RIGHT! EVERYONE UP! BIKE TOUR 10AM IT’S 8.53 RIGHT NOW AND THE BEST COFFEE IS SEVEN MINUTES WALK AWAY AND IT’S 12 MINUTES FROM THERE TO THE BIKE PLACE.

That was Jess.

I sprang out of bed. ‘Bear’s in the shower. Give him a knock and tell him to get out. I don’t need a shower I can be ready in three minutes.’ I said pulling on a frock.

Emma yelled ‘I don’t need a shower either I can be ready in two minutes’

‘FUCK YOU EMMA’ I yelled back ‘I’ll be ready in 90 seconds and I fucked your mum.’

‘I haven’t have a shower for two days so I have to have a quick one’ said Jess as she pounded on the bathroom door to get Bear out ‘Hey bike tour 10am. Get out. You’re clean enough.’

‘YOU’RE A SHOWER TAKING PUSSY JESS GO HARD OR GO HOME’

By 9.01 we were outside the apartment hotfooting it to the best breakfast place in San Sebastian. Thank good for Google reviews and Trip Advisor.

Breakfast place was called Sakona It was the kind of place we have in Melbourne. Now you could do the ‘Ugh, why on earth would you go to a Melbourne kind of place when you should have what the locals have for breakfast?’ And I could then say ‘Go fuck yourself.’

We all needed and wanted good coffee and good breakfast. Not something that didn’t quite hit the spot. Not something we didn’t realized we ordered. New place, new bed, slightly hungover, scratchy eyed, cotton mouthed, slightly pinched brain and keen to make the most of the day we needed reliable fuel. I’m not interested in ‘trying new food’ when I am travelling and need to equipt myself for a big day. I need something I know will keep me going. I don’t mind ‘trying new food’ in passing, but not as my entire meal. Coffee was good. Breakfast good. The cafe was Melbourne enough they served those 63 degree eggs, or as I call them, uncooked. Fun times. Lots of laughs. Scoff, rock and roll.

We discussed how great it was that we were all able to get out the door so fast, happily and with no fuss. That’s what you want in travel companions, people who are relaxed but also able to get their shit together in a hurry.

Most of my travel adventures have been made so much better by travelling with relaxed people who are flexible and adaptable and can get their shit together in minutes if necessary.

I don’t hang out with, and don’t travel by choice with whingers, nervous Nellies, tight arses, piss heads, worry warts, crisis generators, wankers, judgey cunts, the thin skinned, high maintenance or the snarky.

Basically you are after ‘can do’ people not ‘can’t do’ people. Avoid can’ts.

We made it to the Go Local San Sebastián full of carbs, coffee and uncooked egg by 10am on the dot. I was delighted to find it was an ELECTRIC bike tour. Little green bikes with Bosch batteries and motors. The guide Alain was a friendly, enthusiastic Basque bloke who rode us around San Sebastian, or Guy Sebastian as we had started to call it, for the next few hours. He was very knowledgeable but not excessively into details and wove history, culture and politics into our ride as we rode along the beach up the hill to Monte Igeldo and through the town. He even taught us how to play Pelota Mano (Basque Handball) in the national stadium.

The brilliant bike infrastructure in San Sebastian as in most of Europe puts Australia to shame. Drivers, pedestrians, public transport and cyclists all navigate the shared terrain a little like skiers, watching people in front and moving in a purposely predictable manner. Separated lanes are a big help but it’s the attitude of everyone that the space is to be shared that makes the biggest impact by far.

Threaded through the tour Al explained the history, struggles and triumphs of the Basque people. He even taught us a bit of language. The Basques are an indigenous ethno-linguistic group who mainly inhabit Basque country so their history is interconnected with Spanish and French history.

We think we may have experienced our only ‘bike rage’ incident in San Sebastian. As we rode along the designated bike lanes at a sensible pace a rather odd swaying older gentleman wandered into our path and called Bear what sounded like ‘El Niño’. So basically the guy stung Bear with the sledge ‘a warm phase’. That’ll teach him.

The electric bikes were brilliant. So much better for a San Sebastian tour than a regular bike due to the climb to Mount Igeldo. Even the most seasoned cyclist would have found it a challenge. Electric bikes take any stress out of a ride, they erase hills, headwinds, middle age and fatigue. You still have to pedal (the motor assists you it doesn’t carry you) but it means you can see more of the city, faster and with ease. Bike riding for me is not about exercise but about pleasure, convenience and active travel.

I was curious as to how ‘the people’ in San Sebastian had lunch and dinner. All you hear about is pinxtos. Al sent us off to one of many the worker’s restaurant called where you can get a set menu or order a la carte.

We went a la carte. It was a basic lunch of bit of chook, bit of salad, some bread, some excellent garlic prawns. Em is vego which throws up challenges for her in a lot of places she travels. With a little research and forethought she navigates them with ease. There are even apps that can lead you to vego or vego friendly restaurants. This trip has had me thinking more deeply than ever before about how mobility, pain, medical and toilet issues and dietary requirements add another layer of complexity to travel. I have a herniated disk and Anthony has a dodgy tummy that we manage fairly easily but other than that we are super fit and healthy, eat anywhere, walk or ride everywhere and have no problems using any bed, shower or toilet. So far three lots of accommodation have been up five flights of stairs, most of them had showers over high sided baths, one toilet we had to access side on (the gap between the basin and the wall was less than 50 centremetres) and one bed was in a loft which required climbing a ladder to access. None of this was any problem. I didn’t even know about most of these things because they make no difference to us so I don’t need to filter accommodation to avoid.

Some people manage medical and mobility issues their whole lives but they can happen to anyone at anytime. On our first day in Rome we chatted with someone who had to head home early from her travels because she’d mangled her knee. Sickness, disability and injury cost and not just in a monetary sense.

After lunch we dawdled back to the apartment, grabbed our bathers and wandered across to the beach. We’d lucked in with the weather. Shit weather either side of our arrival but blue skies, warm sunshine and cool nights for our couple of days in town. Dotted amongst the folks on the sand there were quite a few nude sunbathers. As is always the way it was the people no one really wanted to see with their gear off who had their gear off. We’re talking old hairy, wrinkly, mostly men who for some reason spend a lot of time bending over.

The beach was lovely but it was the sun that was truly delicious. To lie on the warm sand with the sun on my back, legs and arms was intoxicating. My hair was warm. I could feel the sun tingling on my scalp, my back, my face and my legs. I felt myself slowly melting in the earth. Melbourne winter had not been particularly long or cold, it never is, it just feels like it, and that first proper sunbathe makes me realise why people are so much more chilled when they can strip off and get some vitamin D and some sun. Lying on the earth feeling the light and warmth on my bare skin was a tonic.

After a snooze and a read on the beach I had a quick dip before going back to the apartment where we checked in with our digital worlds, napped and mooched around the apartment.

When we’d arrived our Airbnb the host had shown us a shared apartment lightwell for drying our clothes. It was a typical European apartment block with dozens of people all trying to get their washing done without hanging it over the balcony or taking up too much space.

Bear is the laundry guy on our travels. We are excellent travel companions and the tasks have naturally and neatly divided. I do money, accommodation, itinerary, food and language. He does keys, safety, laundry, navigation, tech, early flights alarms and heavy lifting.

I went looking for a frock on the drying rack in the shared light well. The clothes weren’t drying that well and I wondered if we should bring them into the sunny party of the living room near the open window. I heard Emma crashing about ‘Em, give us a hand with this clotheshorse. I reckon it’d dry better in the lounge.’

She grabbed one end and we tried to shift it through the narrow doorway ‘Nah, won’t fit. I reckon it’s alright there.’

‘Hang on we could put the washing out here ‘ It was a young happy female Australian voice. But it wasn’t Emma. I was disorientated.

‘Oh look, they’ve even got a washing machine. Do we have any detergent left?’ responded a young chirpy female British voice.

Emma was back in her room. It took me a moment to realise the voices were from an apartment a few floors up and the sound was bouncing through the light well ventriloquist style so it sounded as if the voices were in my head, or perhaps in the room, or perhaps from behind me.

I was a little startled. It sounded exactly like my darling Becky and I travelling in our early 20s. Becky was an English, prototype Home Counties girl horses, boarding school and it was rumoured she had a ‘title’ she kept quiet. I was a rough piss taking Aussie. We met in Tokyo teaching English got along like a house on fire and we did a lot of travelling together. We’re still mates today. She lives in Scotland in a castle. They have hounds.

When I travel I’m frequently and vividly transported back to other times in my life when I’ve been travelling. It as If my travel world exists parallel to my non-travel life.

Every year we have a winter holiday with a bunch of other families in a barn near Wilson’s Prom. We’ve been going for 20 years. This year my 15 year old joined us a few days after we arrived and I picked him up from the bus stop in Fish Creek, a small town close by. As we drove towards the winter house my son said ‘I can see the barn already in my mind. I know exactly what it will be like. It’s so familiar to me. Before I left home I remember consciously thinking ‘Remember this, standing here in my home’ because when I go to the barn I forget home. And when I come home I forget the barn. When I come home I feel as if I was never there and when I am there I can’t remember home. It’s like all the winter house memories join up together and all the home memories join up together.’

Yeah. That.

The four of us gussied ourselves up and headed out for our last night in San Sebastian. We began with booze and pintox at a jumpy bar before a beautiful dinner at Gerald’s. Gerald’s Bar has a sister establishment in Carlton. Sure we could go to Gerald’s in Melbourne and guess what, we do, but again for all you playing at home rolling your eyes get fucked.

We rolled out of Gerald’s around 11pm happy, chatty and rosy cheeked into the balmy night with the sea breeze. We ran through the things we’d done and the things we’d do next time. I felt I didn’t really get a lock on the place. I feel I hadn’t really gotten under it’s skin or it under mine. I think this was partly because I am not familiar with the language or the culture. Unlike British, US, Italian, French, Japanese etc Spanish and Basque culture is not as passively woven through our literature, media, comedy, music or film in the same way.

Oh fuck. The cheesecake shop. Everyone had told us we had to go to the same famous cheesecake shop called La Viña.
It was past 11pm. Surely it wouldn’t be open. The shop was in Old Town near our apartment so there was nothing to be lost by wandering past.

Open? Fucking jumping. It was overflowing with people all eating what looked like unremarkable baked, slightly charred cheesecake. We ordered a couple of pieces as we stood looking at a dozens of identical cheesecakes piled high. The Great Wall Of Cheesecake.

It was warmish, velvety, perfectly balanced and delicious. Our eyes rolled into the back of our heads in delight and we moaned in ecstasy as we devoured the cake. Bear even did a little dance from side to side and flapped his hands. We all agreed it was the best cheesecake we had ever eaten.

We tumbled home laughing and planning out next trips. This cheesecake stop will remain my fondest memory of San Sebastian. Becoming a happy gangbuster travel unit in such a short time is such a joy. And it reminded me of so many times in my early 20s when this had happened and it had seemed like magic.

Growing up you have your friends, family, neighbours and school mates. You belong to a certain tribe and you brand yourself with social markers through your clothes, where you live, how you speak and what you do. When I began travelling and meeting new people who were not part of all that unspoken pigeon holing, stereo typing and social profiling I was thrilled to find my personality was not reliant on my clothes, school, who I knew, where I lived or what I did. The essence of who was portable, adaptable and in a short time people were taking the piss out of me and I them in exactly the same way my friends and family did at home. It was a revelation. It was a liberation.

By the time we woke Emma had finished her carb loading tour of San Sebastian and had left for Berlin for her marathon. It was another sparkling blue-sky day. We headed through the town in search of breakfast which we found at Old Town Coffee. Jess and I bought some tax free Camper boots spur of the moment on the way back to the apartment. As we packed speedily, I called out to Jess to check if there were Ubers available’. ‘No Ubers, lucky you suggested we check. We’ll hail a cab down on the main street’.

We said goodbye to the apartment and dragged our luggage down the stairs. No taxis on the main street. Slight panic. We didn’t have a heap of time to get to the bus terminus. Jess was two steps ahead and went into tour guide mode and began hotfooting it to an intersection with a greater chance of finding a cab. She had our tickets, knew what time the bus was leaving and knew where the station was. She only had a backpack so could move faster. We dragged our 20-kilo luggage behind us.

I wasn’t at all fazed or concerned. Jess was sorting this and I just had to follow her lead. It was a blissful moment. ‘This must be what it feels like for the boys and Bear to travel with me’ I thought to myself because I am usually the tour guide, organizer, whip cracker, problem solver, knower of the logistics, Julie McCoy and chaos wrangler.

Jess hailed a cab, we were at the bus station with heaps of time and before we knew it we were in another country.

It’s fascinating leaving one country to head off to a new one. As soon as you pass through to the gate lounge, terminal, platform or port you are in a mash up of the place you are and the place you are going to. I’d never been to Spain before so as we boarded Iberia Airlines I was sticky beaking about getting on with the important job of racial stereotyping and massaging my prejudices. The Spanish kind of looked like a banged up version of the Italians I thought to myself. They looked like they were running late because they’d all had a last minute shag before work. Relaxed, slightly disheveled and distracted. Were they a cross between the Italian and the French? The Greek and the Italian? The Greek and the French? Perhaps they were just fucking Spanish and I should stop playing the ‘what do you get when you cross this with that game’. God I am so fucking parochial.

Half way through my time living in Tokyo in 1993 I bumped into a sheila I had worked as a waiter with at the Arts Centre. I think her name was Katrina. She was leaving the Land Of The Rising Yen in a few weeks with her pockets full of cash and told me she was taking the Trans-Siberian express on her way to backpack through Europe.

The mere mention of the famous train trip immediately unlocked three doors in my head. 1. Fuck how cool would it be to be able to say ‘I’m going on the Trans-Siberian in a few weeks.’ 2. How many travel brag stories would I win with that one and 3. I read about the Trans-Siberian in Bob Geldof’s autobiography when I was 13 years old and remembered thinking ‘that sounds so fucking cool’ but thought no more of it.

As a 13 year old reading a biography of Bob Geldof on the bottom bunk of the bedroom I shared with my two sisters in a housing commission house in Reservoir there was no such thing as bucket lists, wish boards or creative visualization. We just had prayer. Praying the shit didn’t hit the fan and begging for favors. Nothing as bold as ‘having dreams’. I would have thought of the Trans Siberian express as something other people did, like being on Young Talent Time, meeting Daryl and Ossie or flying to the moon. I wouldn’t have been jealous or determined to do it. Growing up poor in the ghetto my dream at that stage of my life would simply have been to not get pregnant before marriage.

So the mere mention of the Trans-Siberian express activated that tiny fragment deep down the memory hole. If it was the kind of thing ‘other people did’ clearly I was now one of those other people.

Katrina’s mention of the Trans-Siberian express did activate a rare pang of jealousy. I am not an envious or jealous person at all but I find the rare pangs very illuminating. They show me what it is I would like to do, be or go next.

I booked the trip through a small indi company called Moonsky Star. Moon. Sky. Star. I took a slow boat to Shanghai from Kobe after enduring a night bus from Tokyo. After I arrived in Shanghai I took a train to Beijing where the official trip took off. From the moment I stepped aboard the boat in Kobe I collected other people who were all heading to Beijing to assemble for the Trans-Sib. I love travelling on my own. It never lasts long. People travelling alone quickly meet others and form groups despite how keen you are to go solo.

The train trip from Beijing to Moscow via Mongolia and Siberia took 12 days. You could do a four-day version or a three week version. The decision to only spend one night in Mongolia was perhaps the best of my life. How much mutton can you eat, Passiona can you drink and fermented mare’s milk can you smell and not dry retch?

Watching the Asian faces turn into Caucasian faces the further we travelled north was a revelation. Mongolians faces seemed the perfect half way point. As if they were the result of one of a photo shop app where you could mash up races.

I was very keen to travel a long distance as close to land as possible. I wanted to comprehend how big the world was. Plane travel is very deceptive. One minute you are in Melbourne, an hour later you are in Sydney. But how big is the world? A night bus, a slow boat and several elderly trains from Tokyo to St. Petersburg really made me able to comprehend how big and small the world was and is.

Bear and I landed at Madrid airport and had to get a connecting flight to San Sebastian. What gate was it? How did we get to the gate? How long would it take and hang on I just need to make sure we don’t have to get our luggage here and check it in again here. We followed the signs, ended up in a shuttle and we were in the right terminal with 40 minutes to spare. Cool. Relax. The terminal was super light and sunny, the Spanish wafted around non-chalantly and seemed to be travelling with a ridiculous amount of small dogs in zip up baskets.

‘Please note. There are no boarding announcements at this airport’.

Ah! That explains why it feels so relaxed. We’re not constantly having our fucking brains pierced with information we don’t need. Very fucking civilized.

I tweeted – Madrid airport PA. Please note. There are no boarding announcements at this airport #becausefuckyou

We had a laugh, found our gate, checked our social media and had a drink.

A queue started to form and we rolled our eyes and talked about who these people were who queued up so early, for what? The seats were assigned and it was the crew’s job to find a place to store your hand luggage if the overhead compartments were full. We went back to our screens and felt smug and superior.

We finally moseyed over as the line began to move and I made a comment about how laid back the Spanish were ‘See this flight is supposedly taking off in five minutes and they have only started to board….’

At the same moment I started thinking it Bear said ‘Are we in the right queue?’

Holy fuck. We raced up to the empty check in point two metres from the queue we were in and as we got closer to the bored looking crew member we could clearly see she was standing under a screen that said San Sebastian FLIGHT CLOSED.

As I pulled out our boarding passes and passports we begged to be let on the flight while the Spanish sheila berated us. I just kept saying ‘we were standing in that queue, we didn’t see this queue…’ we ran to the plane hot footed it along the tarmac, climbed the stairs and caught our breath.

That was over a week ago. I can’t tell you how many times I have had flashbacks and shuddered at the remembering how close we were to missing the plane. How did that happen we kept asking each other. We were at the gate. The check in was directly behind our seats. How did we not see a queue? We saw the other longer queue. Rooky mistake that one.

The no boarding announcements really did make a difference when you are used to being micromanaged by PA. It was also a very small flight. Less than 40 people. I don’t think there was any queue. The check in was open and people drifted straight through. The signals to board I am accustomed to are the formation of a queue and the announcement. There were no announcements and there was a long queue that formed about the time we expected and only one metre away from our correct check in.

We landed in San Sebastian around noon. I knew fuck all about it apart from the fact it was supposed to have the best food in Europe and people raved about the place. As we flew in looked gorgeous, beaches, blue skies, dear little houses, no tall buildings, lush hills. Should be good.

In the same way I love seeing performances and films I know nothing about I love rocking up to places about which I know fuck all. I did know San Sebastian was part of Basque Country so we were in Spain but not in Spain.

No Ubers here so we took a cab to the Airbnb. I speak a little French and a little Italian and a bit more Japanese but no Spanish and no Basque. It was very very odd feeling mute. I showed the cab driver the address on the phone and off we went. I peered out the window summing it up.

And you can fuck right off with your ‘I always make sure I know a few phrases in any language before I arrive in another country. Hello, good-bye, excuse me, thank-you. It’s not hard and it’s very disrespectful to land in a new place with a different language and not have made an effort…’

FUCK. RIGHT. OFF. You do it your way you judgey cunt and I’ll do it mine.

The reason we were here was because of my mate Jess. She’s one of my besties, a manager for a tour company in Paris and an intrepid and enthusiastic traveler along with being a cracking sheila. Bear, me and 11yo Charlie hung out with her in Paris in 2014 and had the most incredible time. When we decided on this crazy trip and Bear and I had two weeks to ourselves one of the things we wanted to do was hang out with Jess. I asked her to work out a bit of an adventure for us all. San Sebastian was our first stop.

We couldn’t get into the Airbnb for a couple of hours so food, beer and some sunshine was the plan. For the next two hours we became the pitiful creatures who drag their luggage around a new place having no idea and knowing we are about to have the worst food and most expensive beer in this leg of the trip. We found a chicken shop where everything was written in Basque and I managed to point and mime enough to get some chicken and chips in a polystyrene container. It was humiliating, liberating and equalising in equal proportions. There were some wide stone steps close by so we decided to set ourselves up with our luggage entourage. There was a bloke sitting a few stairs behind us. Big bloke. May or may not be homeless or a tourist but looked harmless enough. We wolfed down our deep fried treats as we watched the people, breathed the air and started to get a lock on the place.

We had almost finished our lunch when a large white van started to reverse park in front of us. Slowly, deliberately and with precision. The vans bumper touched the bumper of the car parked as it reversed.

And kept going.

When I say kept going I mean reversed so much the bumper of the car parked was completely mashed and the reversing cars bumper was being enveloped. There was a strange crunching noise but not as loud or piercing as you’d expect. The van straightened up, drove forward, extricated itself from the car behind and the van driver hopped out without a backward glance.

The large bloke sitting behind us said in a broad Australian accent ‘Fuck me dead. That’s one way to park.’

It’s at these kind of moments I am always very very quiet. The bloke had clearly heard our accents and knew we were Australian so it was too late to pull the ‘No, English pardon monsieur, no English’ so instead we both silently packed up our rubbish and wheeled our cases to the bar around the corner.

You never know when a solo Australian traveler is an independent, fun, well travelled person who’s good value and an excellent chat or when they are travelling alone because it’s their only option.

Apropos the bumper bar that magically sprang back to shape after the Reverse Parking Incident, the driver clearly knew something we didn’t the bumper was made of some thick rubber/plastic deal. ‘That’ said Bear who is constantly annoyed and frustrated by the fact we don’t live in the future where there is universal free wifi, full skeleton replacements, a living wage, free public transport, self driving cars and bicycle docking stations everywhere ‘is how bumpers should be made’.

We were installed into our gorgeous AirBnb with a view of the Old Town and the beach. Jess was arriving from Paris later that night but her friend Emma who we had never met was meeting us at the Airbnb.

Emma rocked up loaded up with backpack and case and in five minutes we had made a new friend. She was a ripper. Which I expected. Jess is a brilliant traveler and excellent people person and there is no way she’d make a wrong call. Many people do. They invite people along to travel who they personally like or want to please and their lack of thought? insight? Consideration? totally fucks up the trip because they have not bothered to think about the symbiosis of the trip as a whole and only of what they want. To bring an annoying person on the trip fucking up other people’s holiday.

We settled in with wine, chat and easy conversation. Emma too was an intrepid traveler, had met Jess when they were exchange students in Belgium in their teens and was running the Berlin Marathon the following Sunday.

It was exactly what travelling in my early 20s was like. Rock up to somewhere with a mate and their mate and suddenly you’re a travel family with in jokes, intimate revelations and a bond forged by close quarters, shared interests and full on chat.

I had to deal with some annoying bullshit from home, which always happens. I love being connected and I don’t mind dealing with the bullshit but it does mean switching into a different mode. Doing what you can, taking counsel from others about what is best to do, how much can be done from here and the best way to minimize negative impact to you travel and your travel companions and maximize any way you can positively affect the situation out of reach.

I always know when I travel shit will hit the fan where I am or on the other side of the world. I expect it and when it happens I am a little relieved. ‘Good, tick, so something has happened. Not to serious, could have been worse, will blow over soon.’

The fear of shit happening when you are travelling either where you are or at home should not stop people travelling. Shit happens all the time whether you are there or here. You just have to manage it. Some serious shit had gone down when I am far away from loved ones. You just have to do your what you can, where you are with what you have and get some perspective. It’s shit when people you love are being affected by something out of their control or caused by a toxic fuckwit. There is a temptation to air lift them out or abandon your adventure to rescue them but the bottom line you know what? If you don’t rescue people and sort out situations they have plan B-Z you’re just Plan A probably because you are the most reliable and available but you may not be the best.

Even when I was single I have memories of being anxious about tiny things or worse still non-existent things so even having no actual worries is no guarantee of not worrying

Em, Bear and I hit the town about 8pm. I was a little distracted with the shit going on but determined to get as much out of the night a possible.

San Sebastian is famous for its pintxos, small cheap bar snacks. It’s a little overwhelming at first but you have to roll your sleeves up, get stuck in and work it out. Going out for pintxos is basically a bar and food crawl. The idea is not to ‘settle in’ somewhere but to have a drink and a bite at once place and then wander to another joint.

We spent our night wandering around beautiful Old Town. Lanes and lanes full of hundreds of little joints with their bars stacked with dozens of little snacks, mostly stuff piled on pieces of baguette. Some of the pintxos you choose from the bar, some off a menu, some written on boards and some you point to and they warm up.

We were told to try the white sparkling wine of the region called txakoli, which is poured in the same, flamboyant way a street food seller in India or the Middle East would poor tea. Suffice to say txakoli is not my cup of my tea. But I did have four glasses of it to make sure.

I was curious as to how often and under what circumstances the locals got their pintxos on. I wasn’t keen to eat like this every night. Not only am I not a massive drinker but also I am more a sitting at the table having a proper meal kind of sheila.

We headed back to the apartment when Jess rolled up. There was hugging and squealing and the dumping of her backpack and we headed back to the bars.

We ended the night at a mad place tucked behind a church called La Cuchara de San Telmo. People had warned us we had to know what we wanted. The place was fast and furious. Luckily Em and Jess speak fairly good bar/taxi/shagging Spanish so after some ‘no you can’t have that, no you can’t sit there, no we’ve run out’ some incredible food arrived and was demolished between delighted moans before the new city excitement was overtaken by food, booze and yawning.

We wandered back home around midnight laughing and chatting through the gorgeous little lanes. We discussed the possibility of a bike tour in the morning, I’d seen three online. Jess said she’d do some research and try to book us something for the morning. We hit the sack and the sack hit us. I didn’t have a lock on the place yet but I was keen and determined.

Broke my travel rule of never going to the same place by heading back to Cafe Sciascia for coffee and toasted prosciutto and mozzarella panini for the second day in a row because fuck the police. The streets that had been dead the day before on a Sunday were jumping 8.30am on a Monday with folks zipping on vespas to work, kids mouching to school and oldies shuffling out to do their shopping. I had that thought again that I always do when I am a tourist and it’s a week day ‘Wow. People actually live here. What would that be like. What would it be like if we lived here. Could I live her? Would I like to live here…?’

I went ‘overseas’ for the first time when I was 24. I grew up calling it going ‘overseas’. It’s such an Australian thing. People from other countries call it going abroad, travelling or visiting another country. But visiting another country when you are Australian means going over seas.

So I was 24. I had this boyfriend Alex who was a bit older and had some cash and on my 24th birthday he gave me a ridiculously big bunch of flowers that I didn’t have a vase big enough for so I had to use a bucket, a CD of Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion that I couldn’t play because my CD player had been nicked and told me he’d take me overseas for my birthday anywhere in the world I wanted to go. I’d left uni and was a waiter just breaking into stand-up so I wasn’t cashed up at all so this was a generous and ostentatious gift. Ireland was my first choice. We only have ten days to travel so going to Europe was probably a bit too far he said. I then suggested New York, India, Paris… It turns out he wanted to go to Thailand and Vietnam so the ‘anywhere in the world’ was a bit of an overstatement. It was incredible experience, travel is the greatest gift, and it really hooked me on travel. Neither of my parents ever left Australia. I was always wide eyed and a little envious hearing people’s travel stories. After my first ‘overseas’ trip I felt as if I had joined some club, levelled up and finally arrived. Somewhere. I was a person with a passport and travel stories.

It was because of this boyfriend I ended up living in Tokyo for 18 months the next year. It’s a long story. I taught English there, earned enough money to put a deposit on the house I still own, did a bunch of other travel including the Trans Siberian Express where I feel in love with a posh english hedanist who was the inspiration for my book The Happiness Show. I can’t remember much about the relationship to be honest which is strange because it went for a few years but Alex and the travel I did with him and because of him really changed the course of my life.

He’d travelled to Tokyo for work (he was in publishing) just before he and I met. He raved about it and the people he hung out with who were all Australians teaching English. He kept saying ‘If I was your age I’d be living in Tokyo teaching English. You can make heaps of money and have a fucking ball. You are under 26 so you can get a working holiday visa’. A year later I did just that. We split up between me buying my ticket and leaving Australia.

Sitting on the slow cheap train from Narita to Tokyo wide eyed and head fucked I remember looking out the window at kids going to school stopped at the boom gates, girls in their sailor suits, boys in their uniforms inspired by the Prussian army lugging their back packs thinking ‘WOW. People actually live here…’

So after our coffee we headed back to Rex-Tours for another four hour bike ride this time with a 10am start. The weather was fucking glorious as it had been the day before and we were off to The Appian way. Our crew was smaller six this time not eight as Bear and I’s eldest sons both had other stuff to do. Our tour guide was Max, brother of Leo and co owner of the outfit. As we sorted our bikes (fun fact, you really have to have bikes with shockers when you are fanging around Rome because of the cobblestones) Max summed us up and quietly asked me if anyone was from Sydney. ‘No, we’re all from Melbourne’.

He let out a huge sigh of relief. ‘So no one from Sydney? Oh thank God. The people from Sydney their accent grates my brain.’

Then he did a high pitched nasal voice and said in one of those terrible Australian accents people do ‘Heeeelllloooo! Peeeerrrrfect.’

Sydney people have an accent? News to me but according to Max tour guide assured me they do.

The weather happened to be ‘peeeerrrrfect’. You can have fun travelling in all weather but beautiful weather truly does amplify your experience.

We took off though thought the back streets to the old Jewish ghetto over the road from the Portico of Octavia before stopping at the Baths of Caracalla.

For me Max, and our tour guide Arturo the night before had been a bit heavy on the info, but for others in the group they’d been a bit light on the info so they were probably just right. Peeerrrfffeeeect.

I have never been able to truly comprehend the centuries and millennia ancient buildings, statues and places have been around or, if truth be told, absorb their significance. It’s all impossible and incomprehensible to me. These ‘important places’ where ‘important things’ happened to ‘important people’ is too much to appreciate. Yes I can understand the words they are saying and yes I can count but after a certain point my brain reaches ‘peak important’ and all I can say is ‘Fucking amazing. Fucking does my head in.’

The most memorable ‘peak important’ moment was with Arturo the night before as he told us about the Colosseum and my brain was having a tantrum. The Colosseum has over 80 entrances and could accommodate about 50,000 spectators, there were bars, restaurants and it’s where the Romans invented the hamburger, at different times it had been a prison and a zoo, there were 36 trap doors in the arena allowing for elaborate special effects, Festivals as well as games could last up to 100 days, they would sometimes flood the Colosseum and have miniature ship naval battles inside for entertainment, 500,000 people lost their lives and over a million wild animals were killed throughout the duration of the people vs. beast games, the pope turned the fertile soil into a vineyard and made wine….

I was desperate to jam all this info in to no avail. I just stood muttering ‘fucking hell, fucking amazing, does my head in’. How the fuck did they do the design, building, engineering and infrastructure without the experience and technology we have now? All the fuck the had were pencils, paper and slaves. Where the fuck did they get the vision from? What fuelled their imagination and what was their motivation?

Rome is the city I have the most trouble truly comprehending. The whole place is an outdoor museum. I am so grateful and amazed when I consider all the people over centuries that have fought for the ruins, monuments and churches not to be absorbed by practicality. Rome is a huge bustling city. Surely people over the ages have fought to ‘Fuck this old bullshit off and whack in some homes, schools, hospitals and shops’ but peoples stood their ground and said ‘No. This is our history and culture.’ Sure it’s tourism now but the people who saw the importance in preserving it would never have known it would be teaming with tourists and the proceeds would be an integral part of their economy.

So we pedalled off to Appian Way and the Aqueducts though the main streets and it’s amazing how fast we were in the sweet gentle countryside.

The streets in Rome are bonkers. Max and Arturo had both said ‘Just follow me and be rude’. Navigating the Rome traffic you have to take the attitude of being a starving person standing behind a truck where someone is throwing out bread. You just push forward and elbow people out of the way to get what you want. Road rules are a suggestion, markings and signs are optional and no one takes it personally.

Riding through the sweet gentle country side of Italy with it’s soft air and light was delicious. European countryside gives you the familiar hit of nature with an dreamy otherness quality. Different plants, trees and smells. We stopped and filled our water with glorious naturally fizzy volcanic mineral water shoulder to shoulder with the locals filling crates. The Aqueducts and the Appian Way were amazing, incredible, incomprehensible and all those other things. The Appian Way is nearly 500 km long, starting from Rome, along the Tyrrhenian coast, crossing the lands of Campania and Basilicata and ending in Puglia. It was built in 312 BC. Yep. Brain exploded.

For me the trip was about being in the countryside on the bike and enjoying understanding the geometry of the city. Max told us stuff on stops and he was fairly lose with the jokes prefacing everyone with ‘I know this joke but I probably shouldn’t say it because I might offend someone…’ so we’d all beg for his dodgy jokes which would have managed please everyone wanting to be offended.

At about 2pm we landed back at the office dusty, hot, hungry and grateful. There was a little Osteria around the corner and we ate there. You can’t go wrong with the food in Italy, you really really can’t. After a few weeks travelling I usually start craving ‘home food’. But not in Italy. All they serve is Italy is home food.

We all headed off home for a rest before dinner and 16yo Hugo wanted to check out a hoodie at the Nike store. Out of my three sons he is the one most born to travel and it was apparent from a very young age. It was a half an hour walk with a detour to shop I had no interest in but the chat was light and lovely.

Our last night in Rome and Anthony caught up with his son who was heading off to Sicily and the rest of us nailed a reservation at a place Marz’s partner had heard of. One of those mythical true cultural travel brag experiences.

It was a restaurant near the Vatican run by nuns with no menu. You paid a set price and got what you got. This is where it’s very handy to be travelling with Marz who can speak Italian. He had missed Hugo’s birthday a few weeks before because he’d been in Italy so bought a birthday cake and a couple of bottles of prosecco for a celebration. When he made the reservation he asked the nuns if we could bring the cake and bubbles and sure, no problemo. Speaking another language is a fucking superpower.

I wandered up on my own (how good is it having Google maps and data for travel) and found the place – Fraterna Domus. I was buzzed in and sat in austere waiting room with a marble floor that smelt of holy water, genuflecting and bleach. I was a little early so I stickybeaked for a while. It was apparent you could also stay there for those who’d like to sleep in monastic rooms with religious icons watching over you.

Marz, his partner and the boys arrived and we were taken downstairs to a simple room full of long wooden tables and chairs with white tablecloths. Despite being a basement room it was bright and buzzy. We had a delicious super tradition meal of soup, pasta and a meat dish with water and wine served by smiling nuns. The food looked nothing special but tasted extraordinary. Then they turned the lights off. WTF. Did we have to pray now? Is their surprise litugical dancing? No. It was a smiling nun starting a rousing chorus of happy birthday in Italian for Hugo and the whole room sang along. They had even managed to find the number 16 in candles for the cake.

We shared the cake with the others in the restaurant and the nuns. It was one of those very very special travel nights.

As we walked up the stairs to leave we got to the ground level and there was a door ajar. Inside a perfect and exquisite chapel that would sit 40 adorned in incredible art hundreds of years old. If only those walls could talk.

We walked home and said good-bye. The boys were off with Marz to head south for a couple of weeks and Bear and I hit the sack for our belated two week Love Party Honeymoon Adventure. Plane from Rome Airport leaving 7.45am. Up at 5am. In an Uber at 5.30 then dropped off at the ‘Kiss and Go’ zone.