I decided to take a slightly different approach
to this year's trip, simply because it was so
long -- where do I start if I'm retelling it
in total? How do I make it interesting? And
who wants to hear every last detail?
In trying to figure that out, I
started making
a list of the memories I was happily playing over in my
head as the trip progressed. Which turned into this list.
Which seemed like a good place to start.
Flooded sidewalk beneath my hotel window
1. The Flood (Venice)
The night we arrived in Venice, a torrential rain and high tide combined to raise the water, which was already lapping at the top of the canals, another 18 inches. We tried to wait it out in the hotel, but finally, starving and desperate, we waded out, shoes in hand. The city was absolutely silent, the stones beneath our feet warm enough to take any chill out of the water, and a million orange and yellow lights glinted off every wet surface. It was a moment of otherworldly Venetian character, and I have to admit that I secretly hoped that it would recur during the rest of our visit there. Alas, by the time we finished our hard-won dinner that night, the waters were gone. One brief, magic glimpse at life on the reeds.
Me at a cafe
2. Coffee at Montmarte (Paris)
Much later in the trip, I struck out
on my own one morning in Paris to try to "get a feel
for the city." Having been with people for nearly
two weeks, my being-alone-in-a-strange-place skills were
a little rusty, but finally I wandered into a bakery and
bought a baguette and a pastry I'd been wanting to try,
then sat at a bar on a tiny, gemlike square drinking cafe
creme brought to me by the world's friendliest waitress
(really) and spent a very long time alternating between
watching the goings-on and reading a book I'd been
fascinated with since Venice. It was perfect and quiet
and a great break from too much tourism. It was also the
perfect way to pretend I lived there.
Afterwards, I walked back across the city with my
baguette jutting out of my bag, feeling very urban and
trying not to beam too broadly with the happiness I was
feeling. Several people came up to me and started
yammering away in French, allowing me to practice my only
real sentence (I'm sorry, I don't speak French).
I think the visible baguette was responsible, since this
was the only day anyone mistook me for a
Parisienne.
View from the drop off on the side of the road
3. First drive to Cortona (Tuscany)
After his first drive on the Autostrada brought us safely to our hotel in Farneta, Sid headed off to nap. "Take the car," he said, knowing how much I was dying to see a nearby town, "go check out Cortona, and come tell me about it later." You bet. Off I whipped down country roads, not really sure where I was but blown away by the beauty of everything around me, winding through tiny town after tinier town, when suddenly there on the top of an immense hill in front of me was Cortona, unimaginably old, solid as if it had grown there, arranged as haphazardly as if it had grown rather than been built, all browns and tans and sepias, glowing in the sun. Wound the Vectra up a terrifying cliff road to the top and passed through the most immense rock wall to fall utterly in love with the place. We spent almost every hour we had in Tuscany there, but nothing beat the surprise of that first sight of it.
Pere LeChaise
4. City of the Dead (Paris)
Not it's real name, but it should be. Pere LeChaise Cemetery, on the eastern edge of the city. I went there to see Colette's grave, and was amazed to discover not a cemetery as we think of it, but an actual little city. Most of the tombs are small buildings or chapels complete with front doors and windows, all of gothic ornateness, facing small, lined roads with street signs and huge leafy sycamores arching overhead. The individual tombs we saw (Abelard and Heloise, Jim Morrison, Chopin), were interesting but more compelling was the overall feel of this immense, alternate Paris.
My old Goth friends in New
York would have loved it. They would have just moved
right in and never left.