My Italian Adventure

It’s easy to lose track of time when you travel. Days of the week become a blur, and when you’re not showing up for work, weekends morph into weekdays. Throw in jet lag, and time ceases to have its normal meaning. ”So it was easy for me to get the dates mixed up when I was trying to make hotel reservations for our stay in Venice. ”My husband John and I had just arrived in Zurich early on a Sunday morning this September for the start of a 10-day vacation. Although it had been a dream of mine to go to Italy since a college art history class my sophomore year, the trip ended up being arranged on the spur of the moment. I wasn’t used to spur of the moment and I was worried about not having reservations in advance, and other things that might happen. Most of the fears I had didn’t come to pass, but other fears that never occurred to me did. ”Numerous Venice hotels were full, so when we finally found one we took it. It was only when we were in an Internet caf’ later to e-mail the hotel and confirm the reservation, that I realized I had given the hotel the wrong date on the phone. ”Taking the train from Switzerland, we spent a night in Lake Como, and two days later arrived in Venice. We took the water bus from the train station, and made our way through the narrow streets to find the hotel. ‘Didn’t you get our e-mail?’ the woman at the front desk inquired. ‘We’re all booked for the dates you wanted, but we have another hotel and there’s an apartment you can use for the same price.’ We gladly accepted the apartment. ”Although we didn’t need the kitchen and dining room, having our own apartment in this magical city felt luxurious. My mistake had given us something better than we could have planned. My favorite artwork in Venice was the intricate and richly colored mosaics of Biblical figures in the Basilica on St. Mark’s Square, but mostly we just enjoyed the city itself, and planned most of our museum-going for our next destination, Florence. ”The one piece of art I had most wanted to see since college was the baptistery doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti. I still can remember sitting in the a darkened history class and being blown away by the slide of these great bronze doors with their three-dimensional perspective. When we arrived in Florence, we walked straight to the Duomo to see the replica doors, as well as the original panels housed in a nearby museum. ”The next day featured a tour of three Davids. First the original by Michelangelo, in the Accademia museum, celebrating its 500th birthday that month. We saw a second David, a bronze copy, in the Piazza del Michelangelo along with a gorgeous overview of the city. We continued on to the Uffizi Gallery, seeing everything from the delicate, translucent veils painted by Filippino Lippi, to Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus,’ whose beautiful, sleepy eyes were repeated in the artist’s other paintings. Walking out into the rain, we saw our friend David again, another copy, covered in scaffolding. ”On the way from Florence to Rome the next day, I looked in my purse for the digital camera to take pictures out the train window. My stomach dropped when I realized the camera wasn’t there. It wasn’t even my camera; I had borrowed it from a friend. And it had all the pictures from our trip. Hadn’t we downloaded any of them? asked the couple sitting across from us. No’there was nothing I could do but wait until I got off the train in Rome. When we arrived at our hotel, I called the hotel in Florence. I knew the camera wasn’t in our room, because I had it after we checked out, but could have left it when we went to the lobby to pick up our bags and leave. The hotel clerk hadn’t seen it, but he suggested I call back the next day and speak to housekeeping. ”He also gave me the number of the train station and I just started making phone calls. Adjusting to an old-fashioned rotary phone was difficult, and I got a recording I didn’t understand. I called the bus company (we had taken the bus to the train) but couldn’t figure out how to say noon or 12 in Italian, to explain when I was on the bus. The page of Italian phrases in the guidebook only gave numbers up to 10. Trying to say uno’due (one-two) wasn’t working. So, I called again, and a kind man transferred me to an English-speaking woman. She gave me the number of the bus depot where another kind man told us to call back at 10 p.m. ”That evening, after a romantic sunset visit to the Spanish Steps, I tossed three coins in the Trevi Fountain, with one of my wishes that I find the camera in the next 24 hours. I prayed to find the camera. In my mind I imagined having to tell my friend ‘I lost your camera’ and not seeing any of the photos I had taken. ”I asked Enzo, our front desk clerk, if he could call the bus depot for me. No camera there. He tried the train station, but since their automated system required a push-button phone, he kindly offered to make the call from his home. ”The next morning, we woke up early to take a thrilling self-guided tour of the Vatican, a whirlwind of art from ancient Egypt and Rome to modern-day works highlighted by the Sistine Chapel. I finally had a chance to call the hotel again during lunch. Our waiter pointed out a pay phone on the street. I didn’t know how to operate it and inquired in the money exchange office where a woman told me she didn’t know either because ‘I always use my mobile.’ I inquired elsewhere and learned I had to buy a phone card and where. Finally I placed the call. Eureka! Francesco at the hotel said they’d found the camera in the hotel bathroom. ”The relief of the camera being found was a weight off my shoulders. I’d worry later about how to get it home. Off we went for a wonderful afternoon seeing St. Peter’s and the Colosseum, taking pictures with the disposable camera we bought. ”The next day it was time to leave for Zurich, where we we would spend one last night before flying home. Instead of boarding the plane immediately from the boarding tunnel, we rode a little bus which took us to a small plane. ”After a short, uneventful flight we arrived in Zurich. John’s bag came off the carousel right away. Several of us waited and waited, but our luggage never arrived. We all shuffled over to the lost baggage department. The man who helped me said the same thing had happened on the flight the day before! His theory: the airplane was just too small and they didn’t have room for everyone’s luggage. He guessed it might be coming later that night, and be delivered to the hotel, or early the next morning where I could pick it up before our flight. ”When the luggage didn’t arrive, I called and found out it had gone to’ Casablanca! But at that point I was mostly amused’I would miss only the souvenirs I had bought in Italy. It was the end of a wonderful trip and my dream came true to see some of the artwork that I had sketched and studied during college.” ”Like all the other misadventures we had, these turned out okay, thanks to the kindness of many strangers. The luggage was delivered to our home around midnight the following day and the camera arrived a week later. Maybe they needed to have more adventures and weren’t quite ready to come home.