TRAVELING THROUGH ITALY

Cars and trucks zipped by, leaving us in their dust. Tickets for a bus ride across Venice? No one ever asked for proof that we’d paid. Infectious casualness came to mind last week when my children traded their car keys for long-distance travel on mass transportation. My daughter sped, so to speak, to and from Washington, D.C., by Amtrak. My son left the driving to Greyhound on his way back to a summer internship in Philadelphia.