Italy Was More Than Awesome

Photo credit: Karissa Venne

Everyone I know asks me how was Italy and I say it was wonderful, it was unbelievable, it was amazing, it was so worth it, it was awesome, but it’s actually been irritating me to use these bland answers, because really I cannot describe within a sentence what this trip meant to me, and that is all these question-askers are looking for. Even my pictures do not truly express the essence of Italy and that disappoints me. I guess this is why tourists are obsessed with photography and souvenirs. And I fell into that trap on this trip as well. We think that if we take 5,000 pictures and buy a magnet for every person we’ve ever talked to, we’ll somehow prove and showcase how wonderful our trip was. But for me, I cannot succinctly express the joy of travelling without dragging every loved one across the Atlantic and forcing them to touch the walls of a Venetian alley, to lose themselves in the busy Florentine streets and stumble upon statue after statue and painting after painting that are just sitting there, a part of the city instead of hung on a wall or placed in a forgotten room, to stand outside of the Coliseum and feel small and insufficient, to feel pizza juices rolling down their arms and creamy gelato on their tongues. The souvenirs and photos do not do the trip justice. A conversation does not. This paper does not. Only the trip itself, the click clacking of my sandals on cobblestone, the bitter taste of red wine at a restaurant overlooking orange roofs, the quiet surprise of finding a piazza with a fountain or birds or church or ancient ruin— this shudder of peace and realization that the world is bigger than the circle I’ve carved for myself, that is my trip. It is the eventual understanding that I am only a person, and not only are there millions of other people living in different countries, but that the dirt is lined with millions of other people from the past, ones that paved roads and prayed to different gods and carved rocks into gasping figures and painted dutifully and beautifully, and we are all the same. We are all dying, we are looking for an answer to why we are here, why we have been chained to this earth, and whether we find that answer in history or religion or art, it doesn’t matter as long as we’re all looking.


I could list all of the pieces of history that I saw or learned about or touched, but that list would be insufficient and empty. I discovered that travelling is the best way to discover. I learned that I’m on this planet with an expiration date and I can’t take anything with me, so I’m going to count my blessings not in things, not in dollars, but in experiences. I found that if after I die, if my portrait was to be painted like Saint Francis’s, on a wall in Assisi, mine would include a book and a photo of people: reading and writing, and my family and friends. This is what I live for. This is what makes me feel infinite. The people I write and read about and the people standing next to me in my best and worst moments. They are what I live for. They are what make me feel infinite.

Watch out for: my Italy journal that I have to create for class credit, which I will post in the next couple days.