On the road again - Paris to Angouleme.

I leave in the afternoon for Venice. I'm on my way again, I broke up my French trip to meet up with the daughter after the affair of the stolen wallet and the leavetaking of her partner. I was being motherly but she had herself sorted. I wait at the bus station in the freezing cold and decide to have a hot chocolate at the bar. I am the only woman there, the mountain men are all having their aperitivo drinks. The waitress with rainbow hair makes me a thick, dark hot chocolate that is like a hot mousse. I am warmed and ready for the bus trip to Venice.

I get the overnight train again to Paris, booking a carriage for two and ending up for some reason in one on my own again. The usual half bottle of chilled Prosecco, juice, magazines are laid out for me. Why is the Italian train to #Paris so much more glamorous than the Paris to Venice? In the morning there is a choice of four croissants and a fantastic macchiato made by a handsome Italian barista. Ah Italy....

I've booked a hotel on the Ile St Louis. I choose it because it's reasonable and I expect that it's close to tourist places. Wrong again but at least it's in a better area than the last one. It's warm and welcoming with a fireplace crackling. It's freezing, windy and rainy. When I walk out to explore, I am cooled to the core. After an hour of my umbrella being blown inside out; I find a cafe with the famous Moules and frites. Older couples surround me, I can imagine that they come here on a certain day of the week. It seems I am the solo tourist. I have been invited to the opening of the art exhibition of the man I met on the train last time, and I'm also supposed to dine with my late husband's best friend but I cancel both. As Greta Garbo famously said: I just want to be alone. I don't feel like talking to anyone. I'm still in the zone of not being able to see the point of doing anything, of being creative, of starting a business, of anything that will take me away from this depression. I thought it would depart upon my departure but it is stubbornly following wherever I go. I find the famous ice cream shop - #Berthillon which opened in 1961. It's not really the day for icecream but it's the place to go so I order Praline citron and coriander and it's really good. It comes garnished with an enormous tuile studded with slivered almonds. The same couple from the restaurant have arrived. They're holding hands. I wonder why I'm not missing my partner, why I'm so set on being alone on this trip. Since my husband died, I have dreamt of travelling with someone again, holding hands, dining, discovering together but the need to be solo has surpassed my other emotional needs. I think my back operation toppled my delicate emotional equilibrium and threw me over the edge. There is a selfishness there perhaps, I don't have to consider anyone else but myself and after years of being a carer to both my mother and husband with long drawn out illnesses, I need this space to find myself again. I walk out into the street but my walk is curtailed by the wind driven rain. An early night and a new town tomorrow.

I had planned a trip to the countryside to stay in a beautiful country house but again my plans were thwarted by the winter hibernation of buses that would have got me there. I had to change at the last minute and randomly picked two towns on the map. #Angouleme was only a couple of hours away. I should have realised when it's claim to fame was a Festival for Comics that I may be out of my depth. The hotel had a definite art comic theme. All purple and red, with a giant white plastic Eiffel tower light, ornate staircase and gothic style velvet lounges. My room was various tones of red, brothel-like with an orange tiled bathroom. There were comic street art on the old buildings, evidently 40% of French comics are produced here. I walk until six but the magical eating hour is still an hour away so I find a bar that looks like it might be suitable for a single woman. Cafe Chaud is quirky and I have a horse's head as company tonight. A lovely curvy staircase showcases the ancient beams and purple lighting flashes bring it up to date. Again I am the solo female; I take out my phone and look busy. I have booked into a restaurant whose ancient walls are covered with cartoons of chickens, bales of hay interspersed in between the tables. It's raining again and tonight, for the first time, I feel a bit lonely, especially when the waiter asks: Will anyone be joining you? I order duck and a glass of wine. They bring me a bowl of very thin crispy bread studded with fennel seeds and then the duck arrives in a casserole dish with three different varieties of carrot - orange, cream and purple; the champignon sauce is creamy and mustardy, and then another basket of rustic bread arrives. How the French love their bread.

I text the daughter who has gone off on her own for the first time. She's arrived in Perugia, city of the famous Perugina chocolates. She's lonely too, we commiserate with each other. I tell her of being solo in the bar with the horse as my erstwhile companion; she complains about the men trying to pick her up. Oh youth! Oh, middle age! She and the Italian Romeos, me and the stuffed horse's head.

Back to the Dolomites.

There's a few days before the daughter starts University so we head up to our mountain home. It takes us eight hours by public transport; it's probably only four with a car. We organise the one local taxi driver to pick us up. He's so friendly and he's so proud of the daughter's skills with his language. He knows of the Vecellio name (our surname), #Auronzo is full of them he says. He's a chatterer and he will be our way in and out of our small mountain village in the #dolomites for the year.

It's a different scenario now, most of the snow has melted, the trees are still stark, the grass wintered. A lot of the shops are closed, it's a bit like a ghost town. I shop and feed the extended family; the nephew, wife and his kids. The littlest one makes us all laugh, she is wise beyond her four years on this planet.

I get out the paints, the paper and try to be creative. My idea was to paint my way through my travels, journalling as well. So far, I've jotted down a few sparse notes; the painting feels a bit the same. I am uninspired. I feel like the ice in the crevices that hasn't started to melt yet; and always after a few days here I sink a bit, surrounded and hemmed in by the massive grey limestone mountains. I still feel quite numb, as if a part of me has wandered off and hasn't told the rest of me where she's gone. That part is the feeling, enjoying part of me and I'm missing her dreadfully. I begin to worry whether I'll ever 'feel' again. I'm not missing anyone or anything from my life on the other side of the planet. I'm drifting in an environment of constant change and yet not needing an anchor in my life. It feels odd. Having had a childhood of changing schools most years, I craved being in one place but maybe another part of me became gypsyfied during that state of constant movement and it's allowing me not to need to be tied down.

I have to have my fingerprints taken in order to get a residents permit that will allow me to stay in Europe for a year, I have to go to another town (which is one of those medieval hilltop towns) for this procedure, the department is at the bottom. My finger doesn't imprint, eventually she decides dryness could be the issue and we add a bit of cream and I'm fingerprinted. Now I have to go to the top of the town to the police for some other sort of identification but when we arrive we're told the President of Italy has arrived for a visit and the police are out and about making sure he's safe, the police station is closed for the day. We'll have to return tomorrow. The next day, more prints are taken and at some stage, they tell me, I can return to get my permit. It seems a highly secretive procedure, this resident's visa. From picking up a packet in Venice, to filling it out and dropping it off to the post office in my home town here in Italy, to paying for strange tax stamps that were pasted onto the paperwork, to waiting for another text telling me what to do next. They don't know when this will happen and when it does, I have to go within a day to pick it up. Why? No one seems to know. My nephew's wife has been here a year and still hasn't received hers so I won't hold my breath. But I am on my way into the Italian bureaucracy (or bureau-crazy) system and I am feeling well pleased with myself. It's the closest I will come to being Italian via marriage.

Modena.

My Air Bnb is decorated in a Futurist manner, very cool, with Industrial artifacts and 60's style furniture. #Modena is small but decidedly glamorous. It's where the daughter has chosen to study for a year. Modena is quite small and wonder what I'll do here for four days but it grows on you. It's full of colonnades in shades of rust, persimmon, saffron, lobster red. Everyone, especially the old people, are dressed to impress and so many of them are on bikes, the women in their high heels, with a perfectly groomed dog in their baskets or a collection of paper wrapped vegetables from the famous #Albinelli market. The daughter takes me there. Outside are stalls of antiques, old paintings, chandeliers. Inside, is full of wonderful late winter produce. There's delicate shell pink radicchio, curliqued; bunches of wild thin asparagus and #agretti, a marsh plant, succulent, thin, salty strands; three different types of artichoke; tomatoes from Sicily that taste as they should be, like fruit. I buy burrata from Puglia which is where the best comes from with it's thick strands of creamy centre; olive bread with big fat green olives sunken in amongst the greenish olive oil scattered over the top; I buy little bundles of chicken stuffed with pancetta, wrapped in thin fatty prosciutto, with a bay leaf on top, tied up with string; cime di rapa, a bitter green that I love and tortellini stuffed with pumpkin with a sauce made of walnuts, I tell them it's for two and they measure accordingly. I order in Italian and everyone is so friendly. I feel like a real Italian mama, except that I'm in flat shoes!

It takes me hours to cook dinner as I've only got a stove with two tiny burners, but where there's a will there's a way. We feast on fresh pasta. I make a sauce of garlic and anchovies softened in olive oil, the lightly poached agretti and breadcrumbs fried in oil, with the burrata broken up on top. It's divine. Day one in Modena.

The next day, the daughter is at Uni and is going out that night to try and make friends. Her partner has left to return to Australia, she's in her new apartment in an old palazzo in the centre and she realises she has to step out of her comfort zone. I'm alone for the day and I awake in a panic, the black dog is at my door; he's also at the door of my partner. I feel utterly numb, blurred around the edges. I miss no one and nothing of my life back home. I feel as if I have no definition, nothing calls to me. I ran away from this, thinking that the excitement of being in new territories would fling me out of it but I've dragged the threads behind me and they're getting tangled. I struggle to leave the apartment. But I think - what would an Italian woman do? She would put her lipstick on, her high heels, she would bejewel herself, wrap a scarf nonchalantly around her neck and go to the market. I couldn't even find the market today and when I finally do, I'm too scared to order. I go next door to a lovely cafe, with paintings of dogs dressed in period costumes surrounding the walls and have a macchiato and a pistachio brioche. It arrives with a shot of mineral water. I start to revive. I speak to my partner and my depression spins him out of his. He makes me laugh and I head off into the day.

I explore the beautiful shops, wander the colourful arcades. I find a woman who makes unusual jewellery and I try my bad Italian with her. The square around the Duomo is stunning, big and open, surrounded by cafes and shops, crisscrossed by bike riders very confidently making their way across the cobblestones. There is a big marble table from medieval times where the beheadings took place. The church was built in 1099 for the patron saint, St Geminiano, his remains are still there. His famous miracle was catching a child by his hair, just as he was about to fall from the tower of the church, thus saving his life.

I wander until it's Spritz time! The old and the young are heading towards the bars, so I follow them. I find a lovely bar and settle in. The Spritz delivered is huge and is accompanied by a large bowl of chips. The generosity of the Italians. Handsome old men, wrapped in coats and scarves, hold the arms of their beloved, equally beautiful women. It's a university town so there are so many bars and a lot of them have aperitivo, where you buy a drink and there's a buffet included. It's also a non tourist town so I feel I am getting the full Modenese experience.

I'm on my own tonight, so after I sober up, I find a trattoria with a waiter who shows me to my table, he has the palest blue eyes, perfectly peppered grey hair and his job is his life,and in Italy, it's an admirable profession. He suggests the funghi risotto and a small carafe of wine. I'm served buttery soft spinach and the fragrance of the funghi precedes the arrival of the dish. The daughter lets me know she is heading out to party some more with the girls from Australia; they've met some others and suddenly everything settles into perspective, bordered by hope. The anxiety has lifted somewhat, the daughter seems to be settling in and I'm slightly inebriated. All is well in the world.