My visit to Italy lasts less than five hours. The lines long, the hostels full, the breakfast expensive (but still exquisitely delicious), I’m out of Venice in under 45 minutes, moving eastward again to Trieste, where a bus takes me across the border to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Its beauty is classic.
Plans coalesced on the beach in Lagos. Ready for a larger leap between cultures, I intended to cross the Strait of Gibraltar to spend about one week in Morocco. My guidebook had a seven day itinerary that sounded, like most other week-long guidebook itineraries of places I’ve never visited, to be a reasonable balance of perspective and breadth.