I spent five weeks in Italy. From May 5-June 9, 2011, a dear friend and I strapped on our backpacks and took a month to travel through Italy, starting up North and working our way down.
During the planning stages of our adventure, I had grandiose plans to blog faithfully throughout the trip. However, as the time for departure drew close, I realized that I really wanted my friends to be able to read what we were up to, be reassured that we were still alive. Sadly, the best medium for that was facebook. There are a lot of things I dislike about fb [that's for another time, though], but fact is: most of my friends and family have an account. It would be easy for them to check my profile for status updates, comments, and notes.
In the end, it's probably for the best that I did that. Up North, public access to the internet is easily accessible and fairly cheap. However, the farther South you go, the more difficult it is to find a reliable internet connection. And the prices creep ever higher. The easiest thing for me to do was to post the occasional status update on fb [to reassure people of our well-being], and send brief emails to my mom [who required a little more reassurance than a ten word update] and my boyfriend [who I really just missed].
Now, I realize that I have been home for three months now [yikes, how time flies!], but my summer was crazy. And now that it's September, I'm not less busy but I am determined to plonk out the story of my trip in small segments for anyone who would like to read it.
Today is about how and why I decided to go to Italy.
The summer of 2010: I was halfway through my degree [for those of you who don't know, I am taking a Bachelor of Science in Nursing], feeling like I was going to be in post-secondary forever, suffering from a serious case of the travel bug, and reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Love or hate the book [if you've only seen the movie, don't pass judgement. You must read the book before you're allowed to do that] she does include some pretty fantastic descriptions of sites, people, food, and wine. Italy has always been on my go-to list - Rome, Venice, Tuscany - I've always wanted to explore them all.
I had pretty much made up my mind that that's where I wanted to go on a trip. Then, I was talking to a friend, Rachel, and she mentioned that she was reading this book about Italy and she really wanted to travel to Italy in the summer of 2011. With an appropriate amount of squealing, giggling, and "Oh my gosh"ing, we decided to go. We contemplated the idea of a whirlwind, 4-5 week trip through Europe, but found that there was so much in Italy alone that we wanted to see, we had to narrow it down. A fast tour hitting only tourist sites in several countries would probably only leave us exhausted and feeling like we'd missed a lot. So we bought travel guides, read Italian phrase books, browsed blogs, and hunted for cheap flights. We found a wicked flight deal through Canadian Affair [www.canadianaffair.ca] and booked our seats. Originally, we planned to go for four weeks, but the way flight deals worked out, and with all the places we planned to visit, we extended our trip.
May 5 - June 9, 2011. Four flights, seven accomodations, an unmeasured amount of Italian wine and food, many, many new friends, several thousand photos, and innumerable stories. Me amo la bella Italia.
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