Romance on the Rails - a Special Valentine's Day Travel Story

“You do your shopping, and we’ll meet at the train station at 10.”

It seemed like a good plan. I would go get the postcards I wanted, and then meet the two girls I had been kicking around Rome with at the Termini train station at 10 a.m., where we wanted to catch a train to Florence.’

But this was 1979. I, and seemingly everyone else from North America of a certain age, had a backpack hitched up above their waist and was traipsing about Europe with nothing to help us find the pension or restaurant we wanted except maps and torn-out sections of a guide book called “Let’s Go Europe,” also known as “The Bible.” There was no way to contact another person once they had left their hotel or, for most of us backpackers fresh out of college, their hostel.

All I could do was stand outside the massive Rome train station and see if I could find the girls I had met two days before at another train station in Italy. I scanned the horizon for several minutes, but no luck. I went to the platform and looked. Still nothing. I did the logical thing and hopped on the train, reasoning I might find them when the train stopped in Florence.

Little did I know that decision would change the course of my life in an unimaginable, wonderful way; one that would give me a great story to tell every day. But one that’s especially poignant as we get close to Valentine’s Day.

The train to Florence wasn’t departing for a few minutes , so I managed to get a spot inside one of the little booths or cabins that house a half-dozen riders in comfort. The train filled up fairly quickly, and then I noticed a group of four girls plunk themselves down on those little folding seats that trains used to have in the aisles. Not the most comfortable in the world, but at least a place to rest while the train was bouncing through the Italian countryside (and when it was stalled in the middle of lush fields of grain, which seemed to happen quite regularly in those days).

I had filled up my canteen with cold water at the train station, plastic bottles of water not being as much of a thing back then, and it was hot as blazes that August morning in 1979. So, being gallant, and being interested in attractive young women my own age, I offered the one closest to me a drink of water.

I introduced myself and explained I was visiting from California. She introduced me to the other girls in the group ,all from Ontario. The one furthest away from me was Barbara.

They were all cute and outgoing girls. We chatted on the train off and on, and kind of fell in together once we arrived in Florence. We all scanned our Let’s Go book to see where we might stay and ultimately settled on a place (I don’t have to look this up as I can still remember it: Tony’s Locando Inn on Via Faenza in Florence.)

The three other girls led the way as we looked for the hostel, leaving Barbara and I chatting a few feet behind. We really hit it off, and seemed to have all sorts of things to talk about. She likes to tell the story about how I was the only American she had met during her four or five weeks of European travel who knew that A), Canada was a distinct and rather separate country from the United States; B) That Canada had a prime minister and not a president and, C) That I knew the prime minister’s name and party (Conservative Leader Joe Clark at the time).

I was more impressed with her smile and her easy-going manner and her general approach to life. There was also the fact that she was rather attractive, with soft, blue eyes and short-ish blonde hair that had been bleached by several days in the Greek Islands, where the girls had been before going to Rome.

We found our hotel, and ended up spending two or three days together in Florence. We scoured the Uffizi, walked the ancient streets, snapped photos of the Duomo and went for gelato at a place called Vivoli’s, which, by coincidence, had a second shop in Berkeley, California – about 20 minutes from my hometown of Castro Valley, a small town in the Bay Area. We also went to a bar that was wildly popular with visiting Americans and Canadians called The Red Garter, where Barbara and I danced to a couple of tunes from a relatively new band I loved called The Police.

We weren’t in love, no far from it, as the Bob Seger song goes. But we did like each other. And it was sad to say goodbye. We jotted our names down in our diaries/notebooks and headed off in different directions, as I was supposed to meet a friend in Sweden a few days later and her group was already booked for a few nights in France.

I noted in my journal that Barbara had an aunt living in Berkeley, so perhaps one day we could meet up in the San Francisco area.

I thought about her a few times when I was back home. And then, one day, a letter arrived in my mailbox at my apartment in California. “Dear Jim,” it said, or words to that effect. “It was nice to meet you in Italy. We had some lovely talks. And you’re so good-looking (okay, I made that up). Take care. Barbara.”

I quickly wrote back, expressing similar sentiments. She wrote back to me fairly soon after, and I returned the favour again.

This became pretty regular on through the fall of 1979, each of us doing what they could to keep our respective country’s postal services in the black.

I wasn’t seeing anyone seriously at the time, so, on a whim, I called her on New Year’s Day at her home in suburban Toronto. Lucky for me, she was home and we chatted for a few minutes before I had to hang up, long-distance calls in those days being absurdly expensive. The phone company had ridiculous rules that provided discounts only on a Sunday or after midnight or before 6 a.m., or unless it was a Wednesday in a leap year and the Yankees had won the World Series the previous season.

But we managed to talk for a bit and re-establish a great connection. Not long after that, Barbara went cross-country skiing at a friend’s cottage in the Muskoka/Georgian Bay area and sat down to write me another letter. She claims now that she hadn’t had much to drink. But the letter she wrote was fairly straightforward, which is very much like her.

“We have a great connection. Why don’t we get together? How about you come to Toronto this summer?”

This was around February of 1980. I still wasn’t seeing anyone seriously, so I wrote back. Rather quickly.

“Sure,” I said, “I’d love to come visit.”

This letter arrived probably 10 days after Barbara had sent what you might call her “come hither” letter. She didn’t quite recall what she had said, so when she opened my note it appeared to her that I was inviting myself in a rather bold fashion.

Her reply to my acceptance didn’t reflect her slight confusion, so it wasn’t until much later that I realized that she thought I was being a bit forward and inviting myself to her home. It’s something we laugh about now.

We made plans for me to arrive in late June so we could watch some Canada Day celebrations at the Ontario legislature, and I arrived on a plane in Toronto in the late afternoon on, I think, June 29.

When I got off the plane and walked into the terminal, I saw a polished, beautiful young woman with blonde hair. I knew it was Barbara, and I think she knew I was the guy she had met in Italy, but we looked a little more spiffy than we did on that hot train the previous August, each having been sleeping in hostels and carrying scruffy sets of clothes around Europe in a backpack for weeks on end.

We drove to her house and had dinner with her parents. They had every right to eye me with suspicion; some guy their daughter hardly knew suddenly invading their home and staying the night. But they didn’t let on, and we managed a few cheesy laughs about the Blue Jays and a few other topics before I turned in for the night. I was, of course, in the basement bedroom; two floors away from Barbara.

The next morning, after breakfast, we drove downtown to what was then one of the few coffee shops in the city that served cappuccino; something we had become accustomed to during our European trip. We sat down over our fancy coffees and chatted for a minute.

I’m not an impulsive person, but something hit me hard as I looked across the table. I put my cappuccino down and said, “I think we ought to get married.”

As I recall, Barbara didn’t bat an eye.

“Okay,” she said.

We had spent two or three days together in Florence. We shared a bedroom, but with five other people. We liked each other. We might have kissed after a dance at the Red Garter, but if we did it was a quick peck, not a full, embracing, Hollywood kiss.

At her home, we had spent maybe a few hours together, almost all of it with her parents. But, somehow, we just knew. Maybe it was the letters and the phone calls, where we dove deep and talked about things that were important to us. I don’t have the answer, I just know that we had a deep affection for each other and that we each thought we were a fabulous match.

In fairness, there was maybe some thought about this perhaps being a serious relationship before I landed in Toronto. I had brought along a necklace as a gift for her. Barbara's youngest sister likes to tell the story about how Barbara had spent an hour in the bathroom getting ready to pick me up at the airport and how she teased her big sister about taking so long to prepare to meet some casual friend who had shared a gelato with her in Florence. I guess we kinda knew it might work, but I don't think either of was prepared for an engagement.

Barb came out to California to visit my family a couple months later. I flew back east in October to catch a UCLA-Ohio State football game in Columbus, followed by a trip to Niagara Falls and a couple days in Toronto. We sat on the bed in the second-floor apartment she had in Rosedale and decided I would make the move.

Six months later, I was a new immigrant; arriving in Canada on a fiancé visa with a legally binding promise to get married within three months. I arrived on May 1, 1981 around 3 p.m., foolishly driving up the Don Valley Parkway near rush hour on a Friday. We had a romantic dinner, and 84 days later we got married. And just kept going.

This year marks our 39th year celebrating Valentine’s Day together. Next year we’ll celebrate our 40th anniversary.

Here's to 40 more, sweetheart.

NOTE: Jim Byers is senior editorial director at TravelPulse Canada. He and Barbara have a lovely home and three grown children; all of them married to people they had spent more than four days with prior to getting engaged.