After 10 unbroken months in Europe, I finally satisfied my travel bug - and need for a real vacation - with a trip to New York. My daughter and I did about as much as two people could do in a week: museums, movies, shopping, eating types of food we can't get in Italy, visiting with friends, and lots of just walking around.

The highlight of the trip was Cabaret, in a revival production directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty). This had a very different feel from the film version. It starts out cheerfully obscene, but the mood darkens throughout, up to a final scene which hits like a punch in the stomach. I was breathless and in tears. Definitely not a leave-'em-laughing show.

Molly Ringwald has come a long way since her rise to fame in John Hughes movies. She's not a truly great singer or dancer, but she knocked the crucial title song right out of the ballpark, and did the last scene with absolutely no makeup, which takes a kind of courage you rarely see in Hollywood. The real star, in the role of the Emcee, was Raul Esparza, a relative newcomer to Broadway who clearly will go far.

For this production, Studio 54 was made over to be the Kit Kat Club, with tables, red lampshades, and leopard-upholstered sofas. We had seats very close to the stage, at a tiny table for four. Food and drinks were available before the show and during intermission, so you really did feel you were at a nightclub - though I doubt the Kit Kat Club would have served Veuve Clicquot at $275 a bottle. Sharing the table (with a couple from upstate New York) led to a camaraderie that I've never experienced at a show before, which added to the fun. Though Rossella and I were nonplussed when afterwards the lady complimented us: "Your daughter was so well-behaved!" Ross had wanted to see this show - why would she have done otherwise than sit and enjoy it?

On the way out we passed a stand selling T-shirts taken from the show's opening lines: "So, life is disappointing? Forget it. In here, life is beautiful." The shirts said only: "Life is Beautiful," which, in the context of the play, is pure sarcasm. It suddenly struck me: is that where Benigni got the title for his film, "La Vita e' Bella" ? *

New York: Life Goes On

Prior to this trip, I had not visited New York in about ten years. Two major events have occurred in that time, first (and over a longer period) Giuliani's cleanup, then September 11th.

I might not have noticed the cleanup if others hadn't pointed it out to me. Not to downplay the huge job that's been done, but I simply never paid much attention to the things that people used to complain about. I have always liked New York, and never had occasion to feel intimidated or put off by the dirt and crime.

After all, I've lived in far dirtier places! Milan, both in the air and on the ground, is far from clean. As for danger, well, everywhere in the world, as a woman and a foreigner, I'm usually at risk of some kind. I am instinctively cautious wherever I go, so a higher incidence of mugging or rape in any particular place does not change my behavior or the limitations on my movements.

But, yes, even I can tell that New York is considerably cleaned up. The sex shows have almost disappeared from Times Square, replaced by Disney and Toys R Us stores and plush, mega-multi cinema complexes. The subway is clean. Perhaps as a result of 9/11, people are friendly. They may also be more introspective than they were; it's hard for me to judge in such a brief visit.

Most of my New Yorker friends were eager to talk about their experiences of September 11th - not surprising; that kind of trauma does not pass quickly or without examination. One commented that she was proud of her fellow New Yorkers that day, how orderly and altruistic they were as they evacuted downtown.

Another had watched events from her home just the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. She said she used to be constantly amazed at the sheer size of the Twin Towers; not seeing them on the skyline now is still startling, like probing with your tongue for a missing tooth.

Rossella and I went down to the site, where you now have to get a (free) ticket to get onto a viewing platform to see what is basically a big hole in the ground. We arrived too late in the day to get tickets, so we walked around the site at ground level, and felt weird about the whole thing. I can understand the need for neighborhood businesses to recoup their losses, but the people selling Twin Towers disaster photos and flag-draped memorabilia at sidewalk stands seemed merely exploitative. We did our bit for the area by buying a book at the famous (and sadly decaying) Strand bookstore.

* Maybe not. Benigni said: "It's a phrase which Vincenzo Cerami found in Trotsky's diaries. It's banal if you say it while lolling about in an armchair, but it's interesting if you say it while living through terrible atrocities."] But, then again, Benigni is almost never serious in interviews, so, who knows?