The woman in the coffee shop was tall and elegant – long black hair swept back, tanned skin, svelte in her dark barista uniform.
She took the cloth to the nozzle of the coffee machine, wiped clean; frothed milk; sprinkled cinnamon.
On a bleak day in Belfast, the cafe was warm, inviting.
Post Christmas, the city centre is misty and disappointed - wet black leaves, forlorn Christmas decorations, the locked-up sheds of the Christmas market.
All those ghosts of Christmas past.
I had tried half heartedly to look through the picked-over sales bargains – glow-in-the-dark pink bras; impossibly small; impossibly big; long-legged tights for the giant in your life… nothing to thrill.
Half price Christmas cards and wrapping paper are a thing, if you have the heart.
It felt like all the leftover debris of Christmas washed up in the Belfast gutter, we had not the heart.
The cafe was a treat. We stole in to warm ourselves; sit on a bench at a steamed-up window and cup our hands around a taste of the continent… a flat white; a cappuccino.
The man behind me in the queue knew the woman making the coffees.
How was Christmas, he asked.
When she spoke, it was clear she was Italian.
“Beautiful,” she sighed.
She is from Venice, she told us, not the old city, she said.. but still. It was 15 C there, she sighed.
The man in the queue said he checked the flights for Lido di Jesolo - in July, it would cost 900 euros for return flights, he said.
We shared a collective sigh as the steam hissed through the coffee machine pipes and she sprinkled cinnamon on the milky froth.
“There are more beautiful places than Jesolo,” she said.
Ah yes, I thought, dreaming of Italy - how it steals your heart like a favourite perfume.
Say Italy and we are back, trundling on a bus through the winding streets of Sorrento, so close that we could reach up and pluck a perfect lemon from a tree – so close.
Pastel-coloured houses nestle into the rocky coastline – look, there’s Sophia Loren’s villa; the sea sparkles crystal blue.
Whisper Italy and we are back in Amalfi in July, the sun beating down on us as we sit on the stone steps of a kiosk sipping real iced lemonade piled high with strawberries.
“You know your stall is here in our guidebook,” I tell the young man who served us.
He laughs and points far off into the blue faraway slopes – that’s where the lemons come from - his father’s trees far out on the hills beyond Amalfi.
Sitting in a cafe in post-Christmas Belfast, memories keep us warm.
I’m back in the pitch dark of the Paris metro - stations flash past and people appear like ghosts – a mademoiselle in green velvet; a man in a white lace priest’s gown and cap.
I glance down and spot a woman’s foot in the night – a high sandal; a toe nail sharpened to a stiletto point, painted bright silver, glinting in the darkness.
Up at the steps of the Eiffel Tower, a man poses as Tintin from the cartoon - his raincoat at an impossible angle; his hair swept back, as if he has been caught in a sudden gust of wind.
I remember the guide eager to gift us our first look at the Mona Lisa. He whisked us past giant naked statues, past huddled groups of tourists; turned a corner and, with a flourish said: Voila.
But she’s so small; that can’t be her, I thought and the Mona Lisa looked back at me and smiled.
I hoard memories of dinner behind the big railway clock in the Musee d’Orsay, the sweep of the city as you take the steps up at the metro Concorde; walking the Seine and knowing the streets - each turn, each pavement cafe.
There was a time when I lost the wanderlust after a year of travelling. I’d had enough of suitcases and airports, dodgy taxi drivers, hard bunks and an unfortunate case of nits.
But now? Now, we’re ready for sipping icy frascati in a warm piazza; for a stroll on a bleached shore by an indigo sea; for the cool shade of an ancient cathedral; the trickle of water from a fountain in an old square.
Sitting in a cafe in Belfast, stirring a cappuccino, our hearts soar like swallows at the lure of warmer climes.
