July 18, 2017. Piran, Slovenia.
I am looking over the Adriatic Sea and over two brightly colored pier bell boxes, a green and a red one, to the glow of a sunrise on a church at the sharp end of Piran, and across that, at Italy, and to my left, Croatia, a cappuccino warming my throat. It is no worse than Sophie had done last night, typing at a table for two late at night in the grand Tartini Square, children riding by on scooters and skateboards with flashing wheels, the raunch and rhythm of a Rocky Horror Picture Show on a stage energizing her writing despite the barrier of the Slovenian language.
Piran has been an enchanting city for the past two nights. We leave for Padua today, and to Trento the day after that, where Stephanie and I will celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary; but the romance has been bright for us here, in the coastal town whose charm is visible up close in the narrow Venetian alleys and balconies and from its hills and towers, where the houses crowding tightly together resemble the red bow of a ship jutting out into the sea.
Piran is small enough that any of us can go where we want without fear--Sophie and Maisie wandered off from the very beginning, to explore the town and eat ice cream--losing only for a moment our apartment up an almost invisible alley to the right of one large blue planter, one small one, and then a cozy alley up the hill, and then a sharp right--while Amelia, Stephanie and I went swimming on a busy strand of beach.
Every moment seemed more full and joyful than the next. In our first evening, we ate in the row of restaurants leading to end of the peninsula, two men singing La Cucaracha behind Stephanie who helplessly grinned. The girls left us to chase the sunset that turned everything a deep orange. And then we discovered a show, though a Sunday night, dedicated to an international folk festival, in the center of the Tartini Square, and we watched Slovenian, Latvian, Spanish and Italian dances beneath the the shadow of a magically lit clock campanile over the left and right arms of majestic buildings bordering the plaza. We would never get up that tower, though it seemed an obvious attraction.
Monday looked like this: going running up to the town walls and then through the cobbled streets, pastries by the water, a walk over the hill and down the coastal path towards the lake, bathing and wading in the ocean, walking back on the rocks of the beach but taking the stairs back up to the path when people got too naked, swimming and sitting on the shore at the start of town instead, finally getting dressed, returning to the square for fancy drinks, buying bread at the bakery, cheese at the market, chocolate at the chocolatier, returning to the apartment and eating Tünde's salami with the cheese and bread and drinking the wine our host left for us and playing hearts and bullshit during which no one could tell my lies or my truth as I became progressively loopier with sweet white wine, standing in the breeze in the yard of St. George’s Church and its high clock and bell tower, feeling the sun lower as we affectionately held each other and stood close to each other and watched the sunset paint the town its deeper hues, returning again to the square for burgers, gyros and salad and a show--Janet and Brett’s sexual awakening on their wedding night with the sweet Transylvanian transsexual.
At some point, I was deliriously happy. Here’s when it was most pronounced: Deciding we didn’t need a full meal and that we could sit at a table with fruity drinks, and could go to the chocolatier, select truffles, and point to the edible tablets capturing key scenes from the Kama Sutra, and could go back and fill up on salami at the apartment, and laugh through the streets. It was the freedom, the beauty, the adventure, and all of us together, filling ourselves up with it and each other.
I am looking over the Adriatic Sea and over two brightly colored pier bell boxes, a green and a red one, to the glow of a sunrise on a church at the sharp end of Piran, and across that, at Italy, and to my left, Croatia, a cappuccino warming my throat. It is no worse than Sophie had done last night, typing at a table for two late at night in the grand Tartini Square, children riding by on scooters and skateboards with flashing wheels, the raunch and rhythm of a Rocky Horror Picture Show on a stage energizing her writing despite the barrier of the Slovenian language.
Piran has been an enchanting city for the past two nights. We leave for Padua today, and to Trento the day after that, where Stephanie and I will celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary; but the romance has been bright for us here, in the coastal town whose charm is visible up close in the narrow Venetian alleys and balconies and from its hills and towers, where the houses crowding tightly together resemble the red bow of a ship jutting out into the sea.
Piran is small enough that any of us can go where we want without fear--Sophie and Maisie wandered off from the very beginning, to explore the town and eat ice cream--losing only for a moment our apartment up an almost invisible alley to the right of one large blue planter, one small one, and then a cozy alley up the hill, and then a sharp right--while Amelia, Stephanie and I went swimming on a busy strand of beach.
Every moment seemed more full and joyful than the next. In our first evening, we ate in the row of restaurants leading to end of the peninsula, two men singing La Cucaracha behind Stephanie who helplessly grinned. The girls left us to chase the sunset that turned everything a deep orange. And then we discovered a show, though a Sunday night, dedicated to an international folk festival, in the center of the Tartini Square, and we watched Slovenian, Latvian, Spanish and Italian dances beneath the the shadow of a magically lit clock campanile over the left and right arms of majestic buildings bordering the plaza. We would never get up that tower, though it seemed an obvious attraction.
Monday looked like this: going running up to the town walls and then through the cobbled streets, pastries by the water, a walk over the hill and down the coastal path towards the lake, bathing and wading in the ocean, walking back on the rocks of the beach but taking the stairs back up to the path when people got too naked, swimming and sitting on the shore at the start of town instead, finally getting dressed, returning to the square for fancy drinks, buying bread at the bakery, cheese at the market, chocolate at the chocolatier, returning to the apartment and eating Tünde's salami with the cheese and bread and drinking the wine our host left for us and playing hearts and bullshit during which no one could tell my lies or my truth as I became progressively loopier with sweet white wine, standing in the breeze in the yard of St. George’s Church and its high clock and bell tower, feeling the sun lower as we affectionately held each other and stood close to each other and watched the sunset paint the town its deeper hues, returning again to the square for burgers, gyros and salad and a show--Janet and Brett’s sexual awakening on their wedding night with the sweet Transylvanian transsexual.
At some point, I was deliriously happy. Here’s when it was most pronounced: Deciding we didn’t need a full meal and that we could sit at a table with fruity drinks, and could go to the chocolatier, select truffles, and point to the edible tablets capturing key scenes from the Kama Sutra, and could go back and fill up on salami at the apartment, and laugh through the streets. It was the freedom, the beauty, the adventure, and all of us together, filling ourselves up with it and each other.
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