Suddenly Your House is On Fire

     What do you grab?
     Out of every single possession, what's the one thing you would save from the flames? There aren't necessarily any right or wrong answers to this common hypothetical scenario; however, there are some silly ones. Leo Buscaglia's book Love referenced an actual occurrence of this where a woman, the unfortunate owner of the flaming house, found herself running out to the street for safety carrying years and years of personal tax reports. Tax reports! That was the first place of importance her mind went, so she grabbed them and ran!
     This scenario has intrigued me quite a lot in recent weeks. I think I'm more interested in the overall loss of the other possessions rather than hung up on the single thing I would save. As far as what to carry with me to safety, my mind jumps to the most expensive things I own, and therefore the most costly things to replace: my laptop, which is quickly depreciating in value (already four years old), my cell phone (also old - it's an iPhone 4S), and my external hard drive, more for preservation of what's on it rather than how much it would cost to replace. These are boring, expected, and don't honestly boast much value. Even if I couldn't save any of these things, I wouldn't feel too badly about it. They're all just things. 
     Which brings me back to the rest of the hypothetical belongings perishing in the hypothetical fire. Some days I think it would almost be good for me to lose everything I own to something beyond my control. The tenacity with which we hold on to earthly possessions can reach terrifying degrees at times. It's grandma's good china from Germany; it's your children's kindergarten fingerpaintings; it's photo albums of long-dead relatives and friends. There's sentimentality and the desire for preservation. I get it. But you and I will no longer have the conscious of mind to care about all those things when we're packed six feet under. 
     Dark? Maybe. Difficult? Of course.
     Thoughts such as these really convicted me a couple weeks ago, though the seeds had been sown by my good friend Joanna at college just before graduation. Toward the end of this year she's going to India to be an amazing presence there teaching English. One of her first responses to such a calling was to get rid of literally everything she owned, as it would only weigh her down knowing she had so many belongings sitting in storage while she was away indefinitely. She was inviting friends to come raid her room, including her desk, dresser, and in the bins beneath her bed (I was one of those friends, and I took most of her office supplies as well as her perfume collection and some kitchen items). I was gracious in receiving these things without her asking for payment (I'll figure something out, just you wait Jo), but it baffled me how easily it seemed she was letting everything go. She watched numerous people dig through her things and take armloads away. 
     It wasn't necessarily easy, she told me later, but knowing it was the right thing to do was enough to help her remain steadfast in her decision. I knew without a doubt that I needed to maintain this type of attitude the next time I planned to pluck through my things. 
     And that just so happened to be a few weeks ago, when it accumulated into a ball of unnecessary stress, and the only way to alleviate it was to do a cleanse.
     I had too many clothes and too many books occupying the small space of my room - hell, my dresser barely contained only half of my stash of shirts! The rest remained in an unpacked suitcase, neglected since I moved back home after graduation (May 7th - over two months ago now!). I feel I have perpetuated this problem for years. Something had to be done, and with the help of Joanna's example, I had to force myself to get over any attachments that existed. I had to be incredibly frank with myself. My two requirements for this cleanse were 1) if I didn't wear it, I didn't need it, and its new home was the donation bag, and 2) if I had worn it threadbare or stained it, it went into the trash. No exceptions.
      There was a peaceful sense of detachment that happened during this process and I was able to execute it without much pain. It was a cleanse, a much-needed purge - it didn't need to feel like I was stripping myself bare. Those shirts were mere things, and very replaceable. 
     I ended up getting rid of a large, bursting trash bag and two smaller bags worth of stuff. I probably could have pruned back more, but my main goal was to fit it all comfortably in my dresser, and I achieved it, for the first time in years. It is liberating to know such a thing.
     Now, while I certainly hope your house doesn't ever catch on fire, I would encourage you to ponder your earthly possessions and any attachments you may have to them. If we really broke it down to the most primitive level, none of those things are necessary for survival if they don't fall into the categories of food, water, or shelter. I saw for myself through plenty of instances in Peru that the amount of stuff one has does not directly equate to the level of happiness. The true genesis of happiness exudes from within (but that's a post for another time). I am merely asking for your awareness here; what's your focus in life? What's your end goal? And how does stuff fit into that equation?
     V

Addressing Skepticism

     My most recent relationship status has caused quite a buzz. Mostly excited and supportive responses thankfully, but I know there are skeptics among you. I do not blame you for this as a reaction. From the outside looking in, I believe it is warranted. Therefore I decided to give a brief window into what it’s like from the inside looking out. Allow me to jump right in.
     Let me make something clear from the outset: we don’t “complete” each other; it’s insulting to the other person to claim that until now, me without him or him without me we were incomplete, unfinished and the only way to be complete is to invite each other into our lives in an intimate way. That’s silly. The idea of “soul mates” is far from a biblical concept – it’s a romantically pressured one perpetuated by society. To all you single guys and gals, I’m sorry – it’s an impossible standard to achieve, and one many believe in.
     While we don’t endorse the soul mate concept, we do have our ways of describing the rapid depth of our connection. So far the best (and still unworthy) explanation I’ve conjured up is that he and I have recognized pieces of our own souls in each other; we have discovered a divine similarity between us. Personally I think Joseph portrayed it best when he said, “We are almost analogous to male and female permutations of the same soul.”
     These claims have provided the vehicle for us to transcend time itself. This experience has been incomparably ethereal. Between meeting Joseph on the 4th of March and my day trip to Baltimore to see him about a week later felt like a lifetime. It has been three weeks since we met, and from then till now has also felt a lifetime long. We have compacted a larger span of time into a smaller temporal container. Time is, like many things, relative. Our three weeks are nowhere near the same as yours. We understand each other on a level that has never existed before due to its impossibility.
     We transcended time, and continue to. I have never thought so clear or felt my mind so broad and challenged by anything, let alone a single individual. It may seem as if we’ve hurried into things, but there has been absolutely no rush. From the outside looking in, the pace is breakneck, but that’s the nature of our organic timeline. It’s like in algebra – when you know all the rules of the equation you solve it quickly, almost automatically, especially compared to when you were first getting acquainted with how every variable fit together. We’ve learned the rules, and this is the product of our combined equations.
     When I was younger and beginning to grasp the gravity of finding God's best for me, I often asked my parents to describe how it felt for them to get to know each other, and when they decided that they wanted to be together forever. This is a common question with an indescribable answer, and the common clichéd and useless-at-the-time response is typically, “you just know. When you find the right person, you just know it,” or “you feel as if on top of the world!” Being the way that I am, this always frustrated me; I wanted a checklist, or a litmus test or something. Rules to rely on. This feeling of “just knowing” seemed improbable and impossible. What if I didn't realize it? What if I somehow missed it? It all became complicated and worrisome. I was incredibly skeptical of it.
     Until now.
     Now I understand completely what they meant. Because I feel it. The indescribable feeling is in me. I “just know.”
     And I am so achingly certain of it that I would stake my life on it.
     It’s insane, I know. But having previous romantic pursuits to compare to throws this in stark contrast when placed next to all the others. It has far surpassed even the wildest expectations I could imagine.
     Neither of us went to EPA intending to meet anyone in this way, and yet here we are. We were not searching, and yet we found. We are swaddled in God’s divinity, cradled in His palms, and I have never been so certain of something in my life. (Yes, it even rivals my certainty concerning my passions for creative writing.)
     I wrote in my post from 2013 “Infernal Love Triangle Devices” that I was confident when God brought my future husband into the picture, the man He had hand-selected for me, I would know it. To quote the post exactly, “…I’m very particular about the qualities and lifestyle choices of the man I will marry in the future. … I, someone who always tries to have the lowest of expectations, am expecting a lot of the man for me. This makes it very easy for me to believe that once I find him, it won’t be long before I know he’s the one. God knows what I’m looking for and what I need, so once I’ve recognized all that, it will be obvious.” Such confidence!
     I know my expectations, standards, and requirements were tricky for any one mortal to score high on altogether. But I had finally seriously entrusted the worry about my future husband to God, surrendering the last thread I was white-knuckling. It did not need to be my responsibility to hunt for this man. If I truly believed all things were possible, God would have me covered. Obedience and trust were the only things expected of me. So I relinquished my human need to control, folded my hands in my lap, and made peace about waiting patiently for God to move. I had done my part, and He would certainly do His.
     The fruits were almost instant. God is faithful, y’all. His promises are far from empty.
     Earlier in the week leading up to EPA I did a lot of praying and ultimately let go of this obsession with stepping in front of God and arranging my future as if I knew better than him. (I don’t deserve his unflinching forgiveness.) Then, mere days later, enter Lightning Boy (aka Joseph). Unbelievable.
     I’ve always been skeptical of “just knowing.” Now I truly understand. It’s the closest thing to enlightenment, to Heaven, on this side of death.

Orchard

Orchard

My heart is an orchard, with soft,

loamy soil to dig your fingers

into. Each tree has a name, and

each name has roots, some longer than

others, some younger still. A couple

trees have been selected for

execution, roots and all yanked

from the earth, my heart. These pits, these

empty spaces eventually

get filled again with dirt, and a

sapling is planted anew. A mark

is always left, however; some

rooted veins remain.

---

Friends. It's been a while. I apologize - life grows busier with each day. 

This poem was prompted by an event that occurred a little over a year ago that rocked my world. This was my analogy for the results. Some rare poetry for you today. 

Enjoy!
V

Journal Entry//Red Flag

April 7, 2015

9:25 pm

The Pit

Braid a rope of I-Love-You's,

fasten it to futility.

The streetlights don't reach down here - 

neither does your hope.

Il Fine: My Return from Italy

Heyo~

(by the way, the title is pronounced "ill feen-ay" - it's Italian, obviously ;) )

Well I feel like quite a dunce. How did I think it was okay to write all these blogposts about my adventures in Italy and then not write one last post about my journey home, to wrap things up? Silly, that’s what it is – extremely silly.

I figure it’s better than nothing to write about it now, because there was quite a lot that went on that I think would make a good story (in the way that my traipsing through Italy, totally lost, with wet and cold shoes for hours is a “good story”) however, there will probably be some details that I’ll leave out simply because it’s been months. I must say, though, that I do remember very much about the 24 hours revolving around and during my trip, I suppose because I was hyper vigilant and super excited to be getting home.

I guess let’s begin, shall we?

The week of May 25^th was finals week, and I was determined to blast through all of them no sweat (and I did). Two were on Monday, and the other two were back-to-back Wednesday morning, so I was completely and officially done with the academic realm of my semester abroad at 11:30AM, two and a half entire days before my flight. Honestly, and I told some of my classmates this when they asked me if I was staying longer, if I had known my last final was Wednesday before noon, I would have had my plane ticket booked for the earliest flight after that on Wednesday. However, I didn’t know the exam schedule, and neither did I know when I bought the plane tickets that I’d be wanting to get home so bad to see a certain someone and my family. I played it safe and scheduled the flight well after finals would be over.

Well, that left me two and a half days to pack and sleep and essentially just wait for the blasted time for me to leave for the airport.

I ended up packing the afternoon of Wednesday, because I was just that excited by the prospect, even though I was exhausted from my morning of exams. My big bag, carry on, and back pack were preliminarily packed before I even ate lunch!

What in the heck was I supposed to do all day Thursday AND most of the day Friday?!

It was maddening, truly.

Wednesday evening I went out to get pizza with my two closest friends I had made while abroad (the Argentinian, Sophia, and the Australian, Elizabeth) as a sort of farewell after exams, since everything was wrapping up. I ate so much.

I regret nothing.

Thursday morning I got up at noon. What? Sleep made the time go faster, and also, I like sleep, though it doesn’t seem to like me as much.

That day I wrote up a to-do list and it consisted of very basic things, but it kept me a little busy, at least. Using the remaining food tickets I had, I wandered to the grocery store only a four-minute walk from my apartment and bought a bunch of Italian goodies to bring home and bestow upon my family. I’d bought some fun trinkets in Venice, like magnets and such, but these were consumables. Tasty, tasty consumables.

I mainly bought a ton of Lindt chocolate bars (dark chocolate, the 85% stuff for my parents and brother, because they go through it like crazy), these chocolate and hazelnut bars called “bueno bars” (they really like the flavor hazelnut in Italy, I found), and two 750ml bottles of the best, most delicious olive oil I had cooked with, for my mom, because she started being an olive oil snob so I figured some 100% Italian, made-in-Italy oil would make her happy (these bottles were thick glass and also very heavy). I wish I could have safely brought back some Italian Coca-Cola, because that stuff was heavenly, somehow even better than the stuff in Peru (sorry! Inca Cola still holds my heart though <3 o:p="">

After bringing all that home, I rearranged my bags a little to fit everything in, so I was already at the point of only needing to pack my toiletries and other last-minute items that I still needed to use before I set off on Friday evening.

Using the remaining olive oil I had bought for the kitchen, I decided to do a homemade olive oil hair treatment that supposedly helps keep it healthy and makes it feel nice (confirmed: it does). So I sat for a while at my computer with a towel around my shoulders like a cape and a plastic bag wrapping up my hair.

I made lunch (pasta – surprise!) and played Pokémon Yellow on an emulator while watching old episodes of the original Pokémon series online before showering for a nice long while and rinsing out the olive oil.

I basically bided my time by Pokémoning for hours and hours until I got tired enough to fall asleep. Friday morning I awoke with nervous and excited energy vibrating in my limbs. The hours until lift off were counting down, and that’s when I realized that time is actually pretty reliable – it will always move forward. Sometimes it will feel slower or faster, but it will never go backward, it will always continue, and I clutched to this idea. Steadfastly.

I had to force myself to eat lunch before I finalized packing and making sure everything was weighed decently. This is when things started to get…interesting.

Using the scales I had dragged out of the bathroom, I hefted up my bags one at a time to see around what they weighed in at, and both my carry on (which would actually serve as my second checked bag) and my massive bag were each either right at 50lbs or a little over, and this made me nervous. I didn’t want to leave anything behind (there wasn’t really anything I could without feeling bad) so I prayed the lady at the check in counter in the airport wouldn’t be so focused on the exactness of the weight. When I checked in to go to Italy back in February, seeing how much my bags weighed seemed to be the least of their worries, so I desperately hoped this remained the case.

By around 4pm I was as happy as I would ever be with packing, and started the final preparations before leaving, which meant taking out the garbage and recycling as well as cleaning out the fridge of things that would go bad. I grabbed up my bags, and by quarter to 5, I was outta there.

And so, with a 50lb bag handle grasped in each hand and a 20lb backpack slung over my shoulders, I was rolling down the street on my way to the metro.

Here’s where things get a little complicated.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the public transportation system in Italy is known for strikes, and one just so happened to pop up on Friday. The day I needed the metro to be functioning fine to get to the train station to get to the airport.

It turns out that the metro was only going to be operating between about 3 and 6pm all day. That was it. My flight would leave after midnight, so I only needed to be at the airport by 9. This provided a frustratingly tiny, and early, window for me.

So I built up my courage, and lugged those bags like it was nothing down the sidewalk and down the stairs into the metro. I stuffed myself like the Ricotta cheese inside of Manicotti in the train car with my massive bulk, which earned me many a frown, but I seriously could not care less, because I was in the process of getting home, and no one would scare me out of doing that successfully.

When it was my stop, I shoved my way through everyone before the doors locked me in. There was no elevator at this stop, so I bolstered all my 110lb strength (yes the combined weight of all my bags outweighed me) and dragged them up the steps. There was a man behind me on the train, probably only a few years older than me, who was walking up the stairs and he gave me a look, shook his head as he muttered a soft Italian word, and grabbed the handle of my biggest bag to help me get it up the steps.

I was sweating profusely already, and was very appreciative of his help. My arms were already screaming at me, and while the hardest part of the journey was over, there was still much to come. I was managing okay, and yes, I could have been smarter about this whole thing. Oh well.

I waited in line at the train station, and of course as I’m rolling along I am getting all these strange looks because the sight really must have been amusing and yet terrifying. Got my ticket, and off toward the turnstiles I went.

I had to time sliding the ticket into the slot with ramming my bags between the automatic swinging doors because the window was small (obviously they assume there only needs to be enough time for one body to get through), so I hurriedly jammed myself through without much fault.

Except for the fact that I left my ticket on the other side.

I had learned from my experience on this train coming into Italy from the airport that you needed it to verify to the guys that came around checking tickets that you had legitimately bought one and weren’t just taking a free ride, so of course I started panicking. What would they do if they realized I didn’t have a ticket? I had the receipt of the purchase, but would that be enough to explain my cause? Could they toss me off the train at the nearest stop? Could they send me back? What would they do?

It must have been rush hour for the train, because there were absolutely no seats left in any of the cars, and it was standing room only (barely). I ended up cramming my bags into the designated area for luggage, and actually sat on top of them underneath the rack, so that I was under the window and all I could see was knees and feet. I hoped that the fact I was in with the luggage would deter anyone from looking for me there, so I wouldn’t have to show a ticket. It was a weak argument, I know, but I was desperate. Aside from that, I prayed the entire way that no one would come around verifying tickets. Honestly it was way too packed for them to have gotten to everyone, anyway. I grasped to this.

I had been trembling more or less since the threshold of my apartment, with excitement and also blatant nervousness. There were so many variables at play in getting from my apartment to the airport that many things could easily go wrong, and I was deathly afraid of this. All I wanted was to get home, but it wasn’t so easy as clicking some high heels together and hoping with all my heart.

Thankfully I made it to the airport stop without having to cry and explain myself to the train guys, so in my relief, I rolled off the train with tired arms and banged up knees and up the elevator, following signs for Aeroflot and where the check in desk would be for my flight.

It was maybe 6-7pm when I got there and found a place to settle in, sit down, and take a breather. I had several hours to kill before my plane would take off, so I turned on my iPod and watched a movie I had loaded onto it (Eat, Pray, Love – how fitting, right?). After a couple hours of rest, I wandered upstairs to the check in desks and found some chairs right by where Aeroflot would be once the time came, found some wifi, and excitedly logged on to report to my parents how things were going.

(^^ Casually-taken "selfie" at the airport.)

It was quarter to 11pm when the desk finally opened and I got checked in. This didn’t leave me enough time to comfortably get through security, but I couldn’t do much about it.

I waited in line anxiously, trying to get a reading on how closely the ladies were checking the weight of the bags of people in front of me. The lady I got didn’t give a crap, she told me to load both my checked bags on the scale at the same time, tagged them, and I watched them go. Another relieved breath, and some more tension unraveled from my shoulders.

It took me 14 minutes to breeze through all of security and get to my gate. The airport wasn’t busy whatsoever – I never had to wait in those bothersome lines where people were unlacing their shoes and accidentally walking through the metal detectors with keys and change still in their pockets so that the rest of us become impatient and irate.

Everything was suddenly so uncomplicated, ever since I had let my checked bags go, and I really distinctly felt that I was meant to be going home. Nothing was in my way, and everything that could have very effortlessly gone wrong, did not. A path was being cleared for me and I was sprinting headlong down it.

(Gate "selfie." See that joy? Yeah.)

I watched another movie while waiting at my gate, and thankfully found an outlet to perch by. Once this plane took off, I’d be headed to my long layover in Moscow, but the flight itself didn’t take long at all.

I managed to get some crappy shuteye on the flight, but since I was still so hyped with the nervous/excited energy, I knew sleeping was going to be a tough thing to wrangle up, and anyway, the brevity of the flight didn’t allow me enough time to get very deep.

I got into Moscow and at my next gate somewhere between 6:30-7:30AM Saturday, Moscow time (it was 10:30PM our time, Friday). For three hours, I read a book on my phone and listened to music alongside many others who had arrived for the long layover. It was at this point that I felt my shoulders really beginning to complain about the load of my backpack, as well as the fact that bruises were starting to appear on my shins and knees from kicking around my bags to get them rolling. My arms were limp noodles jammed into my shoulder sockets from dragging those hefty things around.

(Do I look tired?)

Needless to say, I was going to be exceedingly grateful once I finally was able to unpack and say bye bye to those bags for a while.

One of the most quirky and fun things about flying back from Moscow was the fact that my plane was leaving at 10:25AM, Saturday, and I landed in Virginia at noon:50, Saturday. The flight was 10-11 hours long, but I was landing what would seem like two and a half hours later.

Time zones, man.

As we hopped back across the time zones, I experienced 11 o’clock for several hours in a row. It felt like some Doctor Who stuff was going on.

Unsurprisingly, the flight took forever. I knew time would keep moving forward, as I said earlier, but man did it tease me so hard. It was like someone fat-fingered the slow-mo button or something. I tried reading, but that didn’t pass the time like I wanted it to. I tried sleeping, but that was difficult and also didn’t pass the time very well.

My eyes were incredibly dry from the recycled cabin air and the person next to me’s foot kept slipping under the armrest and pressing against my thigh (she was kind of curled up into a ball). The time was ticking by, but it could not come fast enough.

Praise the Lord I landed at 12:30, twenty whole minutes earlier than planned! My fingers were shaking so much as I texted my mom officially declaring that I was back on US soil. My heart thundered in my chest, threatening to pry open my ribs and spring free.

I was so ready to reconnect with them that I honestly had to restrain myself from shoving through people that were moving too slow, because I had waited over 100 days for that day, and I would not sacrifice one more minute if I could help it.

At 1:30, after taxiing, tram-riding, and passport-control-clearing, I got my luggage and wheeled down the hallway, stomach so full to the brim with butterflies it was becoming difficult to breathe properly. I could sense that they were all nearby, and I yearned so hard to round that final corner and see them.

I sped through two propped open double doors into a big room with bright lights, and when I turned, the tears came, and I ran.

My parents and brother were waiting in a little pod not too far away. I ignored my screaming arms, burning eyes, and somersaulting stomach, and booked it across the broad floor. I threw the handles from my hands and jumped into my dad’s arms, the bags falling to the floor with two loud cracks.

It was real. I was home.

I was home.

I hugged my brother and my mother, who held me much like my dad, with strong embraces and tearfully joyous words murmured into my ear.

Italy was great and wonderful, don’t get me wrong – I learned quite a bit about myself, among many other things – but my heart wasn’t completely happy while I was there. Now, standing in the airport, in the company of my family, my heart was dancing uncontrollably on my ribcage doubling as a dance floor. The bliss was so immense, I drowned in it, with pleasure.

Nothing could take that teary smile from my face.

Ciao, Italia, and hello home.

Adventures in Venice (Image Heavy!)

Ciao, tutti! (Remember that clicking on the pictures makes them bigger!)

This past Saturday (the 12^th of April) I had the pleasure of accompanying my gracious roommate and her friend on a daytrip to Venice, Italy. This little guy right here.

We awoke early to head to the train station. It was still dark once we finally rolled out.

The train ride was estimated to be around two hours and forty minutes long, which is just a little more than it took riding a bus to Verona. Keep in mind, though, that Venice is nearly twice as far away from Milan as Verona is. I think it’s obvious which is the more efficient mode of travel.

The view from the giant windows was very similar to the one I had on my way to Verona, so, as expected, there were several unused and decaying buildings near the tracks, some of them old train stops that have since been replaced by newer, better buildings close by.

I always think I might be able to catch a little shut eye on the train, but honestly there is no way I could sleep because of the view out the window. How could I let myself close my eyes when there’s so much to see? I’ll only maybe get a few chances to really embrace the Italian countryside – there’s no way I could waste that opportunity.

So I didn’t.

The train stopped a couple of times along the way to deposit and gather passengers. One of them was in Verona. I waved as we passed by buildings I had become familiar with only days before. I must say it was a very satisfying feeling to pass by that city and not wish I could stop to see it, because I have. I went. I saw. I photographed. A lot. And I planned to do the same with Venice.

As you probably know, Venice is known as the floating city, but here’s an interesting thing to keep in mind on how, exactly, it is a floating city: “The buildings of Venice are constructed on closely spaced wooden piles. Most of these piles are still intact after centuries of submersion. The foundations rest on the piles, and buildings of brick or stone sit above these footings. The piles penetrate a softer layer of sand and mud until they reach a much harder layer of compressed clay. Submerged by water, in oxygen-poor conditions, wood does not decay as rapidly as on the surface. Most of these piles were made from trunks of alder trees, a wood noted for its water resistance.” Pretty nifty, huh?

The view as soon as we emerged from the train station immediately seized my interest and Venice held onto it tightly for the remainder of the day.

My roommate, who had been there twice before, was able to play a very trustworthy tour guide and led us first to Saint Mark’s square. On the way there, many things became apparent: firstly, there were no roads and therefore no cars, so at least traffic with wheels was nice to no have to worry about. Secondly, canals twist between houses everywhere, providing many photo opportunities.

Thirdly, the “streets” are less like streets and more like alleyways which, between the squares and main streets, can sometimes be barely one-person wide. Neighbors could hang out of their windows and shake hands with ease if they wanted to.

            Fourthly, the water in the canals is an odd teal color, which I didn’t expect. I’ve read that it’s due to the brackish and polluted nature of it.

Lastly, the Venetians like color (the Milanese seem to as well, at least in buildings – perhaps it’s an Italian thing). The buildings pop everywhere you turn.

Saint Mark’s square was beautiful, but bursting with tourists, which made it difficult to take pictures without people crowding the lens.

We wandered inside the Basilica Di San Marco, pressed in by the current of people. There were signs posted everywhere warning against taking any pictures whatsoever of the history inside. That didn’t deter everyone, though, since no officer was inside watching to make sure it didn’t happen. Thus I sadly don’t have any pictures of the inside, but I can say it was the most extravagant church I have been through yet, and there have been many.

On the whole, I understand discouraging photographs of the statues and mosaics inside the religious monument because simply looking at it through a picture detracts from the overall atmosphere and environment that a cathedral provides – it’s almost like stepping into another dimension, really. So I get that it can take away from the experience and it is best seen with your own eyes and felt in real time, but by the same token (and this is probably just the photographer in me talking), I don’t see what’s so wrong with snapping a few pictures to carry as mementos, to perhaps in later years somewhat recreate the experience and reminisce on it.

That’s one thing I have really appreciated while wandering through every other church I’ve been in – you are free to take as many pictures as you please, but the implicit agreements are that you don’t use flash (which makes things hard since the churches tend to be dimly lit) and that you keep the shutter noise on your camera to a minimum. The respectful silence is very easy to disturb and you’ll get dirty looks even if your shoes clack noisily along the stone. Those sorts of sounds pierce the atmosphere, and thankfully most people understand this.

One other thing that has been really neat to see is that the churches are still used; they aren’t simply museum pieces, destined to sit unmoving in a spotlight for the rest of their existences. While I’m not Catholic, I think it’s a beautiful thing that they still hold mass and sermons regularly inside the ornate cathedrals. They double as tourist attractions and functioning churches.

Unfortunately this is not the feeling I got from the Basilica Di San Marco. It felt wholly like a tourist attraction and nothing more. The atmosphere it cast definitely did not have the depth many other cathedrals did.

Following that, we wove through the streets back to a restaurant that caught our eye a couple hours previously. I ordered lasagna (surprise, surprise). Something I’ve heard, and this seems to be true, is that when it comes to Italian dishes, they tend to place more importance on the pasta and cheese than they do the sauce. My lasagna was delicious, but way cheesier than saucy, which I am not used to. My family places the most importance on the red sauce, the tomato-y and flavorful lusciousness, so this is an interesting concept for me.

After lunch, we made our way back to Saint Mark’s square to climb to the top of this monstrosity (in an elevator, of course):

The panoramic view of Venice from above was so breathtaking, I quickly forgot about how windy and chilly it was up there in the bell-keep of Campanile Di San Marco.

 

 
 
 

I am so thankful for these towers, because the one in Verona provided a very surreal view of the city as well. What I like about Venice, though, is the water – you see the curve of the coast and the boats, and not just rooftops (don’t get me wrong, those are marvelous as well).

Following that exceedingly satisfying sight, we took it easy, moseying through the alleys and taking a few breaks to hang our feet over the edges of canals. We sat and just breathed it all in. (The air was noticeably cleaner in Venice versus Milan due to the absence of cars and smog, I would suspect.)

 

The weather stayed gorgeous the whole day; the air was warm and the sun made several appearances. It was similar to Verona in that the weather was the perfect kind to travel in.

On our lazy way back to the train station, we went down some alleys that ended in stairs going directly down into the water, and as we were standing at the end of one specifically taking pictures, a few gondolas went by (the waterways were loaded with them) and as they passed, one of the gondoliers winked at me.

I’ve heard it costs quite a pretty penny to ride in one of those, which actually doesn’t surprise me since they are traditionally used for ceremonies, like weddings and funerals. Big to-dos, and all that. I bet the gondoliers make pretty good money during the on-season.

Once it was finally time to load back up onto the train, I felt thoroughly pleased with the time spent in Venice. I hadn’t felt rushed or that I had missed seeing anything. The setting sun on the way home provided a good finish.

Trip to Venice? Superb. Worth it? Very much so. I would love to have an apartment that has a window with a balcony over one of the canals so I could sit, hang my legs over the edge and read or write. I don’t know about you, but I think that would be the ideal perch.

The next few adventures on the books are to thoroughly explore Milan during my spring break, which started today and lasts till the 27^th, and that will consist of seeing The Last Supper by Leonardo DaVinci (yes, the real deal!), and popping around to the most noteworthy monuments in town, like the Monumental Cemetery, going to the top of the Duomo, and other things of that nature. I’m also scheduled to go to Florence on the 19^th of May, and that’s still a month off, but it’s happening! I’m very excited and very glad I was able to get out of Milan.

Thank you for all your support, love, and interest – the blog posts and pictures will only keep coming!

Arrivederci, amici!

V