Friday, April 14, 2017

on the road again

I'm all packed up and ready to go - but my heart's not quite ready. Approximately twenty-four hours from now I'll be landing in the US - I was telling Veronica about a great restaurant in Boston today, and when I pulled the search result up on my phone to show her the location, it reminded me that Ritu/Bill/I have reservations there tomorrow night. It will, of course, be great to see all the people I'm about to see, but I'm not quite ready for my trip to be over....

...but I am ready to swap out the 40kg of stuff I have and get some different stuff for the next phase of my travels. Today was a v. idyllic last day, although everything still felt like it was spinning after all the hours I spent standing on ferry boats yesterday. The last day of class was excellent; Rachael is a great teacher, and I've enjoyed all the exercises tremendously. After class, Veronica and I grabbed lunch nearby (a great gluten free pasta! and then a salad after because we were both still starving, although the waitress looked at us askance when we ordered a salad after having pasta because that's just not done). Then we took naps. Then we went out in search of fun things to buy - we found the paper place we've wandered by multiple times and managed to find it when it was open, and it's now one of my favorite stores in the world. The Italian man who runs it seems to be a sole proprietor and also makes everything himself, and I bought the most beautiful leather journal with the Venetian lion embossed in the cover, and holding it makes my heart happy. He also showed us his guest book, which was signed by Johnny Depp, and then he gave me and V each a bookmark with our initials, and he was so friendly (and kept speaking to us in Italian even though we clearly didn't really quite understand him), and it was kind of magical.

Nothing could really top that, but we wandered around a bunch more shops, and found a jewelry place that had also been closed the last time we saw it, where I bought a pair of earrings. Then I cut myself off from further purchases, because really, it's unnecessary. We ended our wanderings with a glass of wine and an attempt at looking out over the water (really we looked out over a dock, since the waterside restaurants reserve the waterside tables for people who are eating meals). Then we met the rest of the group for the goodbye dinner - it was a cute outdoor terrace right around the corner from our hotel, and I had more gluten free pasta and split a bottle of chianti with Misty (who is lovely - another SF person, although I don't know her well), and generally enjoyed the feeling of the end.

Then I came back to the hotel and packed, and I think that I distributed the weight in my bags appropriately to keep from having to pay any excess (as long as my backpack doesn't burst in transit). And now I'm going to sleep so that I can prepare myself for the flight tomorrow - goodnight!

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