A Small Reflection

I'm sure most of my readers have gone by now, but for the few of you left (or who get an email when I post) I thought I would reflect on some of what I've been thinking about since I've been home.

Before I left I was scared, every time I had brought up the fact that I was going to Italy someone told me something bad they had heard or what not to do or what to be careful about. I had so many fearful stories told to me that it was all I could think about. I remember sitting at my computer faithfully exploring Firenze through Google Maps and thinking that if I could see Firenze like this why would I need to go myself? Wasn't I seeing it all right then? How would it be different? How was I to know that it would change everything to see it in person.

Travel isn't just about seeing the sights. It's about the people you meet, the music of a dozen different languages being yelled in a Piazza, it's the smell of the gelato shop you walk by to get your groceries that happened to be where you got your first ever gelato. It's the struggle of learning how to do everything in a new way. It's the feel of lying down in a museum and staring at the ceiling and ignoring all the paintings and artifacts on the walls because for this moment the ceiling has taken center stage.

It's coming to consider a place so far away from where you started a second home. It's the deep connection you feel, so that when you watch movies entitled "Under the Tuscan Sun" or anything to do with Tuscany you pause on the shot of Firenze and nearly start crying because you would do anything to be walking by with your umbrella in that exact spot.

For everyone who tells you a horror story or a tale designed to frighten you away from escaping your comfort zone I would tell you to go. To see. To touch and smell and taste. You'll find out that they were wrong about so many things and that stereotypes are funny things with more and less truth than you imagined. But most of all, you'll learn about yourself. So go, your adventure awaits.