fluorescent announcements beat their wings overhead

Buongiorno, back from Italy, will post at length later, but soon must go fetch my CATS (missed them!). Body still on European time despite long sleepless day yesterday and 10 pm bedtime. Thanks to Lufthansa striking pilots we got a better-timed flight with the chance for non-rushed breakfast in Florence (a bit tired of continental-style, though; today's chez nous was good German bread (from Frankfurt airport) with jam and PEANUT BUTTER. Also bacon. MMM. Tomorrow I will have granola and all will be right with the world).

In short: amazing and fantastic, though ow my knee, OW MY FEET, also mini-ow the mysterious little bruises that occurred in random places throughout the trip probably due to awkward clutching of luggage on crowded public transportation. Boat, train, bus bus bus bus, tram, subway, chair lift; only four taxis (because even not-taxi people get tired and inconvenienced). And miles of walking on narrow streets and stairs and cobblestoned piazzas. Did I mention my feet?

It's raining here, but it was raining in Florence too, which makes the world oddly small and wet. More soon!

Brief travelogue, with theory of vacations

Here's the first Italy post, and I may comment more later, plus there will be stuff at my other blogs when I get the photos sorted out. I'll put the quick where-we-went-when under a cut in a moment. But first - we had this discussion on our last evening, as we do at some point on nearly every trip we take, about conflicting theories of vacation/holiday-taking, and how to hit a happy medium between rushing around to see everything that will possibly fit and just sitting around with a good book in a pretty place. J's idea of a proper vacation leans more toward the former, so when he plans trips we move around a lot and pack the days pretty full. I am sympathetic toward the see-everything! viewpoint, and I certainly don't regret much if anything of what we did, but I am exhausted and have much to do coming up, so there's that.

There is so much to see in the world, and so little time to do it in, so when you have an opportunity such as this one it's probably best to not miss out - but we always end up saying that "when we come back" (which we never do, because there are other places to see) we will just rent a house or apartment for a week so that we can get to know a place. But even then it would be considered a base camp from which to explore in all directions, and I would keep arguing for one day of just holding still, and not getting it (or getting it alone while the others saw something I'd regret missing). Doing too much, especially over a longer vacation, makes the end part of the trip rather blurry, and the first part vanishingly distant, and all the churches and views tend to blend together after a while - I have a theory that you need to see something at least three times before you come anywhere close to understanding it, which makes the usual tourist itinerary pretty useless - but again, who has time to go back over and over? I don't know what the solution to this is, except for larger travel budgets and more free time, and yeah, it screams First World Problem, so onwards.

This is off the top of my insufficient memory and summarizes much:

( Two weeks of scurrying about )

I should do later posts on things like food and drink, which do tend to be important to us, and perhaps on how it feels to be a tourist in a country not one's own, or the combination of the two (I hope that if fellow diners occasionally regarded us as the loud Americans drinking too much, at least we were the loud Americans drinking too much and discussing etymology, but really we don't tend to be loud, and we say grazie a lot). And I think sorting out the photos will help me isolate moments that were particularly meaningful (though they will not necessarily coincide with the moments during which I took photos). I do know that any vision I possessed of Italy as monolithic (figuratively, and literally as well) has now been erased, not that I ever really thought it was all one place. I would like to see more places within it, and to return to places we touched on; we'll see if that happens.

If I had to pick one return trip, I'd probably be practical and say Florence, since we visited there so briefly, and maybe more time in the Tuscan countryside as well, especially if I had a thematic itinerary (like, you know, wine. Or agriculture in general). The visuals there are astonishing, particularly since they are so iconic and familiar from painting and photography, but the first time you pull over on a hilltop and look out at the sinking sun glinting across the green curves and the terracotta roofs and the geometric patterns of vineyard and olive plantation, it's nearly impossible to recognize what you're seeing as real. So I'd like to shake it a bit and force it to say something (I'd have to know Italian better, of course).

But of everywhere we went, my heart belongs to Venice. In part because it was the first place we went, but also because I loved so much the maze of tiny streets and the lack of any wheeled traffic beyond barrows; the watery orientation must call up something in my maritime roots, and every use of the canals and lagoons was charming to me, from public transport to tourist gondolas to construction deliveries. I wouldn't want to live there (not enough space for gardens, plus expensive and crumbling) but I'd love to go back and spend time absorbing atmosphere and water metaphors, and to write something about it.