Meeting up with family?
I managed to finally relax in Venice a bit, settling in to my accomodation. I had to visit the hospital, which was an experience to say the least, but after a few days I was feeling a lot stronger and basically back to full health.
Due to a combination of factors my father decided to drop by Venice from Australia (only a 22 hour flight, no big deal right?). I’d made a full recovery so it wasn’t really a health thing. I think he just wanted to make sure I was definitely set and check out Europe too. In the end it was a full family effort with my aunt booking accomodation for the two of us. His plane got in late so I was up around 0100 waiting for him to get to the hotel, which involved a jog on his part (no busses that late).
He finally arrived and despite being tired we both stayed up even later catching up on everything that’d happened. Much like myself before I set off he’d never been outside of Australia before, so that was going to be exciting for him.
Having never been away from home for so long it was great to see my father and also relax a bit. Having traveled solo for quite a while I’m used to being totally responsible for everything and knowing I don’t have backup, or anyone to bounce ideas off. That’s both a blessing and a curse, but having my father there is a nice change of pace and and a bit of a relief. A month earlier I would have been horrified at the thought of having family drop by on my travels – determined to be independent and managing it all solo. After doing just that for such a long time though and now being much more secure in my traveling abilities it’s just great to see a familiar face!
