Luggage Lamentations

Luggage Lamentations
I hate luggage. As I travel around the world, I often see other women carrying nothing but light backpacks. But being a woman of too many requirements, especially shoes, I am not yet able to travel like a college kid. I couldn’t even when I was a college kid. So I have condemned myself to luggage. Which I hate. Especially in Europe.
Apparently Europe was designed and built with the concept that luggage is carried for you by other people. Since I have not yet been able to convince myself, let alone my husband, that this means hiring and paying other people whatever it costs to follow me around with my stuff, I have to do it myself. (Note: My Italian husband informs me that the world used to be full of people who carried for reasonable fees; in Italy they were called facchini. They no longer exist.).
Over the years I have purchased at least a dozen different kinds of “breakthrough” bags, most of which have wheels. (Note: one of the most distinctive early morning sounds in foreign countries is the particular hum and thump of suitcases being rolled down long cobbled alleys and corridors.). I have been taken in by flight and travel magazine ads for the perfect suitcase: “tough as nails, weighs nothing, holds 20 pairs of shoes and three weeks’ worth of gear, conforms to all airline carryon requirements” AND has the magical property of actually reducing the weight of the stuff you put in it. Bull!
In any case, once I’ve rolled whatever bag I’m testing through that “Nothing to Declare” door and onto the street, the challenges begin. And as far as I’m concerned, the worst place in the world for luggage rolling/management is Venice, Italy.
Everyone says that Venice is magical. Look at all those romantic canals full of water. And what awaits you upon arrival at land’s end, standing between you and the city, are those canals. On those canals float the dreaded Vaporetti. (Note: Some people—not my husband though, and therefore, not me either—hire and pay for a water taxi, an expensive private conveyance that will get you close to where you want to go with some style). The vaporetto is a public “bus” on the water, generally packed stem to stern with tourists, many of whom are dazed new arrivals with luggage. You can spot them by their looks of disbelief when they realize they must hurl themselves and their stuff into the understandably surly crowd already on board. We were these people a month ago. Our hotel was advertised as “conveniently near” the world famous Rialto Bridge, so on board we had to go.

We and dozens of others untangle ourselves and push onto the crowded pedestrian way. Inevitably, the vaporetto stop is on the wrong side with respect to our hotel (as far as we know). We stand at the bottom of the Rialto staircase, each of us with a 40 pound bag on wheels (wheels encourage me to over pack and carry lots and lots of books I never get around to reading). We stand silently counting the number of worn marble steps to each landing and ponder our approach. Even if you can tolerate the sound, roll,thunk! roll,thunk! roll,thunk! and so on, wheels on lots of stairs do not work. I break three finger nails pushing the handle down and picking up the bag to carry it. Look out, rotator cuff!
Once all the way up and then all the way down, scarcely appreciating the splendor around us, we are confronted by four inches of water, the overflow of the picturesque canals due to high tide, full moon and heavy rain. So while we are on level ground, we are also awash. (Note: the City of Venice requires all employees of all businesses to have wading boots at the ready and to be on call 24 hours a day when the waters threaten. City employees install two foot wide boards on top of metal struts a foot above the walkways so the tourists, who generally do not have waders, can keep their feet dry). Picture us hoisting our 40 pound bags onto the boardwalks and then rolling them along without either falling off or being pushed off by other tourists.
In a slightly higher and drier area, we start the process of finding our “boutique” hotel (which means no one knows where it is or has ever heard of it). We have a street name, and we can read maps. So we are now rolling with one arm, holding maps with the other, looking for street names (Ha!), and eventually realizing that we are covering the same territory over and over. Even my native speaking husband can’t get straight directions. (Later we find out that the same street names are used in all of Venice’s seven or eight main neighborhoods. By dumb luck we are looking in the right neighborhood.)
At last, as always happens, we stumble at random upon our hotel. At the beginning of our arrival in Venice, oh so long ago, we were reasonably well-groomed, cool and calm. Now I have deep circles of sweat under both arms, a dripping brow and sweat on the backs of my knees. My right heel is bloody from a scrape from my own wheels. My husband’s luxuriant curly hair now stands in exclamation points. He has been raking it with frustrated fingers at each wrong turn during our search. So much for any sort of grand entrance.
We open the door into the tiny lobby (they are always tiny) and roll our loathsome luggage over the threshold. We see the receptionist to our right and, yawning above us to the left, yet another flight of steep marble stirs disappearing into the gloom. I hate luggage!

Pat Bashaw