Ending

My ears rang with the pop of each burst of light over Piazza Michel Angelo.

I took a deep breath in, filling my lungs with the crisp Italian air. I felt a squeeze on my arm. I looked to my right. Maggie had tears in her eyes.

“We leave in 7 hours.” Her voice could barely be heard over the fireworks. The tears shined blue, then red, then green.

“Don’t,” I pleaded stepping away from her. “7 hours is a lot if you think about it.”

“Yeah, if you think really hard.”

This life of wine, spaghetti, trains, love, language, and exploration is over.

I thought I would want to leave. I thought being with Maggie for six straight months would drive me mad. We weren’t friends until we got here. We wouldn’t be friends when we got back.

I was surrounded by people, shoulder to shoulder on the Ponte alla Grazia watching the festival of lights but I felt so isolated. I can’t leave. I couldn’t leave.

“Hey,” I knew his voice before turning around. His hand hit my hip like an electric shock. When I could finally look at him he had his arm around Maggie too.

“What should we do for 7 more hours?” I asked.

“What could we not do in 7 hours?” He had a point. Experience an entire city in 7 hours and do all of the things we forgot to do throughout the months.

“Are we enough?”

“Yes.”

“Will we make it?”

“I don’t know.” 

explorer le Louvre

I've been here before, I think this is my third time. The tall ceilings, marble floors, surrounded by statues that all seem to be looking at you. Everyone always has to come here but I think once is enough, there are only so many paintings you can look at.

I turned to him on my left and said "I want to try something knew."

He smiled at me that cliche smile you see on every face of someone in love but his eyes looked devious, like he was hiding something.

I stepped away from him. I turned on my heels and ran. I don't know why. I turned down the hallway of mirrors, past the Mona Lisa and the Venus Di Milo, down stairs and up stairs pushing through all the tourists snapping pictures and trying to speak in French. I stopped in a room filled with ancient Egyptian artifacts. He walked in from the opposite direction. How did he get there?

"I am French. I come here every year for a class trip, I know my way around," he said sensing the confusion on my face.
"You want to try something knew because you are such a world travler and it is so hard to impress you, is it not?" His accent was thick and he didn't even need the wink to make my heart melt the way it did.

He pulled me down the hallway he had come from. Down two more flights of stairs winding and turing that felt like walking through streets. We ended up in an empty room. The ceilings were low and all white. The entire wall was a window. Straight ahead was the Eiffel Tower.

"I've seen the Eiffel Tower, Frenchie, I thought you were going to show me something knew," I hoped he got my sarcasm, you would think our language barrier would get smaller after four months but I guess our two weeks apart while I was traveling could be something to worry about.

"I thought you were an English major," He was laughing, he must have gotten it.

"I am." Where is he going with this?

"'It's presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.' You may have been here before but you have never been here with me, therefore it is new."

Everybody Loves Pasta

I could still feel his arms around me as the plane took off. Four months felt like four weeks. The RyanAir flight attendants gave the brief safety instructions as my friend, Maggie, sat next to me intently studying her Europe travel guide.

“Don’t be sad that its over, be happy that it happened,” Maggie chimed in just as the wheels lifted up.

“Really? That’s the phrase you are going with right now?” I didn’t try to hide my sarcasm. Maggie always managed to say something completely irrelevant at the most random times to throw everything out of place and give you a six pack from laughing so hard.

“Yes, it is exactly the phrase I am going to use. You see, we are embarking on a magical journey that you will tell your grand children about,” her hand gestures quickly began to irritate the old Italian woman sitting in between us reading Heart of Darkness.-- that was the catch with RyanAir, cheap but you don’t get to pick your seat, so you sprint and hope you can sit together (I don’t know who would ever chose the middle seat but even after four months in Italy I still don’t understand the Italians).

“I want to ask her if she likes that book,” Maggie whispered.

“Its pretty good, I read it for school.”

“We should go to Africa and adventure up the Congo and become one with the people,”

“Next trip?”

“Deal.”

Two short ours later we were touched down in the Dublin Airport. The air was colder and greener and they were speaking English. I never realized the peace and serenity that accompanied not understanding the people around you. The buildings were modern and different. Everyting was different. Who was I to complain? I was in Dublin, Ireland, most people only dream of coming to these places let alone backpack all over the freaking continent.

“Hey! Look! They are French, say hi!”

“Just because I’m dating a French guy doesn’t mean I’m fluent in French, Margret.”

“What? Since when?”

We grabbed our backpacks off the belt and headed towards the bus into town.
“So next time we do this we are definitely packing less clothes,” I said as the shoulder straps dug into my collar bone.

“Isn’t if funny how we were so excited to start this trip but now we miss everything Italian,” Maggie asked, somehow not so random this time, “I mean, to think, I was starting to get sick of pasta,” she made a face of horror. "Everybody loves pasta, ain't nobody should be hatin' on pasta." 
"Anitas taglerini all fiorentina!"
"Yeah they don't have that here, they eat beans for breakfast." We both shuttered at the thought.

“It is the little things that make us happy,” I laughed

“You were getting onto me with the cheesey comments now listen to you, dumbass.”

“I was reading the billboard,” I lifted my arm and pointed to the very obnoxious yellow and blue RyanAir billboard that had a picture of a smiling flight attendant plastered above the phrase.

“Not one RyanAir flight attendant every smiles, that’s bullshit, I’m gonna call and complain,” Maggie’s high-pitched voice echoed. “But it is true, you never really realize it until they aren’t in front of your face anymore.”

I couldn’t help but agree with her. We had one month ahead of us of non-stop travel before we went back to Italy. “I can tell you right now we won’t even recognize the little things of this trip until we get back,” I said.

“Or until someone tells us about them, cause we are going to drink a lot, and not know what they are, do you get it?”

We busted out laughing.

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Wet Towels.

It’s raining. Again. But then again it always rains here in the spring—or at least that’s what they say, or I think they are saying; I haven’t gotten that far in my Italian classes yet. The rain, which feels more like ice pellets, bounce off the hood of my fleece-lined coat and I can’t help but almost skip through the narrow street. This is nothing like I’m used to. My view out my bedroom window of the white sandy beaches of Florida have been replaced with tall, foreign buildings. I stop at a small parchment store that sits on the corner next to the Pitti Palace; I have always wanted to go in. Right in the window, next to a tie-dyed piece of parchment paper and a paper cut out of an elephant sits a post card of the deep blue ocean contrasted by the light beaches. You can see the heat in the picture.

“It is vintage,” the lady behind the counter said to me in a thick Italian accent. She handed me the delicate paper. I could feel the heat in the picture. I closed my eyes. The sticky heat I once thought was unbearable suddenly seemed like a novelty I would never feel again. The feeling of being hit with warm wet towels every time you step out the front door was so different from the dry, bone-chilling weather here. A heard of bikers came flying around the corner pulling me out of my daydream. I hate bikes. I handed the lady two euros and stepped out the door back into the cold, clinging to the warmth of my post card that now sat in my purse.

Strangers no more

Cold rain drops bit at my nose as I walked over the empty bridge. I heard voices behind me—laughter and chatter about the weather. The sun was setting through the dull clouds lighting them on fire reflecting orange, pink, and purple in the river below. I stopped in the middle of the bridge and stared at the invisible sun. The rod-iron fence came up to my waste and was covered in locks. Small and large all were engraved with names and dates, lovers and friends. The air seemed to get colder. I tightened my scarf and turned around to the happy voices lightheartedly making fun of one another, arms outstretched at the light rain that had suddenly turned into a downpour. Ahead of me stood an arch that framed the light blue and purple mountains painted by the reflected clouds. We began to run through the empty streets—everyone must be at dinner. Laughter that had seemed so distant just seconds ago filled my chest; I took a deep breath of the foreign air that surrounded me breathing in a smell unique to this place and this moment. It was warm even in the heart of winter and felt exciting in my lungs. Fear left my body. Each step on the slippery cobble stone thought each alley way was new, we didn’t know where we were going but we couldn’t wait to get there.