07: Milan, Cinque Terre, Florence, & Venice

[2-minute read]

Had I known the fault lines or seen the conditions before that avalanche in Helsinki, I would have created distance.

I would have suggested he start seeing a counsellor before I saw him again. Before I gave our relationship any more of myself.

That was harder to do just three days into a five-week trip together through Europe.

From Helsinki, we flew to Milan. To be honest, I think I was in mild emotional shock for the 48 hours we spent there. I remember moving through the city without ever quite arriving.

Arriving in Cinque Terre, we had our first relationship squabble. First of the trip, and maybe even the first of our relationship.

We arrived at the two-and-a-half-star guest house I’d booked, and no one was there. The accommodation was closed.

Turns out the payment hadn’t gone through, and although they’d emailed me, I’d been without wifi or service to receive it. Do you remember travelling before smartphones? What an experience.

It was shoulder season in a small village, so by the time they arrived, we squared up payment, and we landed in our room, we were both exhausted.
I crawled into bed to find damp sheets.

Not pleased, I wanted to call back the host who’d just left in order to get the problem solved. My partner, however, had already cranked the room heater, pulled the sheets from the bed, and draped them over the radiator to dry.

Somewhere in the commotion, it was suggested that I was acting like a princess.

Had this been the thread count that I was upset about, he might have had a point. However, I deflated his argument, reminding him that I’d been the one to book and pay for this private room in a two-and-a-half-star hotel

Thanks to his MacGyvering and my cheeky tone, he came to see where I was coming from, and we laughed.

Hiking through the five cities was incredible. Charming. Physical.

The nature and fresh air were good for us.

Pistachios, which we packed for our picnic that day, would later become a trigger, a sensory shortcut back to this leg of the trip. Memory has a strange filing system.

In Florence — where Michelangelo sculpted David, where a young da Vinci imagined the impossible, and where Brunelleschi built his dome — we rubbed elbows (literally bumping into him as he left his studio) with the street artist Clet Abraham. His altered road signs felt mischievous and reverent at the same time. A reminder that even the most fixed structures invite subversion.

Arriving in Venice on Christmas Eve, the city was unusually quiet. By the time we walked back toward the train station on Boxing Day, it felt like we were swimming upstream. Against the current of something we hadn’t yet learned how to name, but that was beginning to form around us.

Up next >> Chapter 08: Rome to Florence, NYE (day) 2014