Getting around.

Way back when I was eleven years old, I was frolicking in a field as eleven year olds are wont to do, and I turned my ankle. Since then, I've had some chronic issues with a lovely condition called accessory navicular syndrome.

Note: These are not my feet.

Basically, I was lucky enough to be born with extra bones in my feet. An important tendon normally inserts into the navicular bone, but for me, it inserts into the extra bone. When I turned my ankle way back when, it damaged the extra bone's attachment to my foot so if I stand or walk too long, it causes me pain.

I actually have a whole separate blog dedicated to my attempts at "solving" this issue (spoiler alert: nothing worked), so what the heck does this have to do with Italy?

Wellll... something must have aggravated it recently because I have spent way too many days lately sitting on my couch or lying in bed all day with an ice bag on my foot. Now I'm not talking about days where I gallivanted around Boston instead of taking the T or days where I stood in front of a classroom for hours. I'm talking about days where the amount of steps it would take me to walk from my bed, to the bathroom, back to my bedroom, and into my kitchen in the morning are just too many steps for my foot to handle and I'm left lying on the couch for the rest of the day.

I feel like this dog, a lot of the time.

Again, what does this have to do with Italy? WELL, my itinerary requires a lot of walking. A LOT! Joel already suggested, in an attempt to make me feel better about the situation, that maybe we could postpone the trip. My reaction was pretty emphatic. I don't care if he's pushing me in a wheelchair or I'm hobbling around on crutches. I'm GOING to Italy.


Second order of business is that I booked our trains! (See what I did there? Dual purpose title.) I had been debating how I was going to pay for the trains for a while now. I originally was thinking about buying a Eurail pass, despite the fact that the last time I was in Italy, they were not the most cost effective option by a long shot. Honestly, I don't even know why people would buy an Italy Eurail pass ever. They are pretty significantly more expensive. I have never looked into trains in another country, but seriously, I don't know how those guys stay in business.

There were a lot of websites out there offering to sell the train tickets, but I ended up going with the plain old Trenitalia website. And I got some pretty amazing deals, I must say! I suppose technically I didn't "save" any money, since the money hadn't been spent, but when I was budgeting money for trains, the predictions I was making were dramatically higher than what was actually spent. For example, I predicted that a train from Venice to Florence was going to cost us $234 together. I actually spent $76. Yes, you read that right. SEVENTY SIX dollars for two tickets.

The fares that I bought are called MINI fares. They have a lot more restrictions than other fares, but as such, they are vastly cheaper. And they aren't even as restricted as flights. You CAN change or even cancel the ticket up to midnight the day before the day of travel. I think it's a pretty sweet deal, and I can't wait to use all that "extra" money on some awesome meals in Italy. Or, you know, put it back in my savings account so we can someday buy a house...