Umbrians are too busy lingering over dinner with friends and family, growing organic lentils or strolling through the piazza during the evening's passeggiata.
I envisioned lingering alfresco dinners amidst a fragrant garden, children playing Marco Polo, my husband running out of the scorching sauna and jumping into the pool, everyone relaxing in the bubbling spa at night, strategically assembled to partake in the drama of the fire pit.
We lingered after dinner, and afterward he walked me to my car and kissed me in the parking lot.
The author finally put a stop to the callers one day when a sainted old lady called before teatime, and lingered till dinner.
But late one evening, after the captain has lingered at dinner telling old stories (sharkfishing off Mauritius; minatory pods of killer whales at Vancouver Island), natural-gas rigs belch commas of fire into the cloudless night.
If you were looking for a neighborhood bistro of the sort where you might linger over dinner for a while, happily talking with friends while picking at fries and finishing a bottle of wine, the corner would rank low on a list of possible locations.
As it happens, both are on the second half of the program, so if you linger over dinner and turn up after the intermission you can hear the orchestra at its best and save being pummeled by Mr. Maazel's fiery but oddly chilly rendering of the Tchaikovsky Sixth Symphony, to which the entire first half is devoted.
"I love art — I have a tendency to go wherever they pay attention to it, whether it's to my taste or not," said Ms. Wahba, 20, of Ridgewood, a Rhode Island School of Design student who recently lingered after dinner at Van Gogh's Ear with her friend Megan Amorosa, 19, of Union.
Wisps of pink clouds obscured a pearlescent moon as guests lingered over dinner, swapping stories of the day's adventures – a lion took down a pregnant wildebeest, a baby leopard was spotted in the fork of a tree.
