I have never overused a word to the extent that I have overused “wander” in the past three months. No plans? “We can just wander.” Ready to leave the cafe? “Should we start wandering?” Updating my travel journal? “This morning, we wandered around.” Not only is wandering a great way to fill endless hours of free time abroad, but it has also been the way that I have stumbled upon some of my favorite stops.
My friends and I have the benefit of studying abroad together now and living together back in New York. This has served us in many ways, from shared wardrobes to the fact that while others were scrambling in recent weeks, we planned our spring break in… October. Cut to March and the four of us are being hypnotized by the endlessly spinning luggage belt in the Rome airport at one in the morning. Once we were finally reunited with our bags, we got into a car fit for at least 10 more passengers, which our Airbnb host insisted was the only reasonable size.
Our trip involved three days in Rome, Florence and Venice, complete with reunions with other friends studying abroad and some who valiantly flew from JFK to Istanbul to Italy all for hugs and piles of pasta. We traveled back in time by staring up at the Pantheon, down at the Roman Forum and wistfully at the Colosseum from the outside — we didn’t get tickets. The street vendors sold everything from cheap leather bags and postcards to baskets of ripe strawberries and “Hot Priest Calendars.”
One night at dinner at a small restaurant tucked into a corner underneath a staircase, the pastry chef came to each table to present the desserts. She was Presenting, with a capital P. In her English-Italian hybrid (heavy on the Italian) she described homemade tiramisu, decadent chocolate cake and fresh gelato. My friends were mesmerized and got all three. On the way home, we passed an abandoned pair of Sambas next to a fountain. Someone must have wandered too far.
Next up was Florence, where our wandering led me to the most delicious ragù I’ve ever had, in a local restaurant with a handwritten menu and a patron who leaned back in her chair to inform my roommate she had to eat her ravioli while it was hot. We went out of our way to find the best gelato in every city, which naturally turned into one, two, three gelatos a day.
Walking 10-plus miles a day for days on end slowly started to show in everyone’s demeanor. On every train ride — one of which my roommate accidentally booked us in business class! — we go nonverbal, four girls engrossed in reading our Kindles, a travel necessity.
Hailing from Venice, Calif., I was immediately giddy when we stepped out of the Venice train station in the pouring rain at the foot of the Grand Canal. My excitement could not even be dampened by our baggage-laden trek to the apartment, about which my roommate said, “Only eight bridges left!” I had to restrain myself from buying every miniature glass animal I came across and kept sending pictures to my family of similarities between my hometown and its counterpart. Another wandering win: we went for a walk once the rain stopped and the sky cleared and lucked out with the most beautiful, multi-toned sunset over the water. I carried the buoyancy of that walk with me for the rest of the rainy trip, boosted additionally by heaping plates of arrabbiata and the glass animals I couldn’t resist.
Enter new wanderers: my mom and my younger sister. After a night spent in the Barcelona airport — which is not conducive to wandering between the hours of midnight and 7 a.m. — my mom and sister were waiting for me in Granada. They were unfazed and fresh, eager for a week of city-hopping in Spain and a weekend trip to Portugal. Over lunch with my host family who doesn’t speak English and my family who doesn’t speak Spanish, I became the mediator between two cultures and two mothers. I translated the refined process of olive oil making as dictated by my host dad and explained to my mom why my host mom thought she needed one more piece of flan! At one point, I turned to my mom and said, “Just smile and laugh, she lost me but I know it was a joke.”
At the end of the meal, the waiters brought out flan with 21 candles in it and everyone sang “Happy Birthday” in Spanish as a very early surprise. My host mom said it was because I should “celebrate my birthday with my family.” We also went to Easter Mass in a 16th-century church as one big happy family, and my mom wondered aloud why there was a big screen at the front. We quickly found out. It turned out to project a Prezi-like read-along, complete with transitions, effects and a musical number with the Virgin Mary singing a ballad and an actor playing Jesus with a fluorescent white robe. I have three people who can vouch for me. Imagine if I had just wandered into that.
