Italy as it Happened...Reflections

Italy as it Happened...Reflections

Wednesday, April 10th thru Thursday, April 25th

Taking a vacation away from home, away from ones comfort zone, gives us the opportunity to ponder on the experience and hopefully learn something that will last us for the rest of our days.

I learned a lot from our Italian adventure and I am going to take a few moments here to share my thoughts (and contemplations) with you. I will start with a reminder of why we decided to tour Italy. This is what happened.

As you may remember, from an earlier blog posting, Kerry and I were booked on a Carnival cruise around the Mediterranean. We were going to see some wonderful exotic places like Croatia, Ephesus in Turkey, Rhodes in Greece and Sicily, to name a few). This 16 day adventure was going to start in Venice on April 10th and come to a glorious conclusion in Barcelona on April 26th. As I write this reflection piece I am looking at the check Carnival sent me to cover our out of pocket expenses. Yea, right, like that is going to make us feel better about having our vacation plans ruined, destroyed, crushed. Enough said about Carnival and the 30,000 people that were forced to find other vacation plans. That's right, 3000 passengers per ship and 10 ships having their cruises cancelled. That is a city's worth of upset people.

Kerry and I were blessed to be able to come up with a Plan "B" and being flexible enough to implement it. Italy as it Happened was our Plan "B" and by now most of you have read the entire story. If you missed the earlier postings, look over there on the right where the previous postings are listed; click on the month of April and then click on the Day 1 posting to read our story from the beginning.

As I wrote each days journal (blog posting) I reflect upon that memory and the emotions I experienced during those events. I am sure some were forgotten but others have been etched in our memories, to last us a life time. For example, there was a day when we were visiting the Vatican (on the Sunday when we went to church service in St. Peter's Square). Kerry has a friend who wanted us to purchase a bunch of rosaries for her to donate in Africa. Kerry and I had a great time searching (and buying) these items. I didn't blog about it but it was (and always will be) a great memory. The smells and tastes we experienced cannot be put to word and still do it justice. So Kerry and I will keep those memories to ourselves.

There was a lot of things that we did not enjoy, such as those mean, complaining ladies on our Amsterdam bound flight, or the constant trouble we had trying to figure out which train was on which track. Sharing a bathroom with others is not a "Kerry" favorite either, but it was something we had to endure, on occasion. We decided to focus on the big picture and not the individual pixels.

Kerry loves to travel and so do I. We have traveled to many faraway places and being able to do that makes us feel grateful and sometimes unworthy. For me, flying is not my favorite thing to do. I get nervous in tight spaces and even the "BIG" wide body air buses seem a little confined at times (especially during rough air). But I endure. Will we continue to travel? Obviously the answer is yes, as long as God gives us the ability, opportunity and means.

Usually when Kerry and I go somewhere, we like to keep the planning to a minimum. That was the main attraction of taking this cruise. All we needed to do was show up at the ship and sit back and enjoy the ride (and food, and theater, and atmosphere, etc). Unpack once and be done with it. Our other cruises were perfect in so many ways. We were anticipating the seeing of places we had never been (especially Ephesus in Turkey). So, having our trip cancelled, and being thrust into Plan "B" mode, we were able to turn that mountainous lemon into semi-sweet lemonade. Was the Italy trip perfect? No way. Would I (we) do it again? Probably not. There were some things we saw that we always wanted to see and there were things we saw that we could have done without.

What was the positive side of this trip? Seeing the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, the ancient Roman ruins, walking around Venice and the walled cities of Florence and Assisi were obviously the highlights. Tuscany in general was a very memorable place to walk around and we did walk many dozens of miles. I would not trade those experiences in for anything. If we did take the cruise we would have missed most of what we had done. I guess you could call that lemonade.

What did we not like about our vacation? I would say the one thing that pops to mind is how Rome feels as a city. Sure, there is a great metro that will take you anywhere you need to go, but for a big city (over 4 million population) it just doesn't have the same feel to it as London or Paris or Montreal or Beijing, to name a few. Instead, when we arrived in Rome, we were greeted with graffiti like we had never seen before. Literally every surface was covered (tagged) and it was not attractive. We made the decision to spend three days in each place (Venice, Florence and Assisi) and the final five days in Rome. Our thoughts were wrapped around the idea that since Rome was a big city there would be so much more to see and do. Wrong! We could have done all we wanted to do in Rome in just a day or two. In retrospect, we would have reversed our Plan "B" and gotten Rome out of the way first, spending only a day or two there while working our way to Venice, a nice place to end a vacation.

Now I can clearly see that there was a Plan "C" and a Plan "D" and so on. Plan "C" could have been our arriving in Venice and working our way to Madrid and spending a week or so travelling around Spain. Our original return flight was out of Barcelona so that would have worked out just fine. Plan "D" would have us doing northern Italy into France. I visited the French Rivera years ago on a business trip and it would have been pretty cool to show Kerry the wonders of Nice and Marseille. We even considered not going to Europe at all but instead doing India (April in India is too hot and humid). The options were endless but for whatever reason, we selected the option we did and there was no turning back. Maybe we made this option selection because there were only a couple of weeks from the time our cruise was cancelled to the departure date, and by just changing the return flight from Barcelona to Rome gave us a leisurely opportunity to wonder around northern Italy, staying at various B&B's along the way.

On a scale of one 1 to 10, 1 being the worst and 10 being the most awesome, I would rate the Italian vacation a 7. My reasons are obvious, as stated above. Maybe I subtracted a point due to the bitter taste in my mouth called Carnival. When I asked Kerry what her likes and dislikes were along with asking what her rating would be she said she loved Venice and all of the canals. She especially enjoyed the water bus rides and the day we spent at the glass blowing factories on Murano. She marveled at all of the antiquities and the pulse of Tuscany. She appreciated the small grocery stores and how the locals only shop for what they need for the day. Then she focused on the down side. Her biggest regret was having her dreams crushed by Carnival. She didn't like having to drag luggage around (even though it was only a carry on with wheels). She thought that not having a rental car restricted us in a small way. With a car we could have visited many wineries, something she would have enjoyed. I guess we could have booked a wine tasting tour but it just didn't fit in with our tight schedule. Kerry finished off with her dislike list with her impression of Rome as being dirty and overcrowded and over all, not that impressive (although some of the places we saw in Rome were). It was interesting getting Kerry's point of view as they were very much in line with my own. Her rating was a point lower than mine, giving the Italian trip a 6.

So, in summary, I (we) look at this trip as another great vacation where we got to eat and sleep with the locals, a culture far separated from ours by unique customs, habits and history. Given the opportunity we would have made a few alterations to the way we laid out our schedule but for the most part we are better people for the experience.

I want to thank all of you for following this story and sharing the experience with us. There is no greater satisfaction compared to when a friend like you sends us a message or walks up to us and revisits some of the experiences they read about in our Blog. I am pleased that you found our silly little adventure entertaining. Kerry and I were extremely entertained living it, just as we were sharing it, with you.

As I checked this morning on the number of followers my blog has so far, I am pleased to announce the number just passed 4000 (4075 to be exact). So far I have told four stories (our Italian vacation, my P90X 3 months of extreme physical exercise and the story of my father-in-law, his cancer and his death). I also shared with you on my Hunter Ink Blog the daily journal of my mission trip to Senegal. As other adventures come our way I will be sure to take notes; lots of notes. And when they get collated into proper composition form and posted, you'll see my posting on Facebook, inviting you in to explore my, no our inner most thoughts.

BONUS MATERIAL...

These short video clips will give you a taste of what we saw, heard and lived during our brief Italian vacation. 

Venice...

Murano...

                                     

Florence...

Assisi...

Vatican Museum (Vatican City)...

St. Peters Sq. (Vatican City)...

Street Church Service (Rome)...

                                         

May you be blessed and those who love you be blessed and those who love those who love you be blessed, in a very special way.