Besotted

Before we went to Venice, I really didn't want to go. It sounded touristy, expensive, corrupted, creepy, and totally unromantic. Some of this impression came from the movie "The Comfort of Strangers" which I saw a long time ago but which really creeped me out. Icky! But it left a lasting impression that Venice is sinister. Also the book Death in Venice--more corruption and unromantic creepiness.

But the reality totally bowled me over. Some of the marvelousness of Venice is just the lack of cars. What a relief. What a fine way to live. Your senses are so happy in Venice. But it also is just such a celebration of beauty, set in stone. I love that the people who built it, maintained it, rebuilt it, genuinely care about community beauty. It's true of every public thing. The bridges are lovely, graceful shapes, and further embellished with decorations. The public lights are handsome. The signs are discreetly attached to walls -- no big, ugly metal poles. The esthetic quality is just so high. And all further enhanced by the fact that evveryone is on foot, and there are no motor vehicles polluting the quiet or the air.

I am totally besotted with Venice.

Trip Around the World

In the late 1990s, we had a plan to leave our high-tech, high-stress, long-week jobs in Silicon Valley to travel around the world for a year. We aimed to stay in 3 or 4 countries for 3 or 4 months each, rent an apartment in each place, take language classes, meet our neighbors, live like normal people there (sort of.) We sold our cars and our loft in San Francisco, gave away a lot of our stuff, packed the rest of it up into a rented storage space, and quit our jobs. We left with around-the-world tickets and the intention of living in Budapest, Hungary; somewhere in India; Bangkok, Thailand; and somewhere else lovely.

We planned by getting stacks and stacks of guidebooks about hte places we knew we wanted to visit. We estimated how much we thought we would need for airfare, travelers' medical insurance, places to stay, food, expenses like washing clothes, and play money. When we sold our place in San Francisco, a city we love, we did so thinking we might never be able to return to our beloved and expensive home, but that this experience would be worth it.

And it was.

We didn't actually live in 3 or 4 places for 3 or 4 months. Instead, we lived in Budapest for 4 months, traveled constantly in India for 4 months, lived in Thailand for 6 months, and traveled through 8 other countries for the balance of a year and a half. The next series of blog entries will be our old notes from those travels. They include entries on:
Prague (Czech Rep.)
Tallinn (Estonia)
Helsinki (Finland)
Eger, Pecs and Budapest (Hungary)
Krakow and Wieliczka (Poland)
Venice, Florence, Pisa, Certaldo, San Gimignano (Italy)
Athens, Corfu (Greece)
India
Thailand
Singapore