travel writing Archives - The Sheona Experiment.

There’s a sort of mental and emotional hangover that rushes over you when arriving back home from an overseas trip, and I’m not sure if it’s normal or not, but I am 100% stuck in a European bubble – what’s scary is, I don’t think I ever want to leave it.

I’m ‘fresh off the boat’ as they say, from a 6 week stint through Europe, wheeling a suitcase which could double as my private room (yes, it’s THAT big, and I’m THAT small) through the world’s cutest cobbled alleyways, sipping the cheapest vino over-looking the most stunning sunsets and dancing on the bar-tops of every venue which wouldn’t escort us out for doing so.

I guess I am suffering the side-effects of a 2-month, daily scramble to pick up the remnants of my suit-caser life 5 minutes before EVERY late checkout, making sure that the essential: iPhone, Passport, Birkenstocks and three gal pals were in tow before departure. Or maybe it’s an epic “come-down” from endless bittersweet farewells to cities i’d re-fallen in love with, in exchange for the promise of a new tomorrow in an equally as fresh land complete with new mates and even newer moments to add to my expanding memory bank.

But, it’s now officially a week that my lungs have been privy to the Melbourne, if not Australian air, and I would be lying if I said that most mornings I don’t still flounder in my bed, confused and often delirious about which country I am in, and whether we have woken up too late and already missed our flight to Brussels.

I am constantly running into my sister’s room across the hall trying to decipher which of my friends are still not home from the crazy night before, only to find my Year 12 mini-me, fast asleep in her bed, awaiting a 7am alarm to welcome a day full of high-school torture.

Yep, I am definitely home; I just don’t know it yet and it’s ludicrously, the exact same feeling I had as we flew out on that chilly Melbourne night, 7 weeks ago. A pitch black sky we had been awaiting, for no less than 183 days, 17 hours and precisely, 22 minutes – I remember because I screen-shot the countdown when the travel agent confirmed our outbound flight.

After so long planning, throwing up ideas, making outlandish bucket-list entries and dares that I ‘shot-gun not’; the very hour had finally dawned, and even on the plane as we milked the mini vodkas just like we said we would (thanks Emirates), it still didn’t seem real.

Even now, as I look back at all the pictures we awkwardly asked strangers to take of us in front of the Colosseum, or as I comment on the “take me back to Europe” statuses of my new – now also returned – travel mates, or even listen to the songs which will forever compose the soundtrack to “that 2014 Eurotrip” – it’s still pretty fantastical and surreal.

So in an effort to relive every moment, non-sober epiphany, soul mate meeting and gorgeous view, I am belatedly beginning the memoirs of the summer that was (your Melbourne winter).

Better late than never, hey!

For now, “skies are blue”.

Gelati Mafia

Maybe it was inevitable that we would love Rome. I mean it is the city of endless love is it not?

Wow look at me, I’ve only been travelling for 3 days and the two Londoners we met on friday night have already imparted their sentence structure with me! If I were at home, there is no way I would say ‘is it not’.

So this is what it means to travel eh? Getting cultured, even with cultures whose city you are not visiting. Because we are definitely not in London, and we are not chilling in the corners of Sydney’s northern beaches or even at a sorority dorm in Oregon state. We are in Rome. But even in Rome, I’m learning so much about these other places, the lives that are led there, and most importantly, how the corners of the world like to party.

We were convinced our first night would end with the bottle of Merlot, a drink chosen not merely for the ‘acquired’ taste it lent us, but more so, for its affordability divided by four. An €8 portion of Italian gold preceded the night that would see us watch the midnight stars twinkle on the sidewalk, endless nagging of the DJ to play Iggy Azalea one more time, and multiple attempts to have a twerk off with two American girls who had obviously practiced far more than us.

As the sun rose, we definitely didn’t, and I’m sure breakfast, lunch and the snacks in between merged into one big pancake at the downstairs bar of our hostel, just the remedy and antidote for a day of getting parched in the Colosseum, being devastated at the ‘under construction’ state of the Trevi Fountain, eating our body weight in Gelati samples, and aimlessly wandering through the cobbled streets which were so perfectly representative of the Rome I have imagined in my dreams.

Pasta was essential, and Gelati was absolutely vital before we headed back to the hostel and greeted by our new pals, – from about 4 minutes earlier – gallantly adorned with trays of jäger bombs and mojitos. Soon the bar top was our dance floor and instead of watching the stars, we were racing through the streets, singing Beyoncé lyrics to policemen and bringing in the next day with dawn chats on the balcony of a room that was certainly not ours.

Confessions of love by beautiful Italian boys, the most amazing salad you have ever had, leashed dogs wandering the aisles of H&M, more Vespas than you can count, merging our mattresses so we can imitate an ‘at home’ slumber party, lattes that cannot be “skinny”, and deeming it acceptable to walk around speaking to ourselves in our best, elongated and dramatic Italian pronunciation of every word. This is Rome. This is love.

Glad-iators, Colosseum.

Now to flirt with the Greek Gods.

The Sheona Experiment.

Tag Archives: travel writing

Daughters of a European Summer.

When in Rome…