My blog post this week was inspired by the song “It’s Okay” by Nightbirde, specifically the following lines:
“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay
If you’re lost, we’re all a little lost and it’s alright”
I love that. We’re all a little lost, and it’s alright. We are all a little lost sometimes, but as the saying goes, not all who wander are lost. And what amazing things we sometimes find when we wander!
My husband and I have been very lucky and have been able to do some travelling since we were married. It’s something I don’t think I ever really thought I would be able to do, and once I started, I just loved it. I love planning our vacations to see all that these amazing places have to offer. But… even though I’m a planner, I like to leave some of it a little bit to chance. Well, not always. If I’m honest, there have been trips where I haven’t left much to chance. But for the most part, I do.
I had always wanted to go to Rome. Mostly, I really wanted to see the Vatican. And somehow, we managed to go to Rome on our honeymoon. I really didn’t understand the richness of Rome until we went. I’m not sure that it’s possible without going there. But I was smart enough to plan for some time to wander. As I said, I am a planner. Pretty much anyone who knows me probably knows that. And before we went, someone said to me that I probably had every minute of that trip planned. No way. I told them I was exhausted from planning a wedding. I had many things planned, but also tried to leave a part of every day free to just see what happened.
And the amazing things that happened! One day, we were wandering around Rome and I saw something across the street. There are fountains and churches everywhere, and every time they try to dig to extend their subway line, they find more ancient artifacts. So while what I saw looked very old, so much in Rome is very, very old that after a while you don’t really question it. Not 50 years old like we have here. Hundreds or even thousands of years old. Anyway, we wandered across the street to see what it was. No big deal. Just the ruins of five pagan temples there in the middle of the city. Where I live, we tend to demolish old buildings to make way for shiny new things and here we were, finding ancient buildings just in the middle of the city for anyone to see. For me, it was shocking and absolutely wonderful.
Until we went on our honeymoon, I really hadn’t done any travel planning. I was really just flying by the seat of my pants, so to speak, learning as I went along. So, because it was cheaper, we didn’t stay in Rome. We stayed in a villa that had been converted into a hotel. The villa was built sometime between 1723 and 1743. Like I said, things there are hundreds of years old. (So cool!) The villa is actually several buildings. The palace (it sounds much grander than it was when we stayed there), which is the main part of the hotel, and two other buildings. We arrived and found that we were staying in one of the other buildings. I was disappointed – who wouldn’t stay in a former palace if they had the chance? – until they took us to our building. Through a secret underground passageway!! (Okay, maybe it was only a secret to people before they visited, but an underground passageway! Does it get much cooler?) We never used it on our own, but I think that was one of the highlights of our trip.
The hotel was outside of a small town, which was outside of Rome. Every day, we took the hotel shuttle to the train station, and took the train into Rome. And every night, we would take the last train back, catch the shuttle, go to the hotel reception desk, get more money from the safe for the next day, and arrange our wake-up call and the shuttle for the next morning.
One night, we missed the train. It wasn’t our fault. Really. It’s a long story, but I will say this. When someone – in this case, the cashier at the ticket office of the train station – in a foreign country asks for your documents, you don’t ask why. You just show him. But when he takes his time counting out your change ONE COIN AT A TIME and you are going to miss your train, well, let’s just say I followed the old adage of “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”. I got mad. And finally, even though he had wanted to see our documents, I made it clear – language barrier and all – that we were going to miss the VERY LAST TRAIN. He suddenly understood, hurried up, and we ran – I doubt that I even said thank you – for our lives to catch that train. But it was too late. As we ran up, we watched it leaving. I was so angry that I was going to cry. But, still mad, I got it together and said we need a plan. There are taxis at the front of the terminal, let’s take one.
Now, keep in mind that we had been warned about what I will call “private” taxi services, from people who knew what they were talking about. The “private” taxi services were really just people with a car who were willing to drive you where you wanted to go for an agreed upon price. But I didn’t care. It was Saturday night. There was a long line for the regular taxis and I didn’t know how long we would have to wait, and though the regular taxis had a regulated pricing system, from what I had read they were more expensive on Saturday nights, and the pricing system I had read about was very complicated. And there were no apps back then. No Uber. No way to get a taxi any faster than just waiting in that oh so long line. Or at least not that we, in our novice tourist ignorance, knew about. I wanted to get back to the hotel and I wanted to do it as soon as we could and for the best price. (I don’t know what happened to me that night. I normally wouldn’t do anything like this.) So, while my new husband was hesitant, I proceeded to negotiate with “private” taxi drivers.
They come up to the terminal and try to get your business – even though the stand for the regular taxis is right there. I told the first driver that his price was too high and he refused to take us. I told the next one that his price was too high and he told me nicely that we wouldn’t find a lower price. It seemed really high to me, but what did I know? We were going out of the city, after all – so I said yes, and off we went to his car. I was mostly concerned about the price. My new husband told me later that he was mostly concerned about this “private” taxi driver taking us out to an empty field and killing us – especially when he locked the doors after we got in.
But what an adventure we had! Everything you have heard about Roman drivers is true. We hung on for our lives. And when we stopped for gas, well… we didn’t actually stop. We pulled up. Our taxi driver didn’t even turn the car off. He pulled up, the attendant put some gas in, the taxi driver literally threw some money at him, and sped off into the night. It was amazing. And crazy. We were off, in the dark, with no idea where we were, hoping we would get to where we were going without being in some kind of car accident.
Then we got to the town. It turned out that the driver didn’t know where the hotel was. I did my best to tell him where it was when I negotiated the price, but I think he thought it was actually in town. Looking back, that part may have been my fault. He pulled over and asked two young girls where to go. But first, he pulled a fast u-turn to come up to them, then another one to go the other way once we had directions. And then, probably our favourite part of the story. We came to a “private driveway”. There was a sign and everything. It wasn’t a driveway like we have here that just leads up to your house. This was going pretty much straight uphill with speed bumps that we assume are to keep people out. It didn’t keep our taxi driver out.
He went up that driveway like it was nothing. Did we need to slow down? Oh, no. No slowing down for us. And every time we hit a speed bump – and there were many – at high speed, no less, the undercarriage of his car would scrape it, and he would yell “Maamma Mia!” As I’m writing this I’m laughing because even though it was so long ago, I can almost still hear him and it was hilarious – once he got us there.
We finally arrived at the hotel – from the back way. I think he took the front way to get out, sparing his poor car any more pain. When we got to the hotel, we asked if we could take his picture, and he agreed. He is one of our favourite memories. And we would never have gotten to experience an Italian taxi driver if the cashier hadn’t misunderstood what we needed, and counted every single coin one at a time. (For the record, the staff at the hotel told us that we had actually gotten the right price for the taxi, unlike the loud people she helped before us who, well, got ripped off.)
On our last night in Rome, we went to the reception desk and asked if we could go see the ancient frescoes that were mentioned in the booklet in our room. We were exhausted, but how could we leave without seeing them? The girl at the desk told us that they had been damaged over time, but yes, we could go see them. She told us to go “up, up, up, to where it is very beautiful”. And so, we went up, up, up the spiral staircase that we had seen in the lobby every day. And finally, we got to the top and saw the beautiful frescoes. Unfortunately, time and water had damaged them, but what treasures. Then my husband saw an open door. (Despite my impulsiveness getting a taxi, he is actually much more adventurous than I am.) He wanted to see what was on the other side. I, on the other hand, was afraid of getting locked out. We went out the open door and found that we were on the roof. We looked down and saw a large soccer field, and further away, from down in the valley, we heard classical music, likely coming from a church in the distance. And so, on the last night of our honeymoon in Rome, we danced on the roof of a 250 year old former palace to classical music coming from down in the valley.
Sometimes it is in the wandering that we find our best adventures, and our best memories. So let’s take a chance and do some wandering (safely – please be smarter than I was!) this summer. We don’t have to go to a foreign country to do it. We could camp in our backyard, go for ice cream or a slurpee, to the park, for a hike, to our kitchen for a dance party… The possibilities are actually as vast as our imaginations.
It may be that we will find that we aren’t lost at all, but instead have found something wonderful.