Wandering Travel

The beauty of travel is the complete anonymity one is able to maintain throughout the journey. Yes, there are those who explore loudly and make themselves known, but if you wish, you can completely immerse yourself in a foreign place by remaining a wallflower. This is what I love to do: find a strange little back alley café in any foreign city and watch the way that people live. I feel like I get an impression of what life really is like instead of waiting hours in a line to take a photo. Maybe this is a cynical or snobbish approach to the whole situation, but it’s also because I love to wander.

My favorite place that I found by getting lost in a big city was a little back alley bar in Venice. What little Italian I speak allowed me to get in and figure out how to order, but they obviously were not used to foreigners. It seemed to be the place that gondoliers went on their off hours. It was one long café/bar, about ten feet wide, with only tables to stand at lined up from door to door. The food being served was all breaded balls of different meats, fish and other mysterious things I never cared to translate into English. (In some cases it tastes better when you don’t know what you’re eating.) The ceiling was covered in hanging copper pots and pans, and the place was packed with fast Italian speakers and fish tanks. I could never find the place again, but since then I remember it when I travel, and use that experience as an excuse to get myself completely lost. I never know where I’ll end up.