermen keep their boats (or whatever the correct nautical term is) with a view of the Atlantic Ocean.  She once showed me a coffee table book by Walter Cronkite that had an aerial view of the house and her quaint Maine village.  How idyllic. 
The place I grew up in was a suburb of a steel mill town;  my childhood memories are of hearing slag trucks drive by as they carried the remnants of steel making to another suburb to form the foundation for a new shopping mall.  There was not a lot of physical beauty.  We would take occasional trips to county or state parks and vacations to Boston, where my dad lived just after he immigrated to the US.   On those trips, I caught a glimpse of what people who grow up in coastal areas experience. 
St. Augustine is quoted as saying -- "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page."   I want to read many pages.  The book, "1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler's Life List" sits on a table in our family room. 
This week I get to go somewhere new that is listed there, Acadia National Park.  Since Clare is spending the summer in Maine, we will get to spend time with her too.  She suggested places to stay, and encouraged us to look beyond the Marriotts, at least for a few nights.  And so we have compromised and I have B&B reservations for three nights.  She further recommended Camden, Maine as a place to stay.  B & B reservations can be a little diffcult to come by for three people during Maine's high season.  After some online searching and phone calling, I found myself in conversation with a woman speaking with an accent I could not easily identify.  At first I thought it odd, since I expected to hear that distinctive Maine pronunciation that Dolly first introduced me to and that I have since come to recognize on trips to Maine with Clare. 
The B&B reservations person who happens to be the owner apologized for her difficulties and mentioned that she is Italian.  Italian??  How would an Italian end up running a B&B on the coast of Maine?  Through the joys of the Internet, I was able to read the story of an Italian couple's life in Rome, interest in US travel and decision to move to Maine.
It's pretty hard for me to understand how someone would want to leave Rome and relocate to a beautiful, yet seasonally challenging place like Maine (think sub-zero and snowed in for months on end).   
I am looking forward to meeting her and hope to post more soon about their travels and ours too.