March 2015
March 2015, Gloria & I visited Italy for her birthday. It was an unforgettable trip, the kind of trip that feels like it rewires your memory forever. We went from hustling in the dirty subways of New York, surrounded by steel, noise, & concrete dust… to the raw beauty of Cinque Terre, where the air felt lighter & the ocean looked like it was painted on purpose. It was the refresher we needed at the time, physically & spiritually. Italy will always have a special place in my heart, because it reminded me that life can be dreamy, slow, romantic, & full of surprises when you least expect it.
We traveled through Milan, Cinque Terre, Rome, Florence, Sienna, & Venice, taking it all in like two kids on a real-life storybook adventure. Every city felt like its own universe: Milan was sharp & stylish, Rome felt ancient & powerful, Florence was pure art, & Venice felt like something impossible… like a city that shouldn’t even exist, but does anyway.
On the train to Venice, two businessmen sat across from us. They kept eyeing all my merch laid out on the table, and you could tell they were curious. Next thing you know, they ask me to draw one of the gentlemen, so I did a caricature right there on the spot. That little moment turned into one of those random life blessings you can’t plan. It turned out the man I drew had the keys to a Murano glass blowing factory. They forwarded the manager’s information, & suddenly we were taking a boat out to Murano, an island off Venice, getting access to something most people never see behind the curtain.
We got a behind-the-scenes tour of the glass blowing process, standing so close to the heat we could feel it on our skin, watching liquid glass get manipulated like magic right in front of us. Fire, precision, skill, tradition, artistry. It was hypnotizing. It felt like watching sculpture happen in real time, like the element itself was alive. That day stuck with me, because it was art in its rawest form, & it reminded me that creativity exists everywhere… even in the most unexpected conversations, on a random train ride, in a country across the world.
