Zero to Dream Job in 90 Days!

Day #40 Paris Part 4

Picture by K Blackwell

In Ancona, Italy, I walked from the train station to the ferry terminal, with my bag, which was light but got heavier with each step. It was December, so I had packed many layers, which worked well, but had decided on a cloth bag, which also worked well, but had no rollers. Each place I landed was a relief to put the bag down and then walk unencumbered.

I had booked open seating ferry tickets, which meant I could sit anywhere but also meant I didn’t have a place to sleep, as this was an overnight ferry. Upon boarding, I was in line with a tour group from Italy going to Medjugorje also. They didn’t speak much English and I didn’t speak much Italian, but somehow they invited me to travel on their tour bus with them to our mutual destination! They were a jovial group and we agreed to meet in the morning. I sat in a last row of seats and ended up curling up on the floor behind the seat, with my cloth bag as a pillow and my coat as a blanket. The engine noise of the boat was a source of white noise and I slept like a baby.

Medjugorje is a little town in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that I had heard about and had wanted to visit for 30 years. Similar to previous appearances in Lourdes and Fatima, the Virgin Mary had appeared to a group of children and has been appearing there to this day since 1981. I wanted to experience it for myself and this was another piece of my journey. It was a memorable experience there, too personal and long to explain here. I was very glad I made the trip, celebrated New Years and the next three days with the people of that mountain town.

I caught a regional bus back to Split, Croatia, where I would take the ferry back to Ancona and then the train to Venice, on to Trieste and back to Zagreb. As long as I made my flight home, I had lots of flexibility in where I could go and how long I could spend there. So far it had worked out perfectly and I felt confident that it would continue this way.

After a terrifying bus ride along very curvy roads on the sides of the Dinaric Alps, with the bus flying around the curves while I white knuckled my seat, I had a coffee and tried to calm my frazzled nerves at a cafe in Split. I then walked around the Emperor Diocletian’s Palace from the 4th century, with my mouth open and then boarded the ferry and once more slept on the floor. The train to Venice was uneventful, but when I walked out of the train station, I thought I was in a dream! There was the main canal, the gondolas gliding by and the ancient buildings and I just sat on the stairs and watched for a long time, soaking in the reality that I was in Venice! This is the part of a solo trip that is the hardest for me, being in an amazing place and not having anyone to share the amazement with!

Here I had no hotel reservation so I decided to take a Vaporetto, (water taxi) to St. Mark’s Square and walk around there to see what I could find. It was January 4, so I knew I would be able to find a room fairly easily, which I did and it was truly what I had hoped my hotel room in Venice would be, all velvet and gold and a tasseled key. While there, I went to several museums and art galleries, window shopped, visited many churches and sat and people watched with lots of coffees, as it had turned chilly, as it does in January.

I hated to leave Venice and as I did I was treated to a parade of “la befana” or the witches, in gondolas for Epiphany, as we went up the canal. Tradition has it in Italy, like Santa, la befana gives candy or coal to the children. The next stop on the train was Trieste, where I would take the bus to Zagreb and fly home. However when I arrived at Trieste, it was a Sunday and the buses were on the weekend schedule. Thus, there were no buses to Zagreb to be had. I was supposed to arrive at my Air b&b that afternoon, for my flight the next morning at 6am and now I was panicking for real. After much problem solving, and schedule checking, the bus station attendant helped me find an alternate route which was much longer but would get me to Zagreb at 1 am, by taking a bus up through Slovenia to Graz, Austria and then a train back down to Zagreb. That was by far the longest, most nerve wracking part of the trip, but I reached my Air b&b with a questionably sober taxi driver at 1 am and walked over to the airport with that darned heavy cloth bag at 5 am. I was back home in Aberdeen, Scotland, (via Amsterdam), by 6pm, wondering if I had really been in these magical places, with a very full and thankful heart.

50 Days to go!!