(Mis)Adventures

Down 4 lbs. from start of diet.

I don’t know why, but today whilst carpooling to work I found myself getting a little sentimental and reflecting on the time I got lost in Florence, Italy. Florence is a beautiful place—old churches and sculptures everywhere you look. Some of the sculptures are duplicate replicas of the genuine articles because Napoleon (or, as my tour director liked to refer to him, “The Short Man”) came in and took it all to France. France, by the way, to this day refuses to give many of these originally Italian works back. The Mona Lisa, for example, still resides in the Louvre.

My tour director was rather insistent and bitter on this point—she gave a half-hour rant one time about the immaturity of the French and how Napoleon set the president for the artistic migrations that followed. According to her, all the great wines, fashion designers, perfume makers, and other artisans were Italian, but because Napoleon had set the venue to France, these items were meticulously grown and crafted in Italy and then moved to France for presentation, ultimately giving France the credit for said creations in many people’s minds.

For the record, I have no clue if this is how it really works, and I hold no grudges against France or the French (please note that I have known some very friendly citizens of that country in my day), but I found it an amusing story none the less. Now, back to my misadventure.

I got lost in Florence when the tour director decided to give us some free roaming time to explore the city on our own. I just turned around and everyone was gone. So there I am, in Italy, knowing how to speak only American English and French, one of which was a highly dis-preferred language due to the political climate of the time and the other I perceived to be dis-preferred for the aforementioned reasons. Plus, my French isn’t that great.

Long story short, I eventually found a cab, gave him the name of my hotel, and was thankfully saved after near an hour of full-on freaking out.

The get-a-cab method saved me a few years later while vacationing in San Diego with Mr. Borealis, too, but that’s a lengthy (and, to me, funny) story for another day. Maybe I’ll tell it when the topic turns to stories of the apocalypse—no, really, that’s how scared Mr. Borealis was.

But my point here is that since Florence, I’ve never been scared when I got lost. One time I was trying to find my way from Aurora, Colorado, to Broomfield, got turned around somehow, and found myself staring at a sign that said I was almost to Garden of the Gods (if you’re not familiar with the region, you’ll have to look at a map to see how bad at directions I am). And instead of freaking out, I just enjoyed the ride.

My advice for travel: always have the address of where you’re going. A car charger for your cell phone doesn’t hurt either.

I need a map,
Alula