Let's Go, Jane!

After nearly four months on the road, this will be my last post before returning to the U.S. As much as I’ve loved this chapter, I am ready to hang up my travel hat for a while. This last week has been a whirlwind tour of Italy–Milan, Florence, Rome, and Venice–moving through these places at a faster pace than Charley or I could absorb them. We are both feeling the accumulated fatigue of months away from home (he left the States only a week after I did), but even in our tiredness there were still moments that landed. 

We arrived in Milan around dusk and were greeted by a murmuration of starlings, a mesmerizing display of hundreds of birds moving in unison in the sky outside the train station. They created these fluid shapes that morphed and changed, with smaller groups breaking off and rejoining the whole. I could have watched it for hours, but we needed to get to the hostel to drop off the bags that we’d been dragging around all day. With only one night in Milan, we wandered around, ate dinner, and slept, and in the morning we climbed the hundreds of stairs to the top of the Duomo di Milano. It was overcast and rainy, not ideal for photos, but the cathedral itself was still stunning.

We made our way to Florence by train, and stayed in a cute apartment Charley had found on Booking.com. By this time we were starting to grate on each other’s nerves a bit, and mostly just did our own thing. We lived together for two years and got along well, but it’s amazing how four months apart, and his first real taste of independence, can subtly shift a dynamic.

One morning he went out on his own and came back with a nice bottle of red wine. It caught me by surprise—in the best way. I suppose that’s what it looks like when your child becomes an adult. We were in Florence for two nights, but we didn’t do much beyond wandering and making ourselves a nice pasta dinner, which honestly felt like enough.

It was still overcast and raining as we boarded a train bound for Rome. I had booked us two beds in a four-person hostel dorm, which we shared with a very nice roommate named Hamza, a solo-traveling young software engineer from Pakistan. The next afternoon, Charley and I met Adam at the airport and brought him back to the hostel, where we now outnumbered Hamza three-to-one. He was a good sport about staying in “our” room, and it was nice to have a non-family presence in the mix.

The three of us continued on to Venice, where we’re staying in a three-bedroom apartment for five nights. It’s been cold and rainy, and we’re all tired, so even after three nights here, we’ve mostly stayed close to home—exploring nearby, cooking simple meals, and letting ourselves rest. Venice deserves more energy than we have to offer it right now, and I’m okay with that.

What I was not prepared for was the shift from solo traveler back into mom mode. I resent every towel left on the floor and the fact that the sink seems perpetually full of dishes. It’s a small thing, but it’s been oddly revealing—just how much I’ve grown accustomed to my freedom since my marriage ended and my nest emptied, and how fiercely I’ve come to value it.

We still have one full day in Venice today, when the shops reopen after Christmas. We’ll ride the vaporetto (the water bus), and maybe head to Murano to see the hand-blown glass being made. One thing I’ll say about the food here: Italy belongs in the same rare category as Thailand–everything I have eaten has been delicious. 

After today we’ll go back to Rome and fly home together. I had originally planned to end this journey in London on January 1st, but I changed my ticket to leave the same day as my kids. I could have squeezed in four more nights, but I didn’t want to. I’m not sad about it. I’m finished. Four months on the road gave me exactly what I needed, and now I’m ready to go home–not because I ran out of places to see, but because I finally ran out of the need to keep moving. I’m looking forward to being back in the States—hugging my family, seeing Carey, and finally turning my attention to the van plan I dreamed up a year ago. It feels less like the end of something, and more like the beginning of the next chapter.