Travel is an investment in life many people fail to make.

You decide to travel someplace inspirational before turning 40. Somehow, this pivotal age calls up the blanks you feel you need to fill in within your life. Just what those blanks are remain to be discerned. It is a longing. A calling. Further intrigue. Or even a need to find one’s true compulsion that decides you on Greece. Not that your life is bland. It is just in a rut and you feel the nagging sense you don’t fully appreciate all you have. You have become numb to what it means to be an American with means. You buy expensive wine and epicurean butter. You pay for three-thousand dollar repairs on your house and it doesn’t dent your life the way it once had. Once you were a working single making $10k a year, having to choose between a filling up the car with gas or purchasing a new pair of LEGGS. Simply, you no longer struggle. This has left you strangely unsatisfied. You have a sense about why this is so. It has to do with perspective. You cannot see a tree for the forest.


It was ten years since Dimitri, a Greek-American colleague, told you that anyone who stands before the Aegean Sea cannot help but feel it tugging at one’s soul to begin the work she was put on earth to do. So moving is that statement, you have pondered it ever since. Perhaps it was because it was with him you first glimpsed our nation’s capital. First saw our constitution from two feet away in the days before terror made this impossible. It was on that day, you remember, that his patriotism washed over you. He had passionately shared his love of America and determination to be self-reliant. He wanted to quit his corporate job and “feed his family himself” instead of allowing a big company to do so. It vexed him that someone else gave him a paycheck. He wanted to create the paycheck. He told you how it had started with his immigrant father who not only made the best of his life in your country, but did it with relish and appreciation most of her citizens never consider. As you strolled through the cherry blossomed streets that day, he took you to the Smithsonian Museum where his father had once worked as a stone mason. He explained how his father offered the lowest bid just to get the job and be part of the crew who chiseled the indelible words of Jefferson into her ivory wall. It was then you made faith with the idea that you love people who love America. You want to be more like them. And since you do not know anyone else like this, you believe this is a uniquely Greek value.

Shortly before your 40th, you book a trip on a cruise ship that will sail from Venice to Athens and back in a span of 11 days. It will stop at several ports in between. Even Slovenia, which until now, you could never have located on a map. You begin marking the days off on the calendar. Next, you embark on what seems to be the most important American preparation for the trip. Shopping. Of course, you are not completely shallow. You also gather numerous guidebooks and travel memoirs about Greece and Italy, along with a few Berlitz tapes that will teach you touristy phrases such as “How much is this scarf?” and “Where is the water closet?”

Like the adage goes, a funny thing happened on the way to your Greek holiday. And you are absolutely sure that if everyone experienced what you experienced, saw what you saw, the world would change. People would invest not only in mutual funds, but in collecting stamps in their passports.

You arrive in Venice with the sensation you are about to meet a real person. You have even selected something appropriately vintage to wear when Venice first meets you. Such is your expectation of the city that visitors must respect her beauty with something of their own. You have read so many novels about the city, you expect it to ooze Casanova and historical secrets from every bridge. Your expectations are too high. Venice cannot possibly live up to your expectation. Yet, it does. But not before you have to schlep and strain your over-stuffed suitcase off the Allilaguna airport shuttle and over three bridges to find your hotel. This is the first lesson Venice has imparted. She is a city best traveled on foot, with a light load and not in shorts if you want a shot at entering Harry’s Bar.
You check into the lovely and quaint Villa Igea in Campo San Zaccaria and instantly know you have made a good choice. It is quiet and out of the way without being too out of the way. It feels safe due to its proximity to the carbineri, or police station. A small courtyard spreads out in front of the hotel. Inside your room, you find perfectly stretched gold fabric on the walls. Quickly discarding your 13 hour flight clothes and changing, you make your way into the Venice streets, heading for St. Mark’s square. Along the way, the sights intoxicate you. Every step is a romantic postcard of apricot facades and green water. Every other step is a souvenir seduction of original paintings, feathery masks and puppet gondoliers. It is almost too much up close. You also quickly spot the pale pink glass of the street lamps giving off a rosy hue in the twilight. Venice must want everyone to look better under her colors. And they do.

Turning into the square, you expect and find throngs of people. But it is not shoulder to shoulder as you feared and you find you can easily navigate through the shirt sellers, picture takers and pigeon feeders. Following your husband’s lead, you walk right through the path of a picture, the first of many vacation photos you will appear in along this trip. But who can blame you. St. Marks is not a place to be stagnant and still. Everyone moves. Everyone seems to have a place to go as they criss-cross the expansive square. Still, you stand in awe of St. Mark’s Basilica. You are amazed at the fresh reds and blues of its mosaics. The sharp contrasts of its sculptures. The idea that an apostle’s remains are within.

In the evening, your dinner consists of tomato/mozzarella sandwiches and a bottle of red wine, all of which cost you more than a gourmet feast dinner back home in Dallas. But where else can you dine in what Napoleon called Europe’s drawing room. You eat your small sandwiches and watch the pigeons alight on the shoulders and heads of children. You hear violin music behind you, a colorful touch enabled by the café’s tuxedo-clad musicians. It is worth a great deal more than the steak dinner price.

In the morning, you ped throughout a maze of streets and canals of Venice, away from the Grand Canal and deep into the city. Before long, you have escaped the tourists completely. You begin walking with purpose so the real Venetians won’t find you grossly out of place. Here, you see clothes line after clothes line dangling from gold sun-baked houses. Open air markets selling fresh fruit and vegetables. Great glass cases stuffed with pastry and panninis. Tilted church spires that lean toward the lagoon. You come into a square that is empty, save for a lone monk reading his Bible. It is then you look up at the mass of white marble and stone and behold a great church. So still is the square, you feel you have intruded on its privacy as you stroll, hand in hand with your husband in silence. It is almost as romantic as a gondola ride, perhaps more so for its aesthetic surprise. That and the fact that most one-day visitors will never see this Venice. You have to resist the touristy impulse to photograph the monk. You find peace with the sweetened knowledge that your husband has seen this with you and because he must also sense this, he squeezes your hand. You remember how traveling with someone you love is a wonder for this reason – you have a witness to the beauty you won’t be able to describe or photograph.
You slowly make your way back toward the crowds and duck into a place called Crazy Bar. The whole eatery is about the size of your master bathroom. There are only three wooden booths, a countertop and a pizza oven. Justin Timberlake booms from the stereo. It is an odd pairing against the boisterous Italian conversations taking place within. You squeeze into an open booth tucked next to the window and order two pizzas and a beer. While you wait, you watch the strangers walk and photograph the bridge just outside. You are lucky to have stopped for a moment to let Venice’s people and visitors walk past you. It’s not hard to discern who is who. The Venetians, man and women alike, have colorful scarves around their necks while the visitors have thick black camera straps.

You walk to the dock where your hotel concierge has arranged a private water taxi to escort you to the ship for your cruise. As you jet out across the lagoon, you say farewell to the city front, which at present is basked in warm sunlight. The houses and shops whizzing by before you as you go. It is wonderful, you muse, to have this view from the water. Greater still, to be in this well cared for wooden boat with only your husband. You know you were right to have tacked on an extra day in Venice at the end of your cruise.
On board your 1200 passenger ship, there are the usual items to take care of such as unpacking and locating your life vest. Within a half-hour, the entire ship is required to muster for the safety-drill. And only minutes after this task is done, you are welcomed to as many margaritas as you wish for the sail away party on the Lido Deck. In some parallel vacation world, the juxtaposition of lifeboats and liquor makes perfect sense.

The first night onboard requires “smart casual” for dinner and though you know it is wrong, you examine what you have packed with a sense of unease. It is not a complete clothing emergency, but you wonder what possessed you to make some of your clothing choices. This thought will unfortunately haunt you throughout your trip. Still, you vow to dismiss those worries as soon as they creep up by mentally slapping yourself in the head and remembering that a Mediterranean woman has a great sense of scarf style that sees her through. You vow your scarf will become your constant backpack companion. It works.
Less than 24 hours later, the ship is docked in Croatia and you set out to explore Dubrovnik, the well preserved walled city who defended herself, more or less, over religious themes for hundreds of years. You have a great reason to love the country since your husband is one-quarter Croatian, although all he knows how to say in his one-quarter ancestral tongue is “shut up.” Apparently his grandfather used this on him more than once. So you ped on, basking in the clear warm day and looking over the souvenir booths selling dried lavender and needlework.
Your guide greets you and she glosses over the country’s less proud moments quickly. The recent Bosnian war was geographically so far removed from her walls that the landscape is postcard beautiful. An expansive hillside resort is about to open, she says. Just six months ago, it was still housing refugees from nearby villages. She further tells you that the average income across Croatia is around 350 Euros per month. You get a taste of the wounds still healing. Still, she presses on, Croatia is ambitiously trying to gain acceptance into the European Union, which will have a greater power to influence the economy.

Your impressions of Dubrovnik are these: the interior of the city is sparkling and ivory. The streets are under the constant traffic of visitors who polish her marble walks to a shiny gleam. Outside, the sea is emerald green in places, fading out into stunning shades of blue that only an artist could, or should, name. So much so, that it is almost surreal. “It is like we are on a movie set,” your husband remarks. Further still, the high outside wall, visible from the cream city, is stunning, with its multi-layer bricks reveals what your guide calls “Three tiers of Europe’s history all in one structure.” Some layers were rebuilt due to man’s destruction. Others due to nature in the form of an earthquake. Here, you begin gaining the perspective that you are an ant. A spec. A droplet in the span of history. The span of men who built and built with their eyes far into the future. Your house will not be here, you know, in two hundred years. It will likely be a parking space.

So here it is. You are barely a few hundred miles into the Aegean and her waters are already rippling across your conscious. So you write in your notebook: who has time to be selfish? You look at the scarf in your backpack and hope the sentiment will last.

The next port of call puts you deep into the Cyclades. You like how this word rolls across your tongue and wonder if you could find uses for it back home. Could you insert this into cocktail conversation with ease? If you bought a gold-fish, would this be a suitable name? The Greeks are lucky to have so many words that are poetic all by themselves. This thought alights on you as you hear your next guide tell you how the locals call the approaching island Thira. A lovely name for a dark-haired little girl, you jot in your notebook. Although no one calls it by that name. She is known to everyone as Santorini.

A tender shuttles you from the boat to the island, twenty at a time. Approaching the sheer volcanic cliffs from a vessel roughly the size of two Suburbans is humbling and you once again feel like an insect. You look up and up and marvel at how or even why someone had sailed to this island and mused that she could be inhabited. You sail past a murky patch of water with a thick incandescent coat of oil on the surface. The ill-fated Sea Diamond sank there just two weeks before. A ship close to the size of your own. It stirs up a conversation amongst your fellow travelers about why it happened. What news has been gathered about it. At present, there is a rumor the captain ran it up onto a volcanic reef on purpose. It was only when he had pulled away that the hull was damaged. You note how this is an apt metaphor for many of life’s decisions. Perspective, you think, is taking shape.

Once on the island, you get into a bus, which makes hair-pin turns up, up, up the sides of the island. At one point, you look out your sea-facing window and cannot see any land. Just an expanse of water. Time to admire your husband’s features instead. At the summit, Santorini spreads out before you in whites and blues. Though it is an overcast day, it is still brilliant, if not a little haunting. You now understand the compulsion to settle here. Like so many things in life, the climb was worth the view.

The bus takes a quick circle of the island in a half hour. The most amazing feature about the gray-black slopes are the vineyards stripping the landscape. Trained in the shape of a basket, the vines sit in neat circles against the black earth. Your guide explains that the dearth of rain requires the vines to be formed in that shape so they will retain what little water they receive and protect the fruit from too much sun.

Inside the town, church bells ring out and you remember it is a Sunday. Still, the shops are open to receive the tourists’ money in exchange for scarves, gold jewelry and olive-oil soap. After you have left your Euros throughout the shops in exchange for an olive wrap sweater and matching dresses for your daughters, you find your way to Zafora, a quaint taverna overlooking Athenios port. You would never get this good a seat in the swell of the summer season so you savor the moment of getting the table of a celebrity. You decide on a dish you’ve never had or heard of before: Kleftika. All good travelers should order something daring. Few do. Your courage is rewarded as you unwrap a foil of tender lamb, cheese and tomato and a spice that hints of clove. Even your husband looks on your plate with mouth-watering envy. It is one of those unforgettable meals, not just for the flavor, but the view below. Just down the rocks, you get a bird’s eye view of the sunken ship’s oil slick and stunning view of your own ship, tethered in the water far from the spot where the Sea Diamond was damaged against the reefs. You give a mental wink to your captain, thanking him for his skill.

To get back to the ship, you have the option of taking a cable car, a donkey or walking down 900 steps. You are fit, you think, so you take a walk. You move down the treacherous steps with the greatest of attention, not so because of their steepness, but because you must navigate a maze of Santorinian donkey doo. After a while it is amusing. More so when you run across the ship’s female dancers. The four of them don t-shirts that announce “I love my boyfriend” in silver glitter. The girls tell you they wear these shirts in port to keep away any would-be Lotharios. This coupled with the sight of these nimble-toed dancers in flip-flops, clutching their shopping bags, dodging the doo is nothing but hilarious. You hope they will remember this when they turn 40.
Next, you dock in Rhodes, named the sunniest place in Greece by one of your guidebooks. You are introduced to the unforgettable Constantine, a professor of history who lives in Athens half the year, the other half entertaining dozens of travelers each year. You are delighted that he is the quintessential Greek man. Old enough to be wise, young enough to be energetic. His knowledge and humor combine to a point where the whole bus seems to lean forward to hear about the approaching town of Lindos. So much history pours forth with an energy that tells you how much he wants you to KNOW Greece. Notable among his lessons are, “Time is eternal. Only the dates change.” He urges us, his students, to learn to “think by knowing history.” It is on an ancient stone under a giant olive tree that he tells you the story of how St. John stopped in Lindos twice on his way to Ephesus. The sight of it calls up a Socratic classroom so you snap a picture so no one back home will say you made it up. Later, you will read the rapt faces of the listeners and remember more of how Constantine shared Greek culture. “You never make a deal with a man unless you know the opinion of his wife. It will not work.”

You write and write notes on what he is saying until you realize you may be a risk of being like Bob, the guy in your group who is seeing his entire vacation through the lens of his camcorder. You stop, pick a flower, press it into your book and take in the amazing blue sea. Your husband leaps onto a pillar that has obviously fallen out of place like so many others in the ruin-laden field. He begs you to take a picture of him, posing as he does like a Greek statue. You already love that picture. It is, you know, destined to become your computer wallpaper.

Tuesday comes early and you disembark in the Turkish port of Kusadasi. A life-size turkey greets you and the ships’ photographer snaps a picture. It’s pure cheese. Still heady on culture from the day before, you have high hopes on the vibes you will get from ancient Ephesus. Your expectations are matched, primarily because you have been welcomed by the female form of Constantine. Her name is Eti and she tells us she will be our mama for the day. “Turkey is about the size of Texas,” she says on the bus ride through Izmir, pointing to her map. Someone asks her why there are Turkish flags hanging from every house, balcony and street sign and she tells us it was that the day before was a national holiday to commemorate Ataturk, who began his rule in 1923. “Before him, women had to veil their faces and a man could say ‘I divorce you’ three times and be divorced,” Eti says. “Since Ataturk, that is not so. He also ushered in literacy to a population largely uneducated. He did this by announcing that all citizens had to learn to spell their names in Latin within three months or they would not get paid.” And so they learned quickly, she says proudly.

As you arrive at the base of Ephesus, Eti describes a once glorious port town that once held more than a quarter million residents, had hot and cold running water, the world’s first street lamps, and embellishments by Alexander the Great, who wanted all the houses to face the sea. This fact has to now be imagined because Ephesus is not the port town she once was. The sea today cannot even be seen from Ephesus. Where water once flowed, yellow farmland is spread wide due to natural changes in climate and earthquakes. If not for the mile-long stretch of amazing, yet skeletal stone structures, one might mistake the region for a parched Californian hillside. But after Eti paints her colors onto the stones, library, mosaics and pathways of Ephesus, your imagination gives way and you can see why Antony and Cleopatra honey-mooned here so many centuries ago. Greater still, you can call up the kind of multi-god, wine and theater good life the people enjoyed, inspiring St. Paul to write his epistles to the Ephesians after he had lived within its decadent borders for two years. You are reminded of the great rise and fall of many a world capital.

With this thought of world economics sobering your mind, you stroll through the port shops in Kusadasi after your tour of Ephesus is over. It is tempting to merely describe the Kusadasian shopping experience with the fail-safe, you just had to be there. You would have to stroll for yourself and be shopkeeper cat-called by not one, two or three of the vendors – but all of them. You cannot even admire a pair of shoes without being surrounded by a Turkish salesman, pressing you to come deeper into his stores. You cannot move on past his shop without the adjacent shopkeeper announcing, “My turn,” as you leave his competitor’s store. And the rug merchant Moustafa, you now realize, should run for political office, with his pleas to you to purchase his rugs for “the beauty of your eyes” overwhelm him. “What could you pay?” he asks. Begs. Implores. Finally, you have to say you have no rug budget, but if you did, you would buy from him. You soon realize this is the wrong tac because he produces his “Boss” from behind the rug curtain who holds a calculator in his hand and shows the deep discount you would receive and how “You should buy it now. You will never be here again. These rugs are very, very hard to find.” It is amusing and entertaining and when you behold the brilliant silk-on-silk masterpiece depicting the Arabian Nights, you indeed wish you had a rug budget. “Please, what can you pay?” he begs. Your husband says he would not want to insult them with his offer and they recognize the game is done.

Which brings you to the amazing Athens. You want to rid yourself by now of the word “amazing.” For the next trip, you think, you will stock up on better adjectives. For now, you walk from the ship to the bus, avoiding the photographic fromage du jour – a ship’s crewwoman dressed as a Grecian goddess. On the bus, a snappy Greek man presses you to buy a thin volume about Greece and he’ll throw in ten postcards free. Several travelers oblige him before you set off, this time with your thirty-something guide Vassilis, who tells everyone to call him Bill. How American are we that we cannot even call him Vassilis, you think. Bill, you think, will not do.

Your first point of Athenian reference is stifling traffic that soon bogs your bus down to a full stop so that all you have to gaze upon is not the inspiring Aegean, but a thick tangle of cars, featureless apartment buildings and yesterday’s wash. You had read that even Athenians remark that it’s not a particularly pretty city, and for this you gave it immediate compassion. Your native city of Dallas has no visible beauty for the one day visitor either.

Vassilis renders a compact history of Athens as you make your way to Cape Sounion to behold the Temple of Poseidon. Slowly, the grey city is behind you and you see blue water in all directions. Once at the cape, you are ready to learn more. But not before the throng of your group complains that the forty-five minute journey leaves them in need of a water closet. None to be found close, Vassilis nervously chats with the ship’s chaperone and together they make a plan to bus the bladder-challenged to the nearest hotel for relief. Half of the group is lost, but Vassilis charges on toward the duty of educating us about the temple and you are glad he does so. You will have more of the monument to yourself. As you climb the steps, you question him if this is one of the temples that forms a triangle along with the Parthenon and another location. This random fact seems to have lodged in your memory somewhere. He smiles warmly at you. “Are you an archeologist?” he muses. You nod no and he says, “You have discovered one of my secrets already.” He shows you his clipboard with a highlighted view of an isosceles triangle forming at the points of the Temple of Poseidon, the Parthenon and the Temple of the Island on Aegina. He asks where you are from and you say Texas. “Oh, George Bush. Dixie Chicks. That is all I know, I am sorry.”

There will be much debate/complaining throughout the day on whether this particular excursion to Sounion was worth one’s time. Being the planner of all of our excursions, you too feel a little wary about the two and half hours expended on this effort. But the view from this particular jut into the Aegean was, in retrospect, exactly where Dimitri had urged you to stand. To look out onto the expanse of water and imagine Odysseus’ ships nodding toward Poseidon. To see the misty haze out into the sea until the blue water vanished and seemed to drop off the earth. This was the compelling point for the restless traveler. To see what others have seen across the ages. To feel the wanderlust of the sea and the curiosity of what lay “out there.” Its pull, you now realize was powerful. For all of those who could not resist the call of nature or pined for shopping time in Athens, they must have missed this point. Not Vassislis, though, for he read lines from Byron, his pages flapping in the wind, of what the poet had once surmised about the point where you stood. In his own way, “Bill” wanted us to KNOW the significance of Greek heritage. The reason why this temple was built out on this cape as a portent to sailors of the rocky cliffs to come around the bend. A signal to look ahead, not behind. Perspective indeed.

More than an hour later, you are trekking up the slippery steps of the Acropolis, the top of the Parthenon peaking out from the trees. You feel your heart beat faster as you prepare to meet it face to face. How many years have passed since you studied perhaps the world’s best preserved monument of antiquity back in elementary school Social Studies? At last, it appears in full against the backdrop of a pale blue sky. You had not expected the giant crane in the background. A massive restoration is underway and the construction crew, thankfully, is leaving just as you approach. You thank God for the Mediterranean two o’clock lunch hour so you can observe this marvel in relative piece. In fact, there are few enough tourists here for you to capture a picture of your husband with no other people in the periphery. His future favorite picture. And for all of the Acropolis’ wonder, you do in fact feel awash with contemplation. The beginning of so many beginnings started here, not the least of which are democracy and the pursuit of wisdom.

Dreamy with antiquity, you amble back into the ship, eager to write your inspirations. You get a caramel coffee and settle into a chair in the ship’s Internet lounge with your journal only to be roused from your impressions of marble and philosophical firsts by the sound of an angry passenger, complaining that the Internet is too slow and can he be reimbursed for minutes lost trying to get on-line? It is another unsavory juxtaposition, you decide, and write in the margins of your notes “internet idiotus.” Thankfully, Vassilis had educated you about the world’s first parliament at the base of the Parthenon where the obnoxious speakers were labeled idiotus, the Greek root word for people who cannot keep their affairs private.

A trip to the origins of thought would not be complete without a nod to the origins of sport. Not an athlete yourself, you still love the Olympics for their spirit. For this, Olympia does not disappoint. It is modern and ancient at once. Earthquakes have reduced it to so many stones toppled together like fallen dominoes no one has bothered to reassemble. But there are two features which strike you right away. Ancient Olympia still has her first track and you can still put your foot in the dust where the first sandals competed. You ditch your backpack and with your husband, run a lap just to say you did. Although, this is largely symbolic since you have also learned that the first athletes ran nude and anointed with olive oil. Like the rest of antiquity, you are left to imagine the scene in full, which has its own pleasures. The second item is that the stone pit used to light the ancient Olympic torch is still used today. Marathon runners take the flame from Olympia to Athens to light the Athenian flame and then allow it to board a plane bound for the host city’s own torch. Past and present, still at work.

With Olympia behind you, the bus takes your group back to the port town of Katakolon where you lunch next to the water on one of the best meals of the entire trip. A feast of spanakopita, cheese pies, gyros and white wine. Your bellies full, you amble up and down the streets of the small fishing port, waving hello to the other ship passengers. The fact that yours is the only ship in port today makes everyone you pass on the street seem familiar. Part of a large, if not internationally dysfunctional family, you share tips on where you found the best ice cream and where you can use your calling cards to place calls home and did you see those X-rated playing cards of buxom Greek women? Suddenly, the sky becomes the focus as two jet fighters chase each other across the sky, drowning out any conversation. Since the waiters and shopkeepers do not seem alarmed, you decide you are not being attacked. Finally, one of them tells you a military base is not far away and they commonly run drills in the afternoon.
You are grateful for the following day. A full day at sea where most will catch up on laundry and the odd postcard. You plan to occupy this lazy day with games of Scrabble, a movie and getting ready for the last formal night onboard, complete with the third new scarf purchase you have made on your voyage.

You hunker down inside the small laundry room, stalking a washer that has ten minutes left to go. Inside, a seventy-ish man sits with you and you strike up conversation, querying him on his favorite excursion of the cruise. He wipes a tearful eye and tells you he has been too sick the last two days, missing the Parthenon and Ephesus, the very places he came on this trip to visit. You nod compassionately, or at least think you do, and remember how blessed you are to be on this trip at a time when others your age have the body and health but lack the funds to bon voyage to this part of the world. It is the saddest of all sights to see him there full of want and means to travel, but with an uncooperative body blocking the dream. And you wonder, with sadness, how many people outlive their ability to enjoy their IRAs?

This attitude in mind, you set about the day with zero complaints and a desire to thump the Internet idiot with a fit body in the head. You go about dressing for dinner, drinking it up with some new friends who had just won a bottle of Champagne and celebrating your husband’s $40 winnings in the casino. The next morning comes early and you are bused off quickly from the Slovenian port of Koper. Knowing little about this country, you find your tour guide Ivan instructive as he explains that his country offers both a sunny swim and a brisk ski all within the same day if one is willing to drive three hours from sea to slope. The country side is lush and green as you make your way to the city of Postjona for a chance to see Europe’s famous caves. There, you find yourself 100 feet beneath the earth’s surface, water from the river above dripping on you intermittently. You ride a train, twenty at a time, through the tunnels and into the 46 degree coolness of the underground, passing a few great chandeliers hung inside for dramatic effect. It works. You could be where the Phantom of the Opera was raised as a boy. The train stops and you follow a guide through narrow and winding paths between enormous stalagmites which, Ivan tells you, grow mere millimeters every ten years. You resist the urge to photograph the unusual shapes as it is forbidden, the flashes causing a strange photosynthesis that turn the structures green. An hour later, your legs throb from the constant climbing, but you are refreshed by the voices of youth singing, their notes echoing off the natural acoustic caverns. As you round the last corner, you discover the source of the lovely notes, now singing a haunting Ave Maria. This is, Ivan instructs, the concert hall of the caves where as many as 7,000 people gathered for concerts as early as the 1930s.

Glad to be on the surface once again and out of the cold, your husband treats you to a hot chocolate and you are on your speedy way back to the ship. Along the way, Ivan expands on the state of Slovenia’s economy, telling you that the average wage is a whopping 600 Euros per month, compared to Croatia’s 350. Slovenia, largely untouched by the recent civil war, has not had to rebuild her infrastructure like her neighboring countries and is already part of the EU. He wishes you would come back to see his country again.
By the time the sun sets, you are in Venice again, escaping from the ship under the condition that all passengers be back on board by midnight. With this Cinderella warning in hand, you run, run, run a half-mile until you come to the water shuttle. You buy a 24 hour pass for 12 Euro so you can hop on and off throughout Venice at your leisure. You remark to your husband what a surreal day it is that in the morning you were exploring Slovenian caves and now eating a prosciutto and cheese sandwich on the banks of the Grand Canal. You bargain with two gondoliers and find a better price on the last one, which is moored against a traditional blue and white stripped pole near the Rialto Bridge. Once inside, you settle into the night where the sky is dark blue and the moon almost full. It is a rarified moment, you realize, as your gondolier steadies himself on a small rug at the top of the boat and punts his way away from the noisy Grand Canal and down deserted narrow canals with only a lantern lighting the way. He comes as close as a breath to the nearby walls, never touching them. You view the mossy water marks and building decay from a foot away. You hear the water slurping and slapping across the bricks and the sides of the gondola. Your gondolier calls out an alert of his approach to any other unseen boat making its way through the narrow waters. The quiet and the blackness jerks you back into history. Your guide identifies Casanova’s former residence, an unremarkable yellow three story casa, now a private residence. Since you are American and possibly unread, you guess he feels the need to use a sparing description of this famous man. “Casanova’s house. You know. Sex machine.” Then, he passes Vivaldi’s house and gives no similar descriptor. Apparently, Venetians assume you know the creator of The Four Seasons.
You rush back to the boat, using the local vaporetto and your tired feet, in order to make the curfew. You are obliged to have your luggage outside your stateroom before midnight. With ten minutes to spare, you strip down, stuffing your Venetian night clothes into suitcases and collapsing onto your bed in laughter next to the towel made monkey your stateroom attendant has left behind. The next day, you disembark back into Venice with your luggage. But not before your husband calls your trip compadres, a pair of fun Canadian honeymooners, and makes plans to meet them at noon in front of St. Mark’s Basilica. You give your best “what were you thinking” look to your husband. It is absurd to say you will meet someone in front of St. Mark’s like it is your own town. Like it is merely a bar where it will be easy to pick someone out of the crowd. Yet, it works to your astonishment and you spot your friends amidst the throngs of people and pigeons and are once again trumped by your husband’s fearless sense of geography. Has Venice rewarded you for not being among its one-nighters?

The remainder of your day gives you a perma-smile as you explore parts of the city you had not seen before. This day, you find a host of human sculptures leaning against or inside different city walls, earning a few coins from on-lookers for their unique talents. You amble up and down the streets, admiring the windows for their elegant displays of art, Murano glass, scarves and hand-made stationary. You turn down an alley that opens into what might be a fashion district of the town. Every window is Prada and Valentino. Ballsy hawkers of knock-off purses pedal their bags from blankets right in front of the real thing. How can this be tolerated, you wonder. And then an hour later you see the police haul away one of the men in handcuffs, his overstuffed trash bags of purses being lugged along the way. Va bene, you think. That’s great!

Exhausted, you haul your tired bodies back to the Villa Igea, asking for a 3:15 wake-up call so you can make your 6:30 flight. Who booked these reservations, you chide yourself? The call comes almost as soon as you had closed your eyes and you dreamily make your way through the dark Venice streets for the last time, your luggage rolling across the cobblestones one last time. There is no one about as you get to the shuttle stop. The silence is intoxicating. You think about sprinting down to St. Mark’s Square once more just to dance in it before sunrise. But there is no time, and you wait out your last minutes of Italy at the airport shuttle water bus stop in the company of two other bleary-eyed families. You note that one wears a word-laden t-shirt and it reminds you of the life you have to return to. Fast paced. Fast food and without enough admiration for history and country. You feel the Euro-snob in you surfacing as you reminisce about Dimitri’s urging, wishing everyone in the world could have had a day in his father’s stonemason shoes. And just when you doubted this attitude was still alive and well, the t-shirt wearing man changed your mind.

You guess he is perhaps thirty-something and Hispanic. He pushes his mother in a wheelchair. An old man and a young woman haul up their luggage beside the pair. You overhear their conversation, the young man calling her “Mamma,” and tenderly gathering up her coat around her to keep her warm. Your husband makes small talk, asking if they have been in Venice and he nods yes, but just for a day. “I took my parents to see Rome. My mother always wanted to see the Pope.” The young man goes on to say his mother was among the flocks of people in wheelchairs, whom the Pope blessed yesterday morning. “And where are you flying back to,” your husband asks.

“They have to get all the way to Mexico City. But I live in Chicago. This weather has been nice. It’s so cold in Chicago and I work construction. Back to the bad weather,” he says with a flash of a smile. If you passed him on the street, you would never guess he held a passport. Someone who could see the forest and the trees. Someone who had taken his family to experience their dream, forged on the wages of a working construction. The spirit of Dimitri’s father still exists. And why not. Didn’t Constantine tell you that Chicago is Greece’s fifth largest city?
With your faith restored in people at large and American immigrant determination in particular, you have your much needed perspective. The malaise of life melts away. You want to know more history. You dare life to put you in a rut again when life is so brief. Your feet have walked in privileged places. Your eyes have seen world altering landscapes. Your ears have been immersed in an unfathomable depth of history and thought. You have traveled. And though it was not without money-saving sacrifice, you know it was cheaper than antidepressants and longer-lasting than therapy. Forty will be the start of a decade lit by Aegean blue perspective. The monetary cost of travel can be high, but the spiritual cost of not traveling is much higher.