La Dolce Vita…Sans Technology

I recently had a 2 week adventure in the one place I’ve wanted to visit my whole life, Italy! As someone that’s type A, I spent weeks planning this trip using spreadsheets, review sites and a multitude of Rick Steve books. The one thing I did not plan for was my phone being stolen on my very first jet-lagged day abroad. I had equipped my phone with an international data plan, saved addresses plotted out on Google maps, phone numbers of hotels I was staying at and plenty of camera space. As all of that, plus the millions of other things I use my iPhone for on a daily basis, disappeared I felt completely lost and had to adapt to traveling the way people did pre-smartphone era.

While the majority of the features were replaceable, none quite met the standard and convenience I was used to from my iPhone. A quick journey down the winding cobblestone streets of Venice led me to find a digital camera and watch, though they lacked the ability to let me post directly to social media or wake me up at a specific time. Fold out paper maps were readily available at each of the 6 stops across my journey through Italy, but meticulous time was spent using spotty wifi to hand draw routes from hotels to landmarks. And even then, some maps left something to be desired, either from lack of street names or expanding so beyond the place of visit that the map would not fold itself back into a carry-able size. Books of Sudoku and travel magazines written in Italian (not understandable to me) were used as forms of entertainment during long train rides.