there were no tables . . .

The rain, in this town in Sicily where it hadn’t rained for months and months, was coming down in torrents. The broken, cracked streets were overflowing, becoming rivers, forming lakes, rising higher.
We had umbrellas, but they were of little use. The socks and the shoes and the bottoms of pants were sodden.
We jumped over a growing pond when we saw a restaurant that was open. It was dinner time, and we wanted to eat, but we most wanted to get in and out of the rain.
A waiter saw us come in and told us, quickly, there were no tables. Despondent, we started slinking to the door, headed out to the torrential rain again.
Then we stopped. A nice looking couple, maybe in their late 50s or early 60s, at a table for four, saw bedraggled us and said we could sit with them. We raced back from the door and sat down at their table.
And then for the next three hours, we talked, with the woman originally from Norway and the man from Switzerland, who now live together in eastern France. They spoke English fluidly – along with Norwegian, Swiss German, German, Italian and French, all better than we spoke any of their languages.
The conversation began with them, sort of hesitantly, finding out we were Americans and asking how things were in America.
Sort of hesitantly, we responded that things were not good. And they jumped in. We exchanged political views that were pretty much the same. Then we talked and talked and talked about Trump, about travel, about food, about children, about their jobs. He was an acupuncturist and she was a physical therapist.
They asked about us and we asked about them. We made jokes and we all laughed. We exchanged email addresses.
When we left the restaurant, after more than three hours, we all hugged each other goodbye.
We have an increasing number of friends who no longer want to deal with the grueling nature of long distance travel. We understand. But this is why we still do it.
When we walked out of the restaurant, the rain had stopped.