Sunday, 2 October, 2022 – Elias got up this morning to go to the museums. Any of the museums, actually. Because the free Sunday deal is so popular, there were lines of people waiting over two hours to get in. Elias said:
Elias: There’s some sponsored tourist event thing going on in the city and there’s literally hundreds of people in bright green shirts so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get into any museums today.
Standing on line for two hours with someone is bearable. Doing it alone is not fun. I cannot really blame him for skipping the hordes. Between the reduced number of people being allowed in and the free admittance, I expect the line looked like this, as it did when we waited to get into the Uffizi back in 1998:
Elias is in Florence until Wednesday so I hope he will get to see some of the artwork. He spent some part of the day today dealing with his plane ticket home. Expedia sent him an email today telling him that the Tokyo-to-Chicago portion of his flight was cancelled. He called Expedia and found a new flight, and it seems he still will be home November 25th. (Yay!)
I was talking to my sister tonight about Elias having some less-than-spectacular days on the trip. We agreed that we wish Elias could have fun every day, and then remembered, “Oh yeah, there were a lot of less-than-spectacular days when we lived abroad.” Elise went to school in Tokyo for her junior year of college and I went to Hong Kong. We were both gone over 10 months. And I had days when I thought, “I give up. I am done. Please beam me home.” I did not really think about Elias’s trip as his living “in Europe,” since he has been moving around, but he’s not living at home and he’s not in the U.S. so that is living in Europe, right?
Anyway, it was funny to recall with my sister just how many days we wondered if we had made the right decision. If I had not gone to Hong Kong, or if I had gone to Perpignan – the place I was originally planning to go for half of my junior year – I probably (definitely) would have second guessed those choices, too. It is easy to forget that being in your early 20s is not easy. I am not sure there is any easy age, but I know it is a mistake to confuse youth with being without a care, or a sense of complete freedom. With youth comes doubt and lack of perspective that can only come with age and experience.
Taken together with the spectacular days, of which he has had several, maybe these less-than-spectacular days will amount to good memories and experiences from which to glean wisdom, months or years from now. Elise and I certainly have good memories, with the added bonus that we can enjoy a laugh together about our 20-year-old selves.