I wanted it to be special. I also wanted the honeymoon I wanted, not just a bake-on-the-beach holiday. They bored me. What I wanted was to break out my backpack again. But I was pretty sure that Bev was never going to be of the backpack and Doc Martens sort. So, I compromised.
I thought, what do you think of when you think romantic destinations? I thought Venice. I thought Paris. I asked Bev what she thought about those destinations. She said they sounded romantic. She did not voice a preference for either. So, I booked both.
I didn’t go through a travel agent at first. I searched travel magazines. I searched maps. I asked Hemingway. Hemingway told me to book a hotel near the Piazza San Marco in Venice, someplace close to Harry’s bar. He also told me that Paris was a Movable Feast, and that most of the ex-pats had hung their hats in the Latin Quarter. If those spots were good enough for Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Joyce, they were good enough for me.
Then I went to a travel agent. This is what I want, I said: I do not want to stay at a major chain hotel, I do not want to stay in a place that could just as well be in Toronto or Spokane. I wanted ambiance. A balcony would be a plus, but not essential. Proximity to the Metro was essential in Paris, though.
We found a wonderful privately-owned little hotel in Venice. Marbled interior, a little terrace alongside, a cistern in the courtyard before the entrance. We found a less than ideal hotel in Paris. It looked better on its website, but truth be told it was fine. More than that, it was good. It served our needs well. The room was comfortable, the Metro was down the block and there was a restaurant/pub/cafĂ© a block away. We were even able to change rooms when upon checking in we thought the first room too small for the length of time we were staying there. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Once the hotels and flights were booked, all we had to do was wait. We made sure our passports were in order. Bev packed for a week, choosing, sorting, changing her mind, repacking, contemplating. I packed the night before.
We went to the airport. Obviously excited. This was our first big trip together. Prior to this we’d been to Manitoulin. Manitoulin is great. If you’ve never been you should go; but having been there for a few consecutive years, I’d had my fill of driving around, going to the same towns, browsing the same shops, going to the same beaches, eating at the same places. Had my back not been injured we might have gone on some of the nature hikes thereabouts, but chronic pain had put such excursions on the backburner. So, I was due for a change. I wanted a return to backpacks and Doc Martens, even if the backpack was a suitcase on casters and the Docs were dress shoes and sandals.
We packed notebooks too. I’d always meant to take one on my other trips but it somehow always slipped my mind. Why a notebook? Because even though a picture is worth a thousand words, pictures are no substitute for words. That building, that person, becomes a hazy memory in the course of time. Thoughts, recollections and anecdotes give depth to those pictures. They can also jog the memory. And capture your thoughts. Impressions. Mood. Ambiance.
The flight from Timmins to Toronto was as it usually is, full, loud, prone to turbulence. The flight to Rome was better. Larger. Smoother. But it was also a red eye. I’m not complaining; red eyes are great; they get you in country at the dawn of a new day, ensuring your first day of holiday isn’t a loss spent in the air. The only problem with a red eye is jetlag. You need to realize that you will be crossing time zones and that the time for sleep is limited, at best. I’m lying. You will not get enough sleep on a red eye to Europe no matter how much sleep you get.
Bev did not get enough sleep. Once we were in the air, I waited just long enough to finish my meal, which is always served early on such flights, before pulling out my mask and earplugs from my carry-on.
“Time to go to sleep,” I told Bev.
“But I’m not tired,” she said.
I sympathised, but I tried to explain that she had best try to sleep whether she was tired or not (I realized that it was only about 9 pm by EDST, way too early for bed at the best of times, even more so considering the excitement brought on by expectation), telling her my tale of my first red eye and the resulting sleep deprivation that followed, but she said that she’d watch a little bit of the movie until she got a tired and then she would try.
I didn’t think that watching “Kingdom of Heaven” was worth the sleep deprivation sure to follow. I wouldn’t know if it was. I didn’t watch it then. I still haven’t. What I did do was put my mask on and squeeze the earplugs into my ears.
“You really need to try to sleep now,” I said before sliding the mask over my eyes, my voice muffled and watery through the plugs.
“I will in a bit,” she said.
I closed my eyes, set my mask and tried to relax. I was asleep in no time.
When I woke at about 4:30 am Rome time, Bev was a mess. Her hair was awry, her eyes close to closing, red as though irritated by a beach of salt water and sand. She was obviously, painfully, tired, much as I had been after my first red eye to Amsterdam.
“I didn’t sleep at all,” she said.
What could I say? I’m sorry? I was. I said so.
“You need to get some morning sunlight to reset your clock,” I said. I did not say that she would feel like shit for the rest of the day.
There was a little confusion as to what was happening with our bags. Our luggage was not in Rome. We watched as everyone from our flight collected their bags and filtered out the door, leaving us and an empty carousel behind. “Where is our luggage?” I thought. “Was it lost? Were we going to spend a few days waiting for it to catch up with us?” I asked a terminal employee. He looked at out baggage stubs and said, “You collect them in Venice.” That was new to me. When returning to Canada, I always had to collect my luggage and clear customs before continuing on to a domestic flight.
We returned to departures and boarded our flight to Venice.
Final flight. Bags collected. Customs. Cab. River shuttle between buoys marking the dredged route. Venice.
Our honeymoon had begun.
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