“Oh, the smell of Italy!” Janet waxed lyrical. There was plenty to wax about. The walk from Paraggi to Portofino is an olfactory delight. A blind person could take equal pleasure in the walk as any sighted individual. Gardenia, fig, wild rose, arugula, thyme, wild basil, and goodness-knows-what-else wafted to our grateful noses, sometimes helped along by our hands as we would pluck a leaf here, a blossom there, and crush them between our fingers in order to smell them better as we strolled along in the twilight.

When you got to the high point of the path there was a wall to sit on. From this wall you could gaze into the harbor, bay, and town of Portofino. With a corn-colored moon hanging over the motionless velvet mantle of the sea to one side and the harbor to the other, it was, as my dad said, just like an opera stage set.

The yachts of the Very Wealthy were moored in a glistening row of white prows and shining glass. Behind them in a semicircle was a pastel line of buildings whose facades touched each other, a crescent-shaped backdrop of pinks, oranges, blues, whites, rusty Pompeii reds, and ochers. Portofino, a fishing village where the “catch of the day” was more likely to be movie stars and billionaires than any local seafood. Portofino, whose tiny grocery stores were tucked into back streets and whose boutiques nestled on the first floor of the buildings on the harbor square. Boutiques that sold belts, shoes, boots, and scarves for more money than ANYTHING you could imagine. Portofino, with its floating bar on a barge anchored in the harbor that had a solid bronze sculpture of a huge crab over the door to the bar’s landward lounge. Portofino, where you could look into the cabin of a yacht and see, with your own eyes, Rex Harrison having an espresso with Peter Sellers! Where you could watch Jackie Kennedy stroll along the quayside in a tight white T-shirt with the words “St. Tropez” on it. Where you could watch Princess Grace duck into an art gallery to buy an original Salvador Dali drawing and come out with it wrapped in brown paper, just as if it were a bar of soap, as my dad said. Portofino, where there were no cars allowed into the town so that when you were ten years old you could have the run of the whole place as long as you remembered to meet everyone at 10 P.M. by the Hotel Nazionale for the walk back to our more modest lodgings in Paraggi. Yes, 10 P.M.! “We only go to Italy once a year,” Dad said.

For the next three hours the town was mine. I knew everyone. We had been coming here for our annual summer vacation since I was three. Portofino was heaven. In heaven you are free, and in heaven all the angels are friendly to little boys.