It wasn’t much to look at—about half the size of a regular sheet of paper, small enough to tuck into my backpack and easy to pull out whenever I needed to write or sketch. But to me, at that particular moment, it was nearly priceless.

I was spending a semester abroad studying art history, traveling through Europe with a group of other students and our teachers, Betty and Candy. For weeks, that little notebook had followed me from London to Paris to Amsterdam and now to Venice, slowly filling with dates, names, architectural details, sketches, observations, and notes about the paintings, churches, museums, and buildings we were studying along the way.

Venice was roughly the halfway point of our ten-week trip—which also meant it was time for midterms. Somewhere during our morning visits, I realized I had left my notebook behind in one of the churches we’d visited.

I was petrified.

We had traveled quite a distance since leaving the church—a water taxi ride, several bridges, winding streets and little alleyways. I hadn’t paid much attention to how we’d gotten there in the first place. Why would I? I’d simply been following the group.

Now I had to find my way back.

I asked Betty and Candy if I could miss the rest of the group’s plans—I think there may have been a lunch involved—and go retrieve it. They gave me a few directions and permission to head out on my own. There was no GPS in my pocket. I spoke almost no Italian. And the church wasn’t some famous Venetian landmark I could easily point to on a map. It was tucked away, off the beaten path, somewhere in a city that already felt like an elaborate maze built on water.

I remember being scared. But off I went.

A Different Venice

Until that afternoon, I had mostly experienced Venice the way a student on an art-history program would. We went somewhere, and I followed. Someone explained what we were seeing, and I listened. There was a church, a painting, a building, an architectural detail—and I wrote it down.

But wandering through Venice alone was different. Without the safety and chatter of the group around me, I became a quiet observer.

I remember children playing in the street, perhaps chasing a ball. An outdoor market with fish and vegetables spread across tables covered in red-and-white checks. A cat lingering near a box underneath one of the tables. Laundry hung overhead between buildings, curtains billowed from open windows, and there was laughter and the ordinary rhythm of people coming and going. I remember an older gentleman in a cap walking with a cane and a little girl smiling and playing with a friend.

I remember the old building facades, beautiful in their imperfection, some of them looking a little dirty and worn. Near the market, the street was wet, as though someone had recently washed it down. None of it was extraordinary to the people who lived there.

That was the extraordinary part.

This wasn’t Venice presented to us as a destination. It was simply Venice on an ordinary day.

Thirty-eight years later, I can’t tell you precisely where along my journey I saw each of these things. Memory doesn’t always preserve a day in perfect chronological order. But it preserved them.

Eventually, somehow, I found the church.

The Little Red Notebook

I stepped inside, and the church was empty. After the brightness outside, I remember how dark it seemed. There was a large black-and-white marble floor and the dim glow of candles, but somewhere above, sunlight was finding its way through the windows.

And there, with sunlight spilling across the backs of the pews, was my little red notebook. Sitting exactly where I’d left it.

The relief was enormous.

I felt saved.

I wanted nothing more than to grab it and quietly disappear before anything else could possibly go wrong. But the priest must have heard the church door open and close, because he came out to see who had entered and whether I needed help.

He may have recognized me from the group of students who had been there earlier that morning. Between my smile, a few hand gestures, and my triumphantly held-up red notebook, there wasn’t much explanation required.

“Grazie,” I said—one of the very few Italian words I knew.

He understood. I quietly left the church with the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders.

And then something wonderful happened.

I had time.

Something I Wasn’t Supposed to Find

On my way back, I noticed a tiny museum or gallery with an exhibition of work by Giorgio de Chirico. I knew the name. I think I had seen perhaps one of his paintings in an art-history course before that trip, but that was about the extent of my familiarity with him.

So I went inside.

The exhibition was tiny—maybe two rooms, meandering from one into the other. Paintings covered the walls, along with a few sculptures. And everything was de Chirico.

I was fascinated.

His work felt strange and lonely and a little unsettling. There were those unmistakable figures, the chessboard-like patterns, deep turquoise, black and white, and wonderful golden tones. There was isolation in those rooms, a sense of humanity becoming mechanical—ideas that felt enormous to a nineteen-year-old standing alone in a tiny exhibition in Venice.

There was no teacher beside me to explain what I was seeing. No classmates to discuss it with. No one telling me which painting was important or what I should write down about it. I didn’t have to remember any of it for an exam.

It was simply there for me to take in.

And somehow, that made it mine.

De Chirico became one of my favorite artists that afternoon. He still is.

What Stayed With Me

When I think about that day now, I’m proud of that nineteen-year-old girl. Not because she was particularly fearless. She wasn’t. I know because I still feel like her.

Put me back in Venice today—even with GPS in my hand—and tell me I need to find some obscure church across the city by myself, and I’m fairly certain I’d still be nervous.

But she went.

And once the frightening part was over, she didn’t simply hurry back. She looked around. She wandered. She walked through an open door because something inside caught her attention. And she discovered something no one had planned for her.

There are many things I remember from those ten weeks in Europe. We visited extraordinary museums, stood before important works of art, walked through magnificent churches, and learned things I remain grateful to have experienced.

But one of my favorite memories began because I made a mistake.

I left a little red notebook on a church pew.

At the time, I thought the most important thing I brought back from that afternoon was everything I’d written inside it. Thirty-eight years later, I’m not so sure.

What stayed with me were children playing in a Venetian street, a cat underneath a market table, laundry overhead, curtains moving through an open window, sunlight falling across a dark church, a kind priest who didn’t need to understand my language to understand why I’d returned, and a tiny exhibition I wasn’t looking for.

Perhaps that’s one of the loveliest things travel can give us—not simply the opportunity to see someplace new, but the chance to discover something for ourselves.

We can make the reservations. Read the guidebooks. Study the maps. Plan the route. There is nothing wrong with knowing where we’re going.

But perhaps we should leave a little room for the things we weren’t looking for.

They may be the things we remember most.