Europe 2017 - Prelude
Our trip to Europe this year (2017) was planned nearly a year ago. What started as a simple 10 day trip, burgeoned into a 21 day journey covering 7 (for me) and 5 (for hubby) towns / cities in 3 different countries.
The seed for the trip was planted when Jose Martinez called us in April 2016 and told that we are invited to attend his daughter, Sofia's marriage on June 24th, 2017. Unlike Indian marriages where we invite people by the hundreds (and their neighbours too!), their marriages has countable number of invitees. Getting an invite from them was indeed an honour.
Obviously, this invite put me in a huge dilemma. What will I wear for the wedding - Indian wear or western?
The month of June and I are not friends.
The school vacation get's over and and I get busy. I am forced to get up way before the sun rises. And in Kerala - June & July are the rain months. Very cold. These 2 months has always been the preferred time for my husband to sleep in and do client visits abroad. I am still undecided (after 20 + years of marriage), if his explanation that June / July is his 'off-season' is really the truth or a way of checking the strength of our marriage and my patience.
April / May are his peak seasons and everything is 'normal' for him; unlike for me who is 'enjoying school vacations' (Meaning: I do not have to get up at 5 am like I usually do for 10 months of the academic year to send kid(s) off to school at 6.45 am). He graciously allows me to sleep-in while he silently knocks vessels in the kitchen trying to make coffee before going for his run at 5 am.
June is different. Everything is slow for him. Running time gets shifted from 5 am to 6.45 am, 7 am or never.
This marriage was in June. So it was decided that he would somehow mix this marriage in Spain with his usual business trip in Italy. Since I was also invited for the marriage, either
a)I could join him after his business trip in Italy and we both could attend the marriage in Spain or
b) I could go along with him to Italy and do some solo-travelling (while he went for meeting clients in various parts of Italy) and later we both would go together for the marriage.
Then came a surprise. Our daughter got admission to London School of Economics for their summer program. Her essays got accepted and she chose to do a course on a topic which has a key-word that would get all the intelligence agencies of the world snooping on my blog - "From Athens to Al Qaeda".
This course was also in June, but in London.
Now hubby and I were in a dilemma. London was proving to be too tempting! First decision: I would drop Italy; as we had been to Rome together last year and I would fly alone to London. We would meet there, spend some days and together we would fly to Spain to attend the marriage.
Then romance bloomed in my husband's heart. Venice and it's gondolas swept into the picture. He said Italy was more than Rome. "You must see Venice".
But the storm of solo travelling pushed it away from my heart. Five days in an unknown country, with no knowledge of the language and travelling to new places alone? Who would I ask if my dress looks alright? Who would hold my bag when I went to use the toilet? With whom could I share the happiness when I enjoyed the beauty of a place or painting or taste of food? And I am not known for my silence. I need to speak....constantly. I NEED a dedicated pair of ears.
This is when my daughter stepped in. She had done solo-travelling last year in Italy and she gave me confidence (ahem, screamed via email).
Thus the trip was finalized.
I would accompany my husband to Italy. We would land in Venice, spend 3 days there; proceed to Verona. Then for 5 days I would be alone and could either stay inside my room or visit new places. He would rejoin me and together we would fly to London to meet our daughter. Then we would fly to Spain to attend the marriage in El'che and celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary in Barcelona.
We booked our plane tickets and hotels.
We applied for our UK visa first as it had a very different process. We filled a form online, took a print-out of the same, took an appointment in VFS, walked in the next day without an appointment, paid extra and got to submit our forms, and give it for visa processing. British visa came in 10 days time.
Italian visa / Schengen - I do not know if anyone else has had this experience.But, it was very interesting!
We submitted our visa application on a Thursday morning through VFS and our passports reached the Italian Embassy in Mumbai on Friday (we got a notification of the same via SMS). And.....
It was posted back to us on the same day after stamping visa! Yes, same day!
Passport was back in our hands on Saturday. In 2 days we had our passport back with Schengan Visa!
Our trip was to begin on June 7th, 2017.
As they say, we cannot travel when the circumstances are perfect.
April - May. I had begun my research on places to visit, tours recommended by other travellers and had started booking tickets to 'places / tours of interest'.
And in May, my Father-in-Law developed an infection. The doctor diagnosed that his prostate had inflamed as had his bladder. They had to put a catheter to reduce the size of his bladder, before his prostate could be operated upon on June 5th.....two days before we were to leave.
Imagine how we felt. My husband's dad is 84. If anything happens to him and we are not close by....Would we be able to forgive ourselves? Not to forget "society". What a field day they would have, gossiping behind our backs!
By May end, we had gotten over feeling bad about not being there post operation. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law reminded me that my husband was not the only son. And we would be leaving him with his wife and other children. Thanks to both my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law for asking us to just leave and enjoy our trip.
Around this time, the children in the apartment started falling sick - dengue on the prowl. And our second daughter; Ananya got fever on 3rd June. We wanted to be sure she was alright and got her blood checked on 5th. Result - negative for dengue. We heaved a sign of relief only to realize that there is a different test to be done, if tested within 5 days of getting fever, for detection of dengue. We had done the wrong test. So we pulled out blood again and this time - positive to dengue.
Ananya was to stay at our friend's house; one week at Revathy's and other week at Reena's. My mom was to come over at the last week to take care of her. When the test result came positive; our flight was in 12 hours. We really did not want to give the fever to either of our friend's children.
This is when you realize parents are Gods. I called my mom and before I put the phone down, my dad had sent the car to pick up my child. My mom would nurse her back to health and come to my home to send her to school.
Thus after much chaos our trip did start on June 7th, 2017.
I have written our travels to Venice in 2 parts. Part 1 is about our initial travel into Venice and the guided tour we took. Part 2 is about the St.Mark's Basilica, Doge's Palace and the beautiful islands of Burano and Murano.
In Verona I wrote some love letters. Not addressed to my husband, though!
In Bologna, I saw another Venice inside the town and also the Meridian inside a church.
Parma was exciting. I went to see a Parma cheese factory and a balsamic Vinegar factory. A foodie day!
I revisited Bologna again because of a Transport strike in Italy and this time I saw a large collection of Egyptian antiques including mummies here.
London was a 5 day stop-over and we had a grand time seeing the real meridian at Greenwich, visiting Diagon Alley from Harry Potter movies and learning about an Admiral whose body got transported in a vat of whiskey among other things.
Then we went to Elche, Spain; two days before the marriage of my husband's client's daughter. On the first day, we went to see the Festival of Moors at Alicante. And the next day, we attended the marriage of Sofia and Oscar.
And at the very end of the trip, we celebrated our wedding anniversary in Barcelona!
Hope you enjoy the journey with us through this blog! Happy reading.
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