Rimini.

We've spent the last two nights in Rimini, Italy, a booming resort city of 140,000 on the Adriatic coast.

When I was a kid, I had imaginative wanderlust, even though I never got to go anyplace. To satisfy my curiosity I would scour the oversized atlas that had been given to me as a gift. I would read the exotic names (anything's exotic when you come from gritty Yonkers) and dream of what those various places were like.

When my wife threw out the idea of celebrating our 30th anniversary in northern Italy, I again got out my atlas. Internet maps are great but they pale in comparison to the view you get from an atlas. There you can see the scope and minutia of where you're planning to travel. As I viewed my atlas, dozens and dozens of towns intrigued me. If we could only take a year, I thought, there are just so many places to traipse.

Rimini, for ridiculous reasons was high on my list. Primarily because Federico Fellini was born there and shot "Amarcord" there, one of my favorite movies. Our hotel, a decent place with clean towels right on the beach was on the corner, believe it or not of Vialle Amerigo Vespucci and I Vittelloni Avenue.

Imagine a street in America named after a great movie. Or even DW Griffith, or Theda Bara, or even, god forbid, Fatty Arbuckle.

We swam in the warm Adriatic. Visited the Republic of San Marino. And ate with gusto.

I for one thought of mad Uncle Teo.

Is he still up in that tree?