This part of my journey became about seeing beauty—beyond expectation.

According to Rosalyn, our mutual friend Carol had secured a good deal on a flight from San Francisco to Zürich. From there, she would take a train to Florence, the rendezvous point for all three of us. Roz and I had parted ways almost three weeks earlier in Madrid and, in the interim, I had traveled to France. I visited Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, cycled through the Loire Valley, and passed the last of my days on French soil along the Riviera, all of this after sharing a magical time with Tristan in Paris.
   I discovered that I liked being in Tristan’s flat for ten consecutive days, I liked being in France, and I was not particularly inclined to rush off to another country. After traveling for two and a half months, I yearned to be in one place for a while, to rest, to get comfortable with one language, to know I could communicate how I liked my coffee without overtaxing my brain. France suited me perfectly. Having studied French, I found that once I left Paris, my confidence and boldness in speaking it grew. But the plan to meet Carol had been arranged months before, and yet another travel lesson presented itself: in the future, I would try to not to commit so far in advance, never knowing where my head, or the rest of my body, might be when the time came.  
   Before saying au revoir to France, I spent several wonderfully relaxing days in Menton on the Côte d’Azur, not far from the Italian border, where I shared a room with four people I met on the train. The beach was crowded with well-tanned wannabes in the skimpiest of bathing suits, wishing they were in Cannes. Morning walks were cool and lovely. Menton is quite hilly and most residences are lush with a variety of bushes and flowers, including, bien sûr, the ever-present bougainvillea of the Mediterranean. An easy hike was rewarded with views of the sea and boats anchored offshore. The produce market in the main square was always bustling and the fruits and vegetables so perfect they seemed to be displayed for a House and Garden photo shoot. One evening, all of us roomies took the train to Nice and had dinner at an old bistro featuring regional specialties such as bouillabaisse. I could easily have spent more time exploring Nice and doing the French Riviera thing, but my appointment in Florence loomed. Instead, I squeezed in brief stops in Milan—where I was awestruck by the train station and the famous Gothic duomo— and Venice.
   My first glimpse of Venice as I emerged from the train station is forever burned in my memory. It felt as though I had stepped into Disneyland or onto a Hollywood set. Venice was immediately spectacular, one of the few places I have been to that matched my pre-imagined vision. My two packed days went from morning to night, and my map, on which I so depended in a maze of streets, alleys, bridges, and canals, became more stained, wrinkled, and torn than any other during my five-month journey through Israel and Europe. 
   At the time, Venice was packed with American tourists, and though I longed to be back on a bicycle on the country roads of the Loire Valley, I gritted my teeth and decided to enjoy myself. There were no available pensions to be found, so I sought lodging in reasonably nearby Padua, commuting each morning by train. Padua itself is an interesting historical city with a university and a lively plaza filled with the hubbub of produce vendors, students, bicycles and cafés.
   If you allow yourself to daydream while walking in Venice, you may become completely lost. Aren't there a lot of creepy movies set in Venice? I could certainly understand why. Meandering through, around, under, and over streets and canals, there were moments I felt claustrophobic and welcomed the wide-open expanse of the Grand Canal. Venice possesses a labyrinthine charm and I could sense the voices and shadows of times past, especially on the quiet streets far from the center, where all the tourists congregated. In some ways it all begins to look the same. Yet from a photographic perspective, I could not get over each building’s uniqueness, the special view of one canal from the one just around the bend. The visual bounty was spectacular, and I found myself shooting more slides in Venice than anywhere I had been since Paris. Of course, that may have been because, while in the Loire Valley, I unfortunately dropped my camera into the toilet, oops! The roll of film inside the camera at the time of the accident had been shot at an old French cemetery. When it was eventually processed, the smearing and blending of water with the photo emulsion were evident, but tended to add a strange, yet apropos mood to the images. The tombstones appeared streaked with color, giving them an eerie, dreamlike quality. 
   My friend Carmine, who had been with me at the time, lent me her camera before we parted, not only because she was returning to New York, but as a gesture of gratitude for my patience with her inexperience and occasionally irrational travel anxieties. 
   On my second afternoon in Venice, I stopped for ice cream at a café. The waiter and I began to flirt, but quickly discovered that neither of us spoke the other's language. We resorted to French, in which we both seemed to have equal command, not very much. 
   Pietro was a young, slender, delicate man with sandy-colored hair and green plaintive eyes that I could not turn myself from. He invited me to dinner that evening, and I eventually agreed, knowing the conversation would be simple, at best. 
   I returned to Padua to rest and shower, then boarded the train back to Venice to meet my date, where else? At the Piazza San Marco, naturalmente. I know this is beginning to sound like a 1950s Hollywood film, but Pietro was no Rossano Brazzi, so don't get too carried away. He led me to a restaurant that, though nearby, required navigating so many twists and turns, that I knew without Pietro I would be completely disoriented. My escort told me he had already eaten, yet proceeded to order dinner for me. When my food arrived, he insisted on cutting it up for me. The whole experience was bizarre, but I felt touched by this young man with his sad eyes, who could likely afford only one dinner and who gazed at me over his wine glass as I ate it. Afterward, we ambled through the narrow streets. The mood was quiet, and though conversation was sporadic, it did not take long for it to reach a dead end, as we both exhausted our combined knowledge of French. I told Pietro I would catch the next train, but he asked me if I would like to stay at his place that night. I graciously declined, but he continued to press.
   “I live with my sister, do not be afraid. You can have your own room.”
   “I prefer to go back to Padua. I am leaving early in the morning for Firenze.”
   At this point, Pietro got down on his knees and implored me with such melancholy earnestness to come home with him that I almost gave in. Never in my life had a man put so much gloriously dramatic effort into persuading me to spend the night with him. I finally managed to pull myself away from Pietro and the allure of that Shakespearean moment to make my train. 
   My pension was only a fifteen-minute walk from the station, but it was already quite late and the streets were deserted. I set off briskly, when a car appeared and some men started catcalling from the windows. I ignored them and kept walking, but they became persistent, slowing the car to match my pace. Even coming from New York City, where such harassment was not uncommon, I began to get apprehensive. 
   When I turned onto a larger street that I knew led to a plaza near my accommodation, I broke into a run until I reached a bar that was still open. The men followed and sat outside with the engine running, but after a few minutes, they drove off. That was one of the few times in my life as a traveler that I genuinely felt threatened and vulnerable. Curiously, I rarely felt nervous in New York, a city awash with light and alive with people at all hours, and yet here, in Padua, I felt exposed and cornered. I probably would have been safer taking my chances with Pietro. 
   The train I took to Florence the next morning arrived hours before I was to meet my friends. I decided to check the schedule to confirm the arrival of the train from Zürich that Roz said would be carrying Carol. I had no idea where Roz herself was coming from. Not too surprisingly, this train was not listed. I recalled that when traveling with Roz and Anil in Spain and Portugal, if Roz said we should turn right, Anil would automatically turn left and we rarely got lost. Suddenly, it occurred to me that Roz, being Roz, might even have even gotten the date wrong. 
   I had no idea when I should be at the station to meet Carol, but more immediately I needed to find accommodation and wasn’t sure whether I would be sharing it with my friends or not. Florence was expensive, and I preferred to split the cost of a room, so I began to scan the train station for a possible roommate for the night. My keen eyes landed on a young man with a backpack who looked like he too was on a budget. Unfortunately, I soon learned he was leaving Italy, heading to his home in Kufstein, Austria, in the Alps.
   “Kufstein is very beautiful. It is in the mountains,” he said proudly. I will give you my address for when you come there.”
   “Thank you, but I have no plans to go to Austria on this trip,” I replied. 
   How many travel lessons learned so far? One of the rules of the kind of travel I do is there are no rules, and one never knows. As it turned out, Carol and I found ourselves in Austria less than one month later. We even ended up at a party in Kitzbuhel after which we were driven to the train station in Kufstein, to catch a train back to Italy. 
   It was a damp, chilly night even for August, and we had several hours to wait before the train’s departure. Between the two of us, we had enough Austrian shillings for one brioche and two cups of tea, which barely filled the time, nor our stomachs.
   “If only I had the address and telephone number of that nice man with the long, curly blonde hair I met in the train station in Florence,” I complained dejectedly to Carol.
   There are moments when you simply must make a decision and act. I left the station to find accommodation and chose a nearby pension, which allowed me to shuttle back and forth to the station in search of Carol and (grrr) Rosalyn. The room had enough beds for all of us, as I suspected there was probably some part of Roz's information that bordered on being correct. 
   By early evening, on my third trip to the station that day, I finally spotted Rosalyn. She was all atwitter about the peacefulness she found in Switzerland, where she had spent time with her friend Janet. Roz recounted all this in a rapid-fire fashion:
   “Janet and I met up in Paris, where Anil flew home from, for work stuff…and even though we had a great time in Switzerland, which is so beautiful…you should really go there…now we aren’t talking and the friendship is probably over.”
   Whew! Did she take a breath during that entire account? I’m not sure. I just stared at her until I managed to extract the crucial detail: Carol's train would arrive at any minute. Apparently, Roz had confused the time of the train with Carol’s flight number, or something like that. 
   Sensing my irritation, Roz said, “Don’t make such a big deal about it. After all, everything worked out, didn’t it?”
   And then, at last, there was Carol, my dear friend, whom I had not seen in two years, stepping off the train, looking slightly dazed. As I ran to greet her, one of my earrings flew off and, can you believe it? I never found it. That same favorite earring had been lost months before in a kibbutz in Israel, only to be miraculously recovered the next morning in the dewy grass. But Italy finally claimed it as her own. 
   It's funny how one emotion can eclipse another. In that moment, being with Carol, and consumed with warmth and affection, was much more important than the loss of the earring, even one I especially liked. And as a traveler, I have learned, time and again, to accept loss, from the trivial to the more deeply felt pain of goodbyes. I always say: take nothing with you that you cannot bear to part with…even your heart. 
   Carol:
   Carol and I had been friends since seventh grade, and even a continent could not diminish the closeness we shared. In high school we were inseparable, in our vintage fur coats, tattered jeans, long, middle-parted hair, and enough jewelry to move the needle of a scale a few notches to the right. 
   When we made our first jaunt to Europe as two wide-eyed eighteen-year old’s, we were introduced to an experience that would, in many ways, shape our yearnings ever after. Now, years later, we found ourselves once again arm in arm on European sidewalks. 
   After a window of years apart following that first trip, we had lived together in San Francisco, where we were reunited with our original traveling buddy, Rosalyn, whom we had met in Amsterdam. Eventually, I moved back to New York, and by the time Carol I found ourselves hugging on that Florence train station platform, we had not seen each other in two years. Though our lifestyles and interests have often taken different paths, Carol will always feel like a sister to me. She has a spiritual nature, paired with a cynical sense of humor. With her dark auburn hair, fair skin, and bright blue eyes, her smile transforms her into an arresting beauty.
   The story continues:
   A siesta was much in order, especially for Carol, who was jetlagged and acclimating to a different continent. We all crashed for a while, then stepped out for pasta at a cheerful nearby trattoria I had spotted earlier that day. 
   The waiter was adorable, with black hair, a deep complexion and dark mischievous eyes. He coaxed us into staying until closing, which did not take a great deal of effort on his part, as we were all so tired and more than happy to linger over wine while catching up on our lives. 
   When the restaurant closed, our waiter was joined by more of his friends, who appeared so suddenly, it almost seemed they had been hiding all night in the pizza oven. The waiter had his sights set on me as his date, and I suspect all of the uomini had convinced themselves they were in for a night of partying with some loose Americanes. But they were just boys, and after a little dancing and flirting we became bored and disappointed them. There was no dramatic pleading on their knees. We simply said goodnight and wobbled back to our room. 
   We awoke early, ready to explore lively, historically rich, Florence. Everywhere we looked was a feast of architecture and renaissance color. Our plan for the day included several of the city’s cathedrals and museums, scattered about, allowing us to view many parts of this handsome city. I had already done a little probing the day before, between my visits to the train station, so I had a sense of where things were, thank God, or we might have had to rely on Roz's map-reading abilities, or lack thereof. 
   Traveling through Europe offers an extraordinary immersion in art history. Throughout this journey, I had the privilege of seeing great works of art that I had previously known from reproductions in books or teachers’ art class slides. It was deeply rewarding to stand before these canvases and sculptures in person. I found that my mood for what I wanted to see matched exactly where I was at the moment. At this time in Florence, my predilection was for Renaissance art, so that the Caravaggio's, Botticelli’s and monumental Tintoretto’s of the Uffizi gallery completely satisfied my soul. One can almost breathe in the Renaissance in the streets, in the duomos, in the very air. It was overwhelming to view such a wealth of breathtaking creations.     Carol, Rosalyn, and I shared a reverence for Florences’s artistic riches, from its architecture to its murals, and were constantly exclaiming:
   “Ooh, ooh, look there!”
   “Did you see the carvings on that building?”
   “Check out the floor of this church!”
   After the Uffizi and a perfect gelato, Carol suggested, “Let’s go shopping!” 
   These were the days of the mighty U.S. dollar, strong against nearly every other currency. Even a budget traveler could afford to indulge, and cities throughout Italy were teeming with American shoppers buying garments and leather goods. Needless to say, we each purchased a new pair of leather boots. I absolutely adored mine. Sometimes purchasing something you especially like, or even the experience of buying itself, is so full of good cheer, it can lift your spirits in a way few other things can. That was how I felt in that moment, as though life could not be any better. Our appetites thus gratified, we were armed to absorb more great art. Late that afternoon, we made our way to yet another gallery. 
   I saw him the moment I entered and realized I had become catatonic when I had to remind myself to breathe.
   Gazing upon such male magnificence, I knew I would forevermore compare other men to this paragon of beauty. His stance, his expression, his physique—everything about him exuded a powerful, almost overwhelming sensuality. Even his hands, unusually large, struck me as irresistible; I have always found large hands on a man especially desirable. As I moved closer and took in the carved perfection of his features, tears began to moisten my cheeks. Here before me was Michelangelo's David, a work of such sensual grace that it actually made me cry. Never before, nor since, have I experienced such a profound emotional response in the presence of art.