We’re spending about two weeks in Italy between our month-long homes in L’Ilse-sur-la-Sorgue (France) and Zagreb (Croatia). Our first stop in Italy was Venice, which always surprises me with it’s capacity to be simultaneously overrun with tourists and still highly charming.
Originally, we envisioned this short piece of our trip as sort of a vacation, but because of changes in projects schedules and the fact that I’ve been a little sick, it’s been very busy thus far. I’ve had to purposefully propel myself away from the computer and into the world.
On our last night in Venice, I went out on my own, just to wander and be charmed by the romantic lights, twisting alleys, and dead end streets.
It was lovely. (Of course it was. It was Venice.) However, while there were plenty of signs leading towards the major sites, there were no signs leading back to our apartment, which was in a nondescript, fairly residential area. After spending about two hours purposefully wandering, I realized I was hopelessly lost.
I then switched gears to frantic wandering. It would have been one thing if I were just a little disoriented. However, I didn’t even know the address of the apartment that would have allowed me to beg for directions.
Before we left the states, Theo’s pediatrician told a story about how when her young son wanted to go off to play soccer in Italy, she wrote their hotel address on a piece of paper and put it in his shoe in case he got lost. I’m contemplating this technique for my own shoe.
(As you probably guessed by my posting this, I did eventually find my way back to the apartment after about two more hours of being lost. So yay.)