These Boots

The sounds of the piazza at night – trumpets, voices, glasses clinking, and the water, forever the sounds of fountains. The light shimmers across white marble facades as the taste of Campari con pompelo refreshes after a day of wandering. Too many streets and piazzas to name, all cobbled, crossed and criss-crossed throughout innumerable years of history.

My old boots are black and shiny, with thick, black soles and black and white laces. They were made to be fancy hiking boots, for city dwellers to look “woodsy.”

I hold them in my hands, turn them over to look at their barely-worn soles, and shake my head, amazed.  Their leather is barely cracked. They have trudged so far, and not just along cobblestone streets, but they have climbed many mountains, splashed their way through creeks and mud, and landed perhaps in a few cow patties along the way. They have walked off the map.

They once carried me along the ledge of a Florence hotel, in through the bedroom window and up to a garden terrace to face the Duomo Cathedral.

They have also been dressed up and worn to restaurants, to cafes and bars hidden among the canals, the alleys and the gothic bridges of Venice, and once to an opera in Vienna.

Then, on to Budapest. They have crossed the chain bridge, and up the winding medieval stone road to the hill-top palace – lavish, regal and dignified. Have traversed Castle Hill’s ramparts, its medieval town streets, treading past patterned-roof churches, pausing to look over the Danube River with its seven bridges.

They have danced and twirled through the late night streets of Prague, across the Charles Bridge again and again, and in and out of basement jazz clubs. They have wandered somberly through the Jewish quarter, explored the Golden Lane and stopped in awe in front of the St. George Basilica.

They look as though they have barely been worn, and yet they have been on some of my greatest, most far-flung adventures.

Written in response to today’s inspiration from the Daily Prompt: Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.

Fellow bloggers’ walking:

1. Nature’s Contrast | Bright Moments Catcher
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http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/daily-prompt-walk/