I almost didn't take the detour.

The train had been delayed by forty minutes outside of Naples and by the time I finally got moving again I had already missed my connection to Amalfi, which meant the whole careful plan I'd spent three weeks building on a spreadsheet — color coded by day, with backup options in a separate column — was already falling apart before I'd even properly started. I sat on a plastic seat in the Naples station with my backpack between my feet and my phone showing me a map that kept losing signal and I thought about crying. Not dramatically. Just the quiet tired kind, the...