When you experience something new, the most insignificant details can stick to your mind like a stubborn bur. Sure, the city’s landmarks, and fashion, and sights all can be recalled, but those little things that you notice in a new place are what really stand over time. Everyone who goes to Paris visits the Eiffel Tower, or Big Ben in London, or the Trevi Fountain in Rome. But once you sift through the common experience, every traveler has his or her own; it could be something as trivial as breaking a shoelace while climbing the Spanish Steps, or as quaking as breaking up with a significant other over the phone while watching the sun rise over the Charles Bridge in Prague—these are moments firmly stamped, and they are yours.
On my trip to Venice I couldn’t get over the fact that every street is water(!), or how laid back the lifestyle is, or the beautiful, centuries old architecture; I also noticed that no matter what chair I sat in while visiting Venice, four legs did touch the ground. They seem not to have placed value in the balance of chair manufacturing in Venice, and this is what I most remember now. In Piazza San Marco, outside, admiring the bell tower, wobbled like a gondola while trying to sip a beer. Along an out-of-the-way canal, at a pizza shop, enjoying the best pizza of my life, I had to take that slice ever so carefully so as not to burn my tongue from the teetering chair legs (and of course I refused to use fork and knife). That is my Venice. It is not a beautiful detail, or even a particularly unique detail, but it is mine. So I implore any traveler; get away from the common experience and find the minutia of a new city. Find your experience. I guarantee you will remember the little things because they are yours, and can not be searched on the internet or found in travel essays, but will remain as easy to recall as an earmark in a memory of a place .
This video is a testament to minutia. It captures the fleetingness of travel better than any film I have seen, and its only five minutes. So take five, and visit Venice, then go and find your own little things.
Interesting thing to notice! You’re right that sometimes, little things stand out more than big ones.
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