I woke up this morning on a concrete landing outside of the door of my guesthouse in Venice. It was my first night there, and if I thought my neck was stiff after a transatlantic flight, I had no idea the misery concrete steps could cause me. This was not exactly how I thought my first night in Venice would go. Actually, if I prepared 100 possible scenarios, this wasn’t one of them. But there I was – cold, exhausted, cried out and bedraggled to the point that I definitely looked homeless because, well, I technically was at that point.
It was such an innocent and incredibly important mistake brought on by sheer exhaustion as I left my room to go in search of beautiful photos and food and vino. It was 6 p.m. Wednesday by the time I got oriented in my bedroom in a little shared apartment near Saint Mark’s Square – the tourism epicenter of Venice. I had not had a proper sleep since I woke up Tuesday morning but I was hungry and thirsty and curious, so I changed into something cute and headed out to meet my new favorite city.
I wandered endlessly and took photos and stopped for cicchetti (snacks) and wine at little bacaros (wine bars) and I started to fall in LOVE with this city. Love love love. It is stylish, summery, romantic, ancient and staggeringly photogenic. Venice is in a hauntingly beautiful state of decay from hundreds and hundreds of years of constant use – but it is clear that Venetians are proud and intent on preserving this magical floating city.
I spent my first evening trying hard to lose the crush of people, which was surprisingly easy to do thanks to the hundreds of narrow streets that meander off in every direction. And something amazing happens around 7:30ish p.m. – the crowds disappear for the most part because the shuttles take day visitors back to the cruise ships and the mainland. What’s left are Venetians and tourists staying in the city, and this place begins to feel a whole lot more Italian rather than like Disneyland.
I wandered until I just couldn’t anymore, and decided to wrap up my evening at a very small bacaro that was maybe a 10-minute walk to my apartment. A cute little place called Ai Stagneri seemed just right so I holed up for a couple (okay three) glasses of wine before deciding to pack it in by 11:30. I could have slept much earlier but I figured pushing to stay up late would help me start to right my internal clock. But dear God I was tired.
With fond goodbyes to my new buddy Paolo the barkeep, I headed for my apartment. But at the doorway, I dug into my bag and came up without my keys. WTF. I dug some more, I scratched around, and eventually dumped my entire bag onto the ground. No keys. I had a passcode for the street door, but the apartment front door upstairs required a key that I didn’t have. Why? My best guess was that I left my keys hanging in my bedroom door on my third trip back to the room for something.
So there I was in a tiny Venetian alleyway with all my belongings laying on ancient granite slabs wondering just how in the fuck I was going to get into my room. I sent a Whatsapp message to the caretaker – who does not live on the property and who, in no reasonable situation, would be on her Whatsapp at nearly midnight. No answer…
After loitering for a few minutes hoping another guest would return, I left the apartment stairwell in search of a new hotel. There were many, many small hotels I’d passed in my wandering – I didn’t care what it cost, I just needed one. But I walked into no fewer than five different hotels that still had someone manning the front desk and not one had a room available.
After the fifth or sixth hotel, I sat down on the steps in the massive and now mostly empty St. Mark’s Square and started to scroll Expedia. There HAD to be a room somewhere, but then I realized I could not use the app to book because it was showing me availability for Thursday since it was after midnight Wednesday. I was either going to have to walk into these places or call them. Then I noticed that my cell phone battery was at 6%. Of course it was.
So I did what any jetlagged middle-age woman on the first day of a romantic Italy holiday alone and now locked out of her guest house at 1 a.m. would do – I started to cry. Like ugly cry – snot everywhere and sobs to catch my breath and the whole thing with my head down on my knees in St. Mark’s Square. So glamorous. Like a fairytale, really. The Brothers Grimm kind though. A kind Millennial boy approached and asked, “Hey, are you okay?” The answer was definitely no, but I could not add this kind, innocent boy to my trauma so, through very unconvincing sobs, I said, “Yeah, thanks.” He looked very doubtful and said, “Are you SURE?” Hahaha. No, kid. I am for sure not okay. “Yeah, I’m okay, thanks,” I said, wiping my nose on my arm. He studied me for a minute and walked away.
The only thing worse than my crying jag was my jetlag and I needed to get out of public. I was Just.So.Exhausted. Thankfully, my building had that secured stairwell and I had the door code, so I went up to the landing outside the apartment and settled in. If I was lucky, another guest would be out as late as me. If I was unlucky (er. Unluckier.) then at least I had a safe spot to be.
In God’s greatest mercy on me at that point, I’d bought a bottle of white wine much earlier in my wandering, and I’d been smart enough to ask the barkeep at my last place to open it for me. So there I sat, the most pitiful version of myself that has ever existed, crying, freezing, drinking wine out of the bottle and wondering how the fuck this was my life.
I tried to curl up on the floor mat to get a little sleep, but it was the fake grass kind and it made me feel like I was laying on a thousand pencils. So instead, I slept draped up the cold concrete stairs until the sky outside of the stairwell window started to turn blue at dawn. I took my cold, aching body into the morning sun, found some espresso and started wandering again to take photos of the city while it was still asleep.
I hesitated to tell you this story because it’s just so awful, so stupid of me, and truthfully kind of embarrassing. Maybe being comfortable traveling has its downside in which the lack of worrying makes mistakes like this possible. Or maybe I’m just human. Or maybe the Universe knows I need to write so it’s just trying to give me a little more material. Haha
Anyway, the adventures will resume once I’m slightly more caught up on sleep… Ciao for now friends!🥰🙃😘
