A WEEK IN ITALY
***
My adventures in Italy did not get off to a promising start. The night before I left, I found out via good ol’ facebook that my recent ex boyfriend had hurriedly replaced me after only a month of being single. Tormenting thoughts of that injury combined with the infuriating whine of a mosquito in my ear kept me wide awake during the night, and at around 5:00am, when I had to get up and get ready, I hadn’t slept a wink. I was in a foul mood, but disapproved of myself for it, as I felt I aught to be more excited than I felt about leaving to go to Italy for a week with a friend. By the time we reached the boats, I was in much happier spirits, and after hugging my parents goodbye and getting some last minute information, I boarded my 6-hour ferry from Zadar to Ancona.
The boat ride was long. Although there were many rows of empty seats, the arms were not the type that could raise up, and the chairs didn’t lean back, so sleeping was uncomfortable. After a while of trying and failing to find a comfortable position, I gave up and kept myself awake instead with music and the book I had brought along, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (a truly masterful account of the murder of a family in Kansas that happened 1959, told from multiple perspectives, including the murderers’ own—I could write a whole separate blog on this book alone).
As the boat docked in Ancona, a strikingly beautiful Italian woman with thick, curly black hair asked me in fluent English if I knew how to get to the train station. My mom had drawn a rough map with the sea port and the train station to the right, and had told me that if I just walked along the sea for a while, I’d hit the station, but as these
directions were somewhat vague, I shook my head. The woman then told me that she had heard something about a bus that was supposed to take us there, but that the system had changed since the last time she’d been in Ancona. Everything was confusion out on the dock—no one appeared to really know what they were doing, and there were no lines of any sort, no station in sight, not even a passport check (which surprised me, given that our boat had come from another country). The woman and I stuck together for a while to see if we could learn anything, and finally asked a man at a kiosk selling magazines. It just so happened that bus tickets were to be had at kiosks such as that one, so we bought our tickets, found the nearest stop, and took the bus to the train station. The rest of the trip to Rome was smooth sailing, but without that woman’s help, I’m not sure what I would have done.
ROME
The train ride was glorious. It was astonishingly fast (especially given that my only standard for comparison was Amtrak in the U. S.) and the scenery was absolutely gorgeous. I kept having to put my book down to stare at the lush green mountains and quintessential Italian landscapes. My first glimpse of Rome, however, was somewhat discouraging (I realized later that it is completely unfair to judge European cities by their train stations, as all the stations I saw were similarly dingy, and in the less appealing parts of town). I saw peaks of what looked like ruins, which excited me, but aside from that, mostly what I saw were seedy, uninteresting complexes and lots and lots of graffiti. I was also discouraged when, after waiting and walking around the station for about half an hour, I saw no sign of my friend Danielle, who was supposed to have met me there. My train had arrived about 20 minutes late though, so I figured she’d probably gone to our hostel (which I had told her to do if we couldn’t find each other). So I obtained a map and made my way to the hostel. This proved to be a bit of a challenge to someone who has never been very good with maps and has never had to use them much either… I had exited the Termini station on the wrong side and couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get to the other side. When I did, finally, I kept passing cross streets that weren’t clearly marked and for which I couldn’t find street signs, so I was unsure whether I was going in the right direction or if I had already passed it. Finally I found the street I needed to be on and was greeted by rather ridiculously grand doors and a man outside who, seeing a youngster heaving several bags and a map, asked “Fiesta Terrace?” (the name of the hostel). I nodded and he led me up the stairs to the woman who ran the place, a short, friendly woman maybe in her early thirties who looked like she could have been Indian with her dark olive skin and black hair. She marked on my map a few spots of interest and a grocery store down the street, gave me the keys, and led me to my room. The complex was old and dusty, and the room was small with dark Tuscan yellow walls, a small bathroom, and a rather hard queen bed. The window opened to a space between two walls, so we didn’t have a view, and there wasn’t much air movement. Nevertheless, it was much better than I had feared from a youth hostel, and it was comfortable enough. Danielle was not there when I arrived, and I was beginning to worry, but not 5 minutes after having set down my bags and having resolved to go out again in search of her, there was a knock on the door, and there was an exhausted but excited Danielle.
As it was already evening and Danielle and I were both dog-tired, we decided to nap for a bit and then explore our immediate surroundings and get dinner along the way. We ate at a cute little place along the street with candle-lit tables and an accordionist. Danielle had a pizza, I had linguini in the best four cheese sauce I’ve ever had, and we shared a celebratory half liter bottle of the restaurant’s house red wine.
The next day we got up at around 8:00am and left the hostel around 9:30. Not wanting to bother too much with finding a place to sit down and eat breakfast at, we went to the grocery store that the woman who ran the hostel had suggested, grabbed some fruits and yogurts, and were on our way. Rome as a city was far from what either of us had expected. There were wide streets cluttered and stinking with garbage and uniformly sized and colored buildings. Everything was brown. Instead of the jovially colored villas with geraniums hanging from windows that I had come to expect of Italy because of my brief experience in Venice last year and my exposure to romantic pictures of Tuscany, there was dullness and stench and disorder. More than that, though, was Rome’s intimidating vastness. Although we did hit many major attractions during our 2-day stay, I still feel that we probably didn’t cover more than a tenth at best of Rome’s total area. To see Rome properly, one would need several weeks.
Our first stop was at the ruins of a palace that was only a few blocks from where we were staying. The placard was not very informative, and my map does not seem to name the building (only the piazzas on either side of it) so I’m afraid I don’t have much to say about the place other than that it was oddly small, the architecture did not seem to me to be typically Roman, and it was overrun by stray cats.
From there, we went straight to the coliseum, which was absolutely magnificent and completely deserves its reputation. I had seen a Roman coliseum before in Pula, and my mom claimed that it was the second or third largest remaining coliseum in the world, but it paled in comparison to this. Its size, its intricateness and complexity, its incredibly good condition… ah, it was breathtaking. Outside the coliseum, there was a woman waving fliers and shouting about a tour. Finding that the tour, which would take us through the coliseum and the forum and included the entrance price for the coliseum was only 28 euros, we joined the group. While waiting in line to enter the coliseum, Danielle and I talked to a friendly couple who were also from California. Coincidentally, they were going to Florence the same day we were, and though we hardly expected to see them again, we ran into them at a restaurant on our way from the train station to our hostel in Florence. We went back later after we had dropped off our bags to see if they were still there, but they had left.
The coliseum exterior--street view.
Danielle and I in the coliseum.
Not much was said about the coliseum that wasn’t drowned out by people or heat (generally we had amazing luck with the weather, but that day in Rome was a hot one). But the tour in and around the forum (who was led by a different guide, a young British student who was doing tours as a summer job) was very interesting. It started at a point between the famous Palatine and Capitoline hills (on which Rome was founded, according to legend), took us up the Capitoline where there were ruins of villas that had once been inhabited by the rich and famous of ancient Rome, then down to the underground tunnel where the famously insane emperor Caligula had been stabbed to death, and then into the forum. One interesting thing that I learned was that the “she-wolf” of the Romulus and Remus legend may have been a mistranslation—that the same Latin word also means prostitute, and that the place where the brothers had allegedly been raised was at the time a famous red light district. So the founder of Rome may not have been raised by a wolf, but in fact by a prostitute! Along the way we also saw the arches of Titus and Constantine, and in the distance, the monument to Vittore Emmanuele II, a gigantic and pompous white building which the Romans (who hate it) refer to as “the wedding cake” or “the typewriter,” or my personal favorite, “the false teeth of Rome.”
The forum was every bit as grand and exciting as the coliseum, a huge space with history everywhere you looked. As I walked along the path, I kept in my mind that the same path had been walked by all the emperors and all the great leaders and influential historical figures that ever were in ancient Rome, and it was a feeling very hard to describe.
Our tour group going up the Capitoline Hill.
The forum from the top of the Capitoline.
The forum from the top of the Capitoline.
In the forum.
After a long day of walking, Danielle and I decided to go back to the hostel and rest for a bit before we went out again, but we both conked and didn’t wake up again until about 10:00pm. Unable to summon up the energy to go out again, we forwent dinner and fell back asleep.
The next morning we got up at around the same time in order to allow us enough time to get to the other side of the city for a time that we had reserved at the Vatican at 10:30. We took a bus instead of walking (because walking probably would have taken a few hours), but had a hell of a time finding where to go. The Basilica of San Pietro was obvious, but once we were there, we couldn’t figure out how to get to the Vatican, and the map showed only a cluster of buildings in a vague space, so that was no help. After asking a few people and getting the same directions of simply, “go left,” we were beginning to get frustrated. We went left until we hit a dead end, then asked another person who pointed toward the exit and said we should go there and then left along the wall. This didn’t seem to make much sense because the map showed both the Basilica and the Vatican inside a wall which we were now being told to go outside of. But we followed the directions we were given and finally found the end of the line into the Vatican museum. The tickets that we had reserved, as it turns out, were only for the museum, not for the Vatican itself, but the line into the museum was (and I’m not exaggerating) about a good 10 minutes walk end to end. Thankfully we had reserved tickets ahead of time on the internet (as had been suggested by friends of ours who live in Rome) and even though we arrived about an hour late because we had gotten lost, we were still admitted. The museum was confusingly laid out and contained mostly sculptures, so after about an hour of roaming around, we decided to go to the next stop: the Sistine Chapel (which our voucher from the internet also covered). Following the signs in the museum to the chapel, the rooms gradually turned into long hallways covered in ancient maps and impressively large and ornate tapestries, and the ceiling, lit along the sides, was gaudily painted in red and green and gold. We were led through six or seven such hallways, moving slowly in one giant mob like a herd of sheep, until we finally reached a small staircase which led into the Sistine Chapel.
One of the hallways leading from the Vatican Museum to the Sistine Chapel.
One of the tapestries on the wall of a hallway leading to the Sistine Chapel. Imagine how long it must have taken to make this thing! It was probably about 6 feet tall and 8 or 9 feet wide... and they didn't have sewing machines back then!
Being faced with such a historically important but also exquisitely beautiful space was another breathtaking experience. The chapel was again not what I had expected, but was even more grand than I had pictured. Every inch of the walls and ceiling was brightly colored with skillfully rendered scenes. To imagine the labor involved in creating that work of art (especially given the nature of frescos and how everything must be done quickly before the plaster dries) absolutely boggled my mind. The place was packed (not surprisingly) and although there were many signs telling people that photography was not allowed, of course everybody had their cameras up in the air, myself included. Every so often, a guard would wearily shout, “No pictures please!” and everyone would guiltily put down their cameras for a moment—but only a moment—before raising them back up and continuing to shoot away.
Speechless.
After exiting the Sistine Chapel and deciding that we did not want to wait in line for 3 hours to see the Vatican itself (as it did not interest us very much anyway except as a historically and culturally significant building), we took a bus back in the direction of our hostel but stopped about halfway and walked to the Pantheon. The Pantheon was also extremely busy, but did not somehow leave a lasting impression. I suppose the dome must have been an impressive achievement in its day, but the place was small and overcrowded. After seeing the Pantheon, we moved on to our last destination in Rome: the Trevi Fountain.
Poor Danielle's terrible sunburn... :(
Generally when I think of a fountain, I think of a circular thing with a couple of levels from which water falls in the middle of a piazza. Even if it’s big, it’s usually nothing too special. The Trevi Fountain is quite a different. It is the entire side of a building, with the bottom level being as big as a regular house swimming pool, and with majestic white stone statues of horses and gods. The fountain, as with every other major attraction in Rome, was swarming with people, and Danielle and I had to hunt for a spot to take pictures of each other throwing coins over our shoulder into it (a tradition, meaning that you will return). It was a lovely and refreshingly cool place, with a separate small fountain with drinking water from which we could refill our bottles, and was a great end to the first part of our Italian adventure.
FLORENCE
Getting to Florence the next day was an unpleasant experience. We got tickets and got on the right train, and everything was fine up until we got off. Looking at a printout of train schedules, I had the impression that we were supposed to get off at the Firenze Rifredi stop (the stop we should have gotten off at was Firenze S. M. N. which stands for Santa Maria Novella—the town center; but I couldn’t have known that). Rifredi, as my parents later explained after my return, was not a place anyone would want to stop at. Danielle and I did not discover our mistake until we had walked about 20 minutes with heavy bags in one direction, and then 20 minutes in the other, and saw nothing but dilapidated apartment buildings. Finally, hot, frustrated, and exhausted, I left Danielle with the bags and searched for the actual train station so that I could ask a representative for help and hopefully buy a map of Florence, as we did not yet have one. It was a shack of a station, with only two ticket windows and a vending machine, but the man behind the counter informed me that we had gotten off at the wrong stop and that we needed to board the next train to Santa Maria Novella. After getting off at the right stop and buying a map, finding our hostel was relatively easy, and Danielle and I were both relieved that Rifredi was far from an accurate picture of Florence.
Our hostel in Florence was terrific. I’d like to LIVE there. It was new, clean, and very youth oriented, with a common eating area, plenty of advertised tours and events organized by the hostel staff and open exclusively to people staying in the hostel, it had free WiFi, a bar, a disco at night, and even a pool, which was great for relaxing after a long day of walking. I noticed actually that each hostel we stayed at seemed to characterize the city itself—the hostel in Rome was old and dirty (though pleasant and perfectly habitable), the Florence hostel was fun and exciting and tourist-oriented, and the hotel we stayed at in Venice was fancy and luxurious in a kind of Victorian, almost macabre way.
Since again we arrived too late to do any serious trekking, Danielle and I decided to check out the premises and then find a nice place to have dinner. Danielle ate a delicious looking and smelling gnocci dish with crab sauce (I momentarily regretted being vegetarian), and I had spaghetti with a spicy tomato based sauce and basil. And of course another celebratory half liter bottle of house red wine.
Danielle on our first night in Florence.
After dinner, we ambled down the streets for a while in no particular direction, and explored a street market that took up several blocks, selling leather goods, maoilica, touristy “I Love Italy" shirts, and men's boxers with a picture of David's penis printed on the front (these vulgar but amusing items were ubiquitous).
These were EVERYWHERE. Silliness.
Florence was immediately noticeably different from Rome. As my dad later explained, it had become a major city during the Renaissance, and was purposely built “on a human scale.” In contrast to Rome, most of Florence can easily be walked in a day, and the narrow cobblestone streets are much more like the typical European style. It is a warm and charming place with much to see, and though it is also a hot travel spot, it wasn’t as tourist infested as either Rome or Venice. Even after only a short evening stroll, Danielle and I had decided by the time we got back to our hostel that we very much preferred this to Rome.
The next morning we got off to an early start at 7:00am because we had reserved tickets for the Uffizi at 9:00. Before we left, we marked a trail on our map that had been suggested by the hostel as a way to see “Florence in a day.” We walked to the Uffizi (a large area on the map but actually only about a 20 minute walk) but stopped first at the cathedral of Santa Maria Del Fiore, an absolutely insanely ornate church next to the famous Giotto’s bell tower and the baptistery. The entire façade was done in white and green marble, and the obsessive detail with which it was placed to make patterns, or carved to make figures, was almost intimidating.
Baptistry.
We arrived at the Uffizi gallery a little late (due to our stop at the cathedral), but this was not a problem. Outside were reproductions of two vastly different but equally important statues. One, an extremely muscular figure, represented a more classical ideal of the perfect man, and stood in a dominating pose, holding down a defeated enemy. The more famous of the two, David, represented the Renaissance ideal, and, though clearly masculine, was less muscular and somewhat effeminate in his stance and body type.
The Uffizi gallery itself holds an impressively large collection of important works, including ones by Caravaggio, da Vinci, Dürer, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, and Botticelli (I was scolded for sneaking a picture of Botticelli’s famous painting of Venus). It also held two life size panels of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach which I had attended a lecture on, dozens of famous icons, and many works from classical antiquity and the Renaissance and Gothic eras. It was especially interesting to go through a museum such as this after having recently taken an art history course covering ancient to Renaissance. Danielle and I had been in the same class, and we recognized many works that we had studied.
Botticelli's Venus. Apologies for the crappy quality and the window reflections... I had to sneak this picture (they don't allow pictures in the Uffizi).
After spending about three hours in the Uffizi, we took a detour to Santa Croce (a charming little cathedral with strangely both a star of David and a cross, in front of a very large and empty piazza) before going across the Ponte Vecchio.
The bridge was impressive looking from far away and reminded me of a panier bag slung across a mule’s back, the way buildings seem to grow out of buildings and hung, unsupported, above the river. Being on the bridge felt almost like walking down an ordinary street because both sides were lined with shops (much like the Rialto in Venice), and it was flooded with tourists. Except for one open spot where you could look over the river in both directions, the view was blocked by buildings.
The Ponte Vecchio (taken from a window in the Uffizi).
The Ponte Vecchio.
Me on the Ponte Vecchio.
On the other side of the bridge, we passed the Pitti Palace (an uncharacteristically drab, brown, and gigantic building), and then ate lunch right at the foot of the Santo Spirito. That meal was actually probably the best that I had in Italy; simple but flavorful and perfectly sized. Danielle and I both had rigatoni in a slightly spicy tomato sauce with arugula and sliced pecorino on top.
All you really need in Italy: a map, your camera(s), some water, and some damn good food.
The Santo Spirito was a familiar façade, as my dad has many pictures of it and a collection of postcards picturing various images that were projected onto the church’s blank face. But even though I had already been acquainted with the church, its starkness still struck me. It is hard to convey in a photograph how lonely that façade is, with just its one circular window at the top and three doors. There are absolutely no embellishments; nothing painted, not even a variation in texture or elevation. Just one flat, cream colored surface.
Santo Spirito (side).
On the way home, we passed by the Medici Chapels at San Lorenzo (though they were hard to see from the street because they were so close to other buildings, and the street markets were in the way), and I stopped at a beautiful little maiolica store to buy my parents a present. They’ve always adored maiolica pottery, so I bought them a vase.
Maiolica store.
We had a panini in place of dinner (because we’d had a late lunch) and then, after taking a swim in the pool, checked out the bar on the top floor of the hostel and had a few cosmopolitans before heading off to bed to wake up early the next morning and leave Florence (rather too soon) for Venice.
VENICE
In Venice we again got off at the wrong stop, but this time we figured that out right away and caught the next train to the right stop, so that was easily remedied. Once we got to Venice proper however, it was raining hard and we had no ponchos or umbrellas, so whenever we had to check the map, we had to find a place with an overhang, and storekeepers were quite unfriendly when we wanted to use their stores as shelter for a minute or two and it was clear that we did not intend to buy anything. To make matters worse, the cobblestone street was extremely slippery and I was stupidly wearing foam sandals with no traction, so I had to walk like a penguin to keep from falling.
Our hotel was fancy, given how relatively inexpensive it was, with a chandelier in the ceiling, red velvet chairs with elaborate backs and red satiny coversheets. Like the luxurious interior of a gondola, it was extravagant, but in a dark, kind of creepy way. The room had two windows that opened onto the piazza below (we were on the 3rd floor) and we had a very pleasant view. The person who ran the hotel was a very friendly bald man with glasses who seemed almost ridiculously chipper, and was always talking in an expressive voice to someone at the counter. Once, when using the computer with internet in the lobby, Danielle heard him arguing emphatically with his mother on the phone—something to do with pictures on facebook. Breakfast was included with the hotel, which was great because it meant that we didn’t have to search the streets for overpriced edibles until lunchtime. They served the typical cereal and coffee and yogurts and delicious jam-filled croissants.
I had been to Venice the previous summer, so this was not a new experience for me, but Danielle had never been, and this was the one place, she said, that had exactly matched her expectations. The streets were narrow and flooded with tourists, every store front was decorated with either a collection of Venetian masks or Murano glass, there were pigeons everywhere, and the canals were like LA traffic, they were so congested with gondolas. The city was so tourist-oriented, in fact, that it almost felt a little fake, like a macabre kind of Disneyland. The gondolas, because EVERYBODY rides them, had almost been reduced to theme park rides (expensive ones—Danielle and I might have been interested in taking one, had they not cost 80 euros for half an hour). And everything was overpriced. Our first night, we dined at an unassuming pizzeria right outside of our hotel, and were charged nearly twice as much as we would have been for the same meal in Rome or Florence (one constant annoyance in Italy was how much they charged for a bottle of water, especially at restaurants, but the place we ate at in Venice reached a new level of insanity, charging us three euros for a half liter bottle).
After having been thoroughly history and art-ed out from Rome and Florence, Danielle and I decided to take it easy in Venice, because Venice, unlike just about any other place in the world, can be fully appreciated just by getting lost in it. Aside from using it to find our hotel, we didn’t touch the map once.
A typical canal.
My one big disappointment was that we never got to go inside Saint Mark’s Basilica, which had been recommended to us by our friends in Rome. They had said that for a few extra euros, we could be taken up to the gallery level and would get a great view of the San Marco Square. But unfortunately, every time we checked, the line was 500 people long, and we just didn’t feel like spending our time in Venice by waiting in a line.
The crowds at Piazza San Marco.
St. Mark's basilica.
We did, however, see San Giovanni e Paolo (which we found quite by accident), Piazza San Marco, and the Rialto bridge, and we also stumbled upon an exhibit held in a small church of historical instruments (some dating back as far as 500).
San Giovanni e Paolo.
From the Rialto.
Crowds on the Rialto.
And of course, we had our obligatory pigeon experience, using bits of bread to lure 4 or 5 pigeons at a time to land on us at Piazza San Marco. There was one girl sitting on the ground, probably around 9 or 10, who had a box of seeds which she poured around her and then on herself. Pretty soon she was swarming with pigeons; they landed on her arms, shoulders, head… anything that was perchable, they perched on. She was quite a sight.
Toward evening on our last day in Italy, not ten minutes after we had come back to our hotel to drop off stuff, it started to torrentially downpour. Aside from when we had arrived in Venice, the weather had been clear, and we’d been able to walk the whole day without rain, but suddenly rain was coming down diagonally in sheets. We waited a while for the rain to subside and then had our last dinner in Italy, after which we headed back to the hotel and went to bed early, as we both had to get up very early the next day.
GOING HOME
Getting back from Venice to Ancona, and then from Ancona back to Zadar was a harrowing experience. In fact this day was probably one of the worst and most stressful days of my life, starting at 4:00am when I got up and had a cold shower because the hot water apparently wasn’t working in our hotel. When we got to the vaparetto station, none of the ticket windows were open that early, and the machines could only “top up” already purchased cards (we had discarded ours because we didn’t know that this was how it worked), so we had to get on without tickets. Luckily they never checked, but the sign above the door saying that passengers without tickets would be fined 50 euros made us nervous.
When I finally got to the train station after Danielle and I parted, I found out that the seats for the train I needed were all sold out. No problem though, I could take a train an hour later with a transfer in Bologna, and the delay wouldn’t be a problem because I had about 4 hours in Ancona before I had to board the boat anyway. Well, in Bologna, I found the billboard and went to my platform, and when a train arrived at about 10:20 (my train was scheduled to leave at 10:36), I stupidly boarded without asking other passengers or personnel to make sure this was the right train. There were lots of people in the aisle and by the time I found my seat the train was moving. But something was wrong—my reserved seat was taken. So I asked the ticket checker, and she informed me that I had boarded a train going north… back to Venice. So I stood forlornly at the door with my bags for about half an hour, and then got off at the next stop in Ferrara. I found a train to Bologna and boarded it, then called my mom to tell her what happened. The conversation was cut short because my SIM card ran out (I found out that SIM cards are a rip off… I paid 15 euros for about 15 minutes worth) so I now had no phone. It was at this point that an announcement was made saying that there would be a delay because the train’s brakes weren’t working properly.
About 40 freaked out minutes later, the train finally left, but took forever to get to Bologna because it was the kind of train that stopped at every stop. Finally I got to Bologna and boarded a train to Ancona about 2 hours later than the one I had bought a ticket for. This train, it turned out, was also the kind of train that stopped at every stop, so by the time I got to Ancona, I had about half an hour to ride a bus to the boat station, get my ticket, take a shuttle to the boats (because the station is strangely not even walking distance to the boats), find my boat, and board it. The bus driver took his sweet time in leaving, and by the time I got to the ticket window at about 10 till, the woman behind the counter assured me that I was too late and that I should buy a ticket for the next day (as there were no more boats to Zadar that day). With the prospect of not only having to shell out almost $100 for another ticket, but also having to spend the night somewhere in Ancona (and during tourist season, it’s damned hard to get a room if you have no reservation), and without even really having a way of reaching my parents, I was on the verge of tears. The woman saw my distress and printed me a ticket anyway, telling me to take the shuttle but that I surely wouldn’t make it. I ran out the door and waved frantically at the shuttle (which had already pulled away from the curb). The driver was annoyed but he did stop for me. At this point it was about 3 minutes to the hour, and traffic was slow. As soon as the shuttle stopped, I ran like mad to the ticket collector, and then onto the boat. About 5 minutes after I sat down, they closed the gate and we were off.
My boat from Ancona to Zadar (parents took this picture while waiting to pick me up).
Of the many things I learned during my travels in Italy, probably the most practical was how to navigate. During her study abroad in England, Danielle had apparently been the one doing most of the navigating, so she was more than happy to let me take over when she got to Italy. In the beginning, I was clumsy and got us lost quite a few times, but over time, I learned how to pick out the best routes and follow them. Also, despite my many mishaps with the trains, I feel that my traveling misadventures actually taught me quite a bit, and I feel much more confident now that I could handle myself in a situation where I had full responsibility. Danielle and I packed quite a bit into that week—we saw lots of really incredible historical sites and works of art, we explored places we’d never been to, we worked together to plan and organize our days and commutes, and I feel closer to Danielle now because of all that we went through together. This trip was a great experience for me; it expanded my horizons and enriched me as a person, and I can’t wait to travel again and explore new territory.
