The End.

 Today is the final day.

We have slogged through airport after train station after hotel. We have admired cathedral after castle after colosseum. We have cheered, cried, and bit our nails at rugby games.

What’s the takeaway, you might ask?

The takeaway, dear reader, is - there isn’t one.

No single, all-encompassing phrase could describe the sheer volume of experiences on this trip. The good, the bad, the supposedly neutral, all valuable in the mosaic of what we’ll look back on. Our eyes may be drawn to the deep, unreflecting and unrepentant bad days; they may equally be drawn to the shining crown-jewel good days. There is no one tree in this forest that is more important or special or teachable than the others, they do not represent the forest as a whole and they never will. You cannot comprehend the beauty of an art piece from a single phrase, nor can you the horror of a thriller novel.

Maybe in one hundred years, some enterprising english teacher will stumble upon this post and find a hidden meaning. Maybe, even further in the future, the internet will have fallen and this will have died twice already.

It doesn’t matter, because right now I desperately need to be doing something that’s not autobiographical.

Day 23

 Hello! It’s been a while.

I’m going to keep it relatively quick, because I barely remember - I mean I have stuff to do.

Anyways, two days ago started off quietly and seemed to stay that way. We woke up, got on a train for several hours then got supper in our destination, Munich. German restaurants and Germany in general are a far cry from the sheer disorganization in Italy. I felt a lot more comfortable there than in Rome, but it still doesn’t beat Exeter.

The food was pretty good, but seemed really centered around cold meats, which I didn’t like. The server was entertaining, but not annoying, which I did like!

The next day, we woke up super early (I’m not kidding this time - 6am!) to go on a castle tour. We actually missed the first bus because so many people were on it and they couldn’t fit us, but they had another one lined up right behind it. The castles were quite impressive - though the first, smaller one was my favourite. It was rather quaint, as castles built for Ludwig II go, using mirrors to make it seem like there was more gold than there was instead of just adding more. The second one was double the amount of opulence, spread across five floors instead of two. The chandeliers were quite impressive!

That’s most of what I remember. Time to go be productive, maybe.

Day 20 - 9

 20. Twenty whole frickin days.

Is it weird that I’m kinda looking forward to going home? I mean, I’m excited for the final and all, but the rest is starting to slur like a practice piece for an amateur flutist.

Anyways, today was a super lazy day. Most of what happened was museum, and there was lots of museum. There were boats! And more boats! And a door! I’m not sure that last one was intentionally on display, but oh well. I didn’t quite feel alive at that point, so I sort of wandered and ghosted through the museum like a soul out of time staring at remnants of what used to be reality. I had some spaghetti there.

After that, it was mostly chill chill chill. I beat my high score in a racing game - 9688, just short of the 10000 score I’d need to move my ranking from B+ to A (my previous record was 9626.) I think I might have finally cracked the trick to getting the higher rankings, but that remains to be seen.

At about six, we went to the final dinner (which I’ve been calling the Last Supper in my head for funsies) with the rest of our tour group for the very last time.

I don’t think I’ll miss it.

Day 19 - 8

 I am finally free of our tour guide!

That’s a bit mean. My point is, he got kind of annoying after a certain point (if I never hear anyone call me a baby repeatedly again it will be too soon) and also I just didn’t like him. Blame it on the energy drink.

Anyways, today was very boat. I got on a boat far too early (9am) (this is sarcasm) and went basically nowhere. It was a nice boat though. Not a gondola.

We then went to the Doge’s Palace (no association with the Department of Government Efficiency) where there were incredibly few frescoes for a place as fresco-heavy as Italy. This is apparently because the humidity in Venice degraded the paint or something? I barely remember. The days are blurring together.

We then maybe had free time? Our tour guide, for what is not the first time, didn’t communicate something to us and then got upset when we didn’t know (the thing being that we didn’t actually have free time) (this is another reason I’m annoyed by him).

Anyways, after that mess we got on a boat again, where I drank the aforementioned energy drink, and we got to the island of Murano! Or Burano. One was glassblowing and one was food. We went to the glassblowing one first.

We saw some glass get blown, which was surprisingly satisfying. We got some glass stuff, and then we were marshalled off to the other one, where I ate my steak and then mom’s steak and then pasta with meat sauce and also bread, only possibly in that order. Mom bought a glass dragon and we just kinda wandered for a bit. After that we went back, on the boat again, and hit the hotel. I procrastinated writing this (because I was having fun) and now here we are.

Day 18 - 7

 I hate low boats. Gondolas? Terrifying.

We started the day relatively quietly. Get up, forget to do everything, get on the high speed train, get aggressively reminded to do everything, get frustrated, do things, get off the train, get on a (non-low, thank the gods) boat, go for a ride for a bit, discover electrolytes are magic. The works.

We then went on a gondola ride. Why. I never want to do that again.

The first issue was the price math. We figured out that our tour company seemed to be wildly overcharging us on it, after having warned us that gondoliers are apparently quite rude. The next was the gondoliers themselves - every single one was smoking while driving. Terrible smell. Then, once we got on, I faced my final enemy - the rocking of the boat.

I hated it. The boat would tip wildly from side to side, constantly making me feel like we were going to tip over and fall into the water. I spent most of the ride holding onto mom for dear life.

Next, we had some dinner, where I combatted my chronic iron deficiency with a good steak. We then went on a water taxi, which was similarly low but had a covered section which made me feel less like we were going to fall off. All in all, good 7/10.

I only have to put up with our tour guide for one more day. If I never hear someone call me a baby repeatedly again, it will be too soon,

Day 17 - 6

 We got on a bus stupid early this morning.

I was asleep for basically the entire bus ride, but I woke up some more with rapid application of gelato. The town we went to was a little medieval one called Gimignano (which mom could neither pronounce nor spell) which had a frankly concerning amount of torture museums. It also had a very picturesque citadel with arrow slits and a lot of bugs.

After having gelato pt 2 and falling asleep on the bus ride home, mom wandered off to her Tuscan dinner thing that she reserved with our tour agency while me and dad vegged out for a while and looked at the England v France match results (England won, to the surprise of absolutely no one.) Afterwards, we went to a Leonardo da Vinci museum - of which there are two remarkably similar ones that were right across the street from each other and were definitely not in Vinci, as they should have been. There was an entire music section, where I played easily the most awesome drum solo I have ever played. I have never played a drum solo before.

Day 16 - 5

 Late post today cause I stayed up watching the Canada - New Zealand game.

It was amazing! Sophie de Goede really showed her skill. She scored and then converted her own try (pretty impressive) and was just generally a force on the field. At one point she (a forward) broke the defensive line and had a near-open shot through to the try line and effectively went ‘nah, that’s too much field’ because as fast as she is, she is not a back. So she lobs it off to the girl supporting her. It was a little hilarious to watch; it was 75 minutes in and they were winning by some 15 points, New Zealand couldn’t score a hat trick in that time, especially not with the fight Canada continued to put up until the game was over, beyond the last second. 

Anyways, we also went to Pisa. We did the classic hold-up-the-leaning-tower poses and got gelato. We partied in Florence too. It was sweltering - and the place where we had lunch was trying very hard to have air conditioning. The food was good, though.