City number two: Treviso, Italy.
Canals in Treviso.
A lot of memorable moments in Treviso… such as renting a car. But I’ll get to that story in a second. First of all, we arrived in Treviso on Sunday afternoon, touching down in the rain. It had been warm and sunny when we left Romania, so the change in weather was a little disappointing, but still… it was Italy! Julie and I just about freaked when it suddenly hit us where we were. We were picked up and brought to our hostel by the owner; the room we’d booked ended up being more of a little apartment for the five of us, which was nice. We explored the city that evening (and ate pizza [mine had eggplant and mushrooms and tomatoes and zucchini and it was awesome] and gelato [welcome to Italy!]), and walked back in the rain, trying to avoid stepping on these huge, nasty slugs that suddenly appeared everywhere. (I crunched one and squealed, I was so surprised…)
A rainy night leaving the city center.
Then at about 10 Monday morning, Julie and Marit and I were picked up at our hostel by a friend of the owner, and were brought to the airport so we could pick up the car Marit had reserved for our grand road trip around Italy. It was pouring rain, and the woman driving us didn't speak anything but Italian, but if I spoke slowly in Spanish and she spoke slowly in Italian, we could communicate well enough to figure out where we were supposed to leave the keys to the room, etc. So eventually the three of us arrived at the airport and headed to the Budget desk. Our first issue was that Marit hadn't printed out the correct forms--well, she printed one copy of them, but it printed so small you had to use a magnifying glass to read it--but that was the only copy she had, so we sheepishly offered that to the lady. Thankfully she was a good sport and took it anyway. (Whew.) Then, Marit didn't have enough money on her credit card to back up the purchase, so Julie had to pay, but Julie had left her passport at the hostel, and neither card would work, and technically only the person who made the reservation can pay, and on and on and on... so for a good half-hour the poor lady working at the desk had to bend rules and call people and bend over backwards to help us out. But eventually everything was miraculously resolved (I stood there helplessly praying the whole time, so I'm really attributing it to the miraculous). We got a key and a license plate number and walked out to the lot. It was still pouring rain, and my umbrella is really small, so by the time we had walked the quarter-mile to the parking lot to find our car, we were all pretty wet. We started looking... and looking... and looking... it wasn't in the lot. Anywhere. So there we stood, water dripping off us, slightly miserable and praying for a solution... ugh. We had just decided to head back to the rental desk and ask the woman about it, when we looked up and saw a person arrive in the lot on bicycle. It was the lady from the rental desk! She asked us if we'd found it (uh, no) and helped us look; when she determined it wasn't there she loaded us all in her personal car and drove us a good few miles away to the place they clean out the cars once they're returned--nowhere near the airport. It was there! We almost kissed the car, we were so glad to see it--and I really would have given the woman a bear hug if I could have. I think God chose to put an angel at the Budget desk this morning.
God kept showing up on this trip, providing for us in really tangible ways: our hostels working out, finding cheap and delicious places to eat, providing someone who speaks English at just the point where we really need help, etc. I guess I had forgotten that God answers prayers really concretely--or I had forgotten until the rental car lady showed up on a bicycle in the pouring rain this morning. I don't think I'll forget again soon.
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