A month is not a long time to really know a country, but it may be sufficient to grasp the essence of a place and a people before dulling the sense of "the change of the scene". And now when the memory of the silhouette of a Tuscany cypress and the cacophony of Palermo in Sicily started to fade, it is a better time to think about what we like about that country.
Italy is an intense place, and we learned that because we tried not to pose ourselves to be just tourists as much as we could. We tried to speak their language, drive their roads, take their auto-ferries, shop their open-air markets, just as the locals do. We got lost plenty of times and sometimes at places we shouldn't. With these close contacts, we were able to see the country up close in different lights rather than from a double-decked bus.
There are many things about Italy that people make acclamations about, most of them are aromatic and some can be a bit overly exuberant, but we had to agree with one thing: There is a strong appreciation of beauty in the ethos of that society, which in turn imbues their life with a strong aesthetic pursue for perfection. Maybe that's why the building erected 2000 years ago in Roman time is still breathtaking to our contemporary eyes, why on a narrow lane in Florence that appears completely non-commercial, one comes across the most unexpected and arresting window display. It seems that beauty requires no reason for endeavor. It's a pure need in the psyche for just 'being". And this we really dig...
It's impossible to list everything we did and every place we went, but for the next ten days or so, I will list our ten favorite things in Italy. And, that does not include foods of course.
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