Take a walk - Italian style

Italy, a fascinating and interesting place to be.  Being here is taking a step back in time; at least, that is how I feel.  Many steps back in time.

At this very moment though, I am bored. Am sitting on a bus heading to Venice and nodding off to sleep along with the other 47 people on the bus – so will type something to update family & friends about our Italian excursion.

Have gone from being totally lost in the Italian out backs of Tuscany, being ripped off by an Italian telecommunications company, to being pushed into the underground tubes due to peak hour office workers going home, to having the funniest taxi ride around Rome by a rogue and rough taxi driver,  to mixing it with Rome’s street girls, to condom machines and of course, the Pope heaving at me.

Our first nine or ten days of being in Italy on our self-guided walking tour is long over and we are in Day Something of the hi-de-hi bus tour around all the key points in Italy.

There’s 48 of us on this bus. Lots of Americans, Singaporeans, one Pom, Russians, Australians and four of us Kiwis.  Mixture of ages 10 to 110.  Well, almost. 

Actually… on reflection, Delwyn and I just may be the oldest on the coach.  But we shall not enlighten any of the other passengers of that statistic.

The walking trip

Look, if have every thought of something exotic for a holiday and would like to head to Europe, do a walking tour.  Well, at least this walking tour in Italy.  Getting almost lost every day in the hills of Tuscany and Umbria, whilst frustrating at the time – mostly due to the excessive heat in the sunshine rays of 32-37 degrees – was fabulous. 

And throwing oneself into the Italian culture in this was is the best way to force one into learning the language, quickly.

Since being on this bus we’ve hardly had to use an Italian word. Pity, as was just beginning to feel confident in engaging basic communications with Italians.

It certainly wasn’t quite the easy walking tour I had pictured, walking flat to rolling countryside from wine tasting spot to wine tasting spot.  Indeed, most of the day's walking distances were shorter than they had told us they would be, and jolly hard slogs some days, especially whilst becoming lost. We would find ourselves climbing from sea level to 2,000 feet, on gravelled or broken and hardly distinguishable tracks.  Fun.

We booked  the actual tour through Mac’s Tours, online. But wouldn’t do that again, would book direct as Mac’s merely were the middleman between us and the small walking tour company here in Italy.

That tour company had some rough edges (the botched directions being in that category), but it had so many positives that we shall reflect back on the ten days as the best way to have been introduced to a new country.  And to Michael (or Michaela, as his real Italian name is). He was certainly the epitome of the perfect Italian man and was the main cause for us not throwing tantrums with the tour company over their ineptness.   He did not have a lot of intelligence, but who cares about that when he had a lot of everything else Italian … looks, smoothness, charm, smile, perfect skin, great body….   need more be said?

The hotels and bed and breakfasts we stayed in each night were superb.  By Italian standards.  Wonderful medieval castles, homes, hotels and fortresses.  The food, very Italian – funny that – the wine even more Italian and oh so smooth to move from table top to mouth top.

If I could encourage anyone to seriously consider the trip I would do.

The tour company is a small, local one that is run by three Italians who have lived all their lives in the area – two women and one man. They specialise in cycling tours which to me, after having gone through all the entertainment of the walking one, would be so very ho-hum.  That says something coming from a cyclist. 

They also specialise in Vesper tours.  Now that’s a tour that could tempt me to return.  Zipping around and getting lost on Vespers throughout Tuscany and Umbria would be a dream holiday.  Except for the fact they drive on the wrong side of the road. And drive madly.  And don’t stick to speed limits.  And never stop at stop signs.  And drive through red lights.  And never stop at pedestrian crossings.  And never use indicators.

Seriously, plan a holiday for next year, or the year after - an Italian self-guided walking tour in Tuscany and Umbria.

Arrivederci.

 

Lost - it now has a very, very different meaning

I lost a friend this week.  A dear friend. Back in New Zealand. 

I only found this out yesterday when I finally found a Wi-Fi café - I got the news via email.  I was, and am, gutted.

One of my greatest fears of leaving New Zealand shores for this period was leaving my friend back home and not knowing how she would be whilst I was away.  I hated leaving her when I last visited.  And now she has died.  I am not even sure which day she died. To get this news, and to get it via email when so far away on the other side of the world is heart breaking.

I so remember the look on her face when I last visited her before I left New Zealand, and she asked how long I would be away.  

She knew I was travelling to the UK and she knew why I was coming to Italy; she knew the story about Tony, the one I published on my last blog.  She had known and loved Tony and she understood why I was making the whole trip; but I saw the wave of sadness on her face when I told her how long I would be away; I saw her sadness that she would not see me for so long.  Now, she will never see me again.

She has gone.

All these deaths of such pivotal people in my life in this past period keeps reminding me of how fragile and short term we all are.

More specifically how we must realise that everyone in our life is special. With this modern life that everyone seems to be choosing nowadays that message seems to have been eliminated from many people's self-focused being.

For some time it has concerned me that there seems to be an epidemic around us that could be called the Me epidemic. This is something many have heard me rant about often over the years, how so many focus on their own life, their own busy-ness and just don't have time to fit in a teeny bit of kindness to someone else.

If there is a God  I am hoping he will be pleased of the friendship I (and Tony) had with our sweet friend, Ella.  We made her happy, most of the time. But like everyone else, there was never enough 'times'.  It was difficult when Tony had become so unwell himself - I did not want Ella to see Tony so unwell, I wanted her to only recall the real Tony - so I did not visit very frequently once Tony's health began to really deteriorate.  I am sure that her God will know and understand that.

In the meantime while I was focused on Tony and his passing, she became old, and became frail and fragile.  My friend and I found her late last year in the bowels of a hospital in care.  We were shocked.  She was then put into a rest home, where she has just passed away. 

Ella was hard work to visit and had been for some years prior. She was half deaf and always found a reason not to utilise a hearing aid.  We had to yell to be heard. Her eyesight was going and due to unnecessary reasons she became almost bedridden.  As is always said when something like this happens – I should have spent more time with her.  There's nothing wrong with yelling, or touching, or caring.   

It's totally empty words to say, "I shoulda."  Or, "I woulda."  Or, "I couldn't." 

We all CAN. 

We all can take and make the time for someone whose life would be lifted because we DID.

 

The real reason I have come to Italy

Perhaps I have a serious case of narcism, only others will be able to confirm, but I have enjoyed writing the blogs about our ‘adventures’ in Italy.  It is fair to say though that the blogs have probably been a little lop-sided in certain points of view about our experiences in Italy.  That’s because it makes for more interest to a reader to have facts detailed but to ensure the facts are splattered with teeny bit of cynicism and humour.  And, maybe every now and then, stretched to make the story seem all the more interesting.  What harm is there in that?

And besides, reading a step-by-step, day-by-day journal about someone’s excursion and travels around the world is boring.  It’s like people who love to talk to you about their dreams, it’s boring. You subconsciously tune out within seconds.  Who cares what someone else dreamt about?  It was only a dream.  So who cares about what a carefree time someone else is having when you are at home having to face winter weather and work! Therefore whenever I do write something I endeavour to consider the reader and consider how the story may be told to make it interesting enough to keep the reader reading to the story’s end.

Despite that, those who really know me do manage to read between the lines and fathom out how much is stretched and how much is not in the least bit enhanced; they can then enjoy and appreciate the true reality in between the lines of the words I have written.

And the true reality about this travel log and my coming to Italy is, in itself, a very real and true story of love that needs no stretching or enhancing.  Coming to Italy was not a whim of mine to enable me to write frivolous holiday stories. This trip has had in all its planning and execution a very strong purpose of a promise to myself, and to Tony, that I will one day get to Italy.

When Tony and I planned our 10 month trip to the Northern Hemisphere back in 2010 we had many options of wants and must dos during our near ten month period away.

We knew we wanted to spend much time with Tony’s family in England; we knew we wanted to visit friends in Dubai; we knew we wanted to visit other dear friends in their homeland in the United States; we knew we wanted to spend time with other dear friends in Wales; we knew we wanted to experience the Edinburgh Tattoo and festival together; and we knew we wished to follow le Tour de France while it was on.  And tucked in amongst those ‘must dos’ was a trip together to experience things Italian.

I had never been to Italy and of all the European countries Italy was the one I had, for many years, had a desire to visit. There had been previous opportunities when travelling to the Northern Hemisphere for me to visit the country but for various reasons never manage to cross to the Italian borders.  Tony had been to Italy in his earlier life and assured me that with the ten months we had in the Northern Hemisphere we would easily manage at least a week, or more, somewhere in that desired country.

I was buoyed by Tony’s enthusiasm to take me to the Italian countryside; to take me to real historic Italian cities, to share the history of one of the world’s oldest nations and of course, to share with me the enjoyment of Italian food and wines. This preplanning was enhanced when a distant associate had one evening kindly offered us accommodation in a house he owned in Italy that he insisted we utilise at his compliments. 

Before we left New Zealand for that ten month vacation we spent quite some time pouring over Italian travel brochures.  We looked at the kind offer of accommodation and at perhaps adding on a bus tour of Italy, but dismissed that as being for old people only.  We very seriously looked at a number of options of cycle tours in various parts of Italy.  That option enthused us greatly as, if you were a triathlete, who would not want to enjoy cycling the Italian roads whilst pretending to be taking part in Tour of Italia bike race?  Thus we began defining which cycling tour was the best option.  Northern Italy?  Southern Italy? Tuscany? Sicily?  There were many options available. 

During the days of perusing all the various brochures Tony noticed one particular cycle tour of Holland which he considered to be the ideal and perfect holiday, for him.  To me Holland would be a boring  option, all that flat land and dykes.  But Tony’s heart began to really settle on cycling the Dutch canals via a canal boat that would drop us off each morning then tug itself up along a major canal and wait for us at a preset meeting point. They would provide the evening meal, we would head off to our cabin each evening and by morning the canal boat would have motored to some other township where we would disembark with our bikes and set off on a day’s adventure to another eventual destination where the canal boat would be waiting for us yet again. 

After seeing the brochure on this cycle holiday Tony’s heart was set on Holland and the canals and biking. I did not try to persuade him to change his view.  This entire ten month trip was after all, a trip of a lifetime, and I knew that he had such a short life time left that all I really wanted was to make him happy and for him to enjoy every moment.  It was important to me that whatever we planned and did was what Tony wanted to do.  Little else mattered.

By this time the seemingly generous offer of Italian accommodation seemed to have vaporised between the initial offer and my attempting to formalise with the associate, which did not enhance my chances of confirming any specific Italian dates. It had become a little awkward and Tony had felt the awkwardness hence making it seem a bit in the ‘too hard’ basket.

Thus it was decided Holland biking would be booked and we would wait until our arrival in the UK and then book a tour of Italy that would fit in between all those other activities on our Must Do list.

However, it never happened.  Each time we went to book the Italian sojourn something would occur that meant it would have to be delayed until later in our trip.  A family birthday, a celebration, something that meant it was timely for us to remain in the UK at the period we would ear mark for Italy. We kept attempting to make the Italian date but it seemed to slip away at each attempt.

It was no matter, we were busy doing so much else that Italy soon became only a mild thought rather than a purpose.

Our ten months expired and before we knew it we were on the flight from Heathrow heading back towards the New Zealand shores after having had a most glorious few months of happiness and travels together.  It was not long after our plane left Heathrow that Tony turned in his seat to face me, picked up my hand and looked at me with an earnest sadness in his eyes and said, “I am sorry I didn’t get to take you to Italy darling.”  I smiled and responded by saying that it was no matter and that, “… we will still get to travel to Italy together one day honey,” whilst knowing deep in my heart of hearts it would never happen.  I think he knew that too, but he smiled, squeezed my hand and leant over and kissed me.

That was the last of our conversation about travelling to Italy. 

The next two years were busy years for us, with his health taking priority, a stroke and more procedures and operations for him and yet he still managing to continue beating the odds by enjoying as much of his life as he had left.  He completed another Ironman event in 2011 and his last in 2012.  By the middle of 2012 his health began to deteriorate considerably.  He knew, we all knew there was little time left. By December of that year it was clear it was only a matter of weeks.  The hospital could do no more for him, I brought him home for Christmas where he happily spent his last couple of months.

Sometime in early February 2013, when  Tony’s brain tumour had taken complete control of his life, of his body and of his mental capacities, he was sitting in a lazy boy chair in the corner of our lounge.  I was sitting on the couch next to him with the computer on my lap doing some work when he suddenly sat upright, turned to me with the old Tony look of serious conversation and stated, “You have got to go to Italy.”  I paused and looked and said, “I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve got to go to Italy,” he repeated.

“Where did that come from?” I asked.  “You’ve got to go,” he replied with insistence.

“Of course I will go darling, we will go together,” was my spontaneous response.

With that he smiled his Tony smile, leant back in chair and returned to his own world again.  I think that was the last proper conversation I ever had with Tony.

That is why I am in Italy.

 

But wait, there's more

I have had cause to ponder today, ponder lots.  One does ponder a lot when one spends such a lot of time lost in the woods, or in the mountains, or in the cities, or on the highways, or in the towns, or in the thoroughfares, or in the train stations, or in the piazzas, or ... anywhere.

For today's lost period I pondered on all things Italian and my earlier blog this week about how I had come to realise that history has shown Italians were once a clever bunch of people inventing thermometers, ice cream cones, espresso, pizzas, fiats and other Italian things. 

After posting that blog I realised that not only had I missed out the fact that the Italians were the great inventors of opera (thank you Katherine) but they had a history of having some great explorers, like Columbus, Marco Polo, Caboto, and others whose names I cannot recall.


So why, I pondered, can today's twenty-first century Italian not write up a simple set of directional instructions to hand to a couple of wily, and not totally unintelligent, Kiwis to enable them to walk from Point A in one town, to Point B in another town?


Today was Day 3 of the 8 days of walking to be done.  So far the Italians:


1) dropped us off in the wrong medieval town
2) didn't know their left from their right
3) didn't know how to write down telephone numbers accurately
4) didn't know their down hill from their up hill
5) didn't know their left from their right
6) didn't know the difference between an abandoned ruin to a brand, sparkling new mansion
7) didn't know that the average human being can not distinguish a horse paddock from a cow paddock when there is neither a horse or a cow in either paddock.
8) didn't know their left from their right
9) didn't know the difference between a farm stable and an enormous granary
10) 10 didn't know the difference between a.m. and p.m.
11) didn't know their left from their right


Oh, I can hear those smart alecks among you saying that we are clearly a hopeless couple of old klutz Kiwi women who are clearly incapable of reading maps and navigating in their own country, let alone one on the other side of the world.


Well, this recent Italian picture proves our point.

We were to walk from Tuscany to Umbria via a mountain range and down to a big and beautiful lake.  Our scheduled walk was only 13 kilometres and due to the amount of mountain climbing we were scheduled to do over the 13 kilometres it was estimated it would stil only take us less than 3 hours - and in those hours would be a number of stops to take in the views, eat our sandwiches and have the odd comfort stop.

We set off at 9.30 a.m.  Good looking, tall, dark, swarthy, charming, Colgate smiling Michael drove us to the drop off point.   Five hours and 17 kilometres later we arrived at Point B to meet Michael.  One look at us and he had that "uh, uh" look.


After walking over the mountain range and down among towns and villages in the average head of 27 degrees Delwyn has blisters. Upon blisters. 


She's fast asleep, snoring at this present moment.  She's earned those zzzz's.  She's the one with the recent knee replacement and having done very little hiking for the past year - I am supposed to be eternally fit.  With a bung knee. 


It was a testing day.  Not only because of the heat, nor because of the terrain or the distance, but because of the constant battle to keep our wits about us and continue to head in the right direction - despite having gone left when the instructions told us to go left, then 2 kilometres down the road realising we should have gone right.  No wondered she's snoring. As I will be very soon.


It is funny.  Now.  After two pints of beer each.  Red wine. A couple of enormous pizzas and a cool evening breeze. 





Everything is rosy in the Umbrian countryside.  Especially our cheeks.


And tomorrow is another day.  To be rosy.

Lost soles in Italy

... feeling a little frazzled today because there have been some mighty Italian hiccups and before anyone thinks it, the hiccups are not caused by the wine. 


Today was our first official day of walking through Tuscany and Umbria.  Today was the day that we have been planning for some months, the start of enjoying another country's countryside, breathing in the air between the grapevines and olive trees, taste a little wine and cheese along the way and enjoy the nodding and greetings from local Italian villagers with "buongiorno" as we meandered past.


We had had a slight bit of bother on the first couple of days in Italy in relation to orientating ourselves to our locale and working out why we were finding ourselves totally lost in the city of Rome throughout an entire day, then replicating the same situation in Sienna the next day.  In fact, we got lost in Sienna the minute our feet touched the Sienna earth as we disembarked off the public transport bus that took us there.


We had a map, with instructions.  The map showed us the road the bus would drop us off and showed that our hotel was a mere 200 metres along from the bus stop.  That should be easy, shouldn't it?  Not.


We stepped off the bus and realised that we did not know whether we should walk left from the bus stop, or right.  The map and instructions did not tell us whether the bus would be facing the hotel direction, or facing the other.


So, with our giant sized overweight luggage we stood on the busy pathway, looked at the map, looked at the street, looked back at the map, back at the street but were none the wiser as to whether we  should walk the 200 down that way, or the other way.


So I asked a bus driver.  Bus driver did not speak English. Nor did the bus driver want to be helpful.  We were disappointed at that as everything we had been led to believe about Italian men was that they would be charming, delightful, helpful, gracious and gregarious.  Except the Italian bus drivers.


There we stood, on a busy pathway with bus passengers rushing past us hither and thither and we still pondered, left or right?


Then we saw them.  Or at least he saw us. This tall, well built fellow who looked distinctively non-Italian.  He saw us trying to decipher our map and offered his map reading assistance.  After turning the map around, and upside down and back the other way, he very authoritively and assertively told us he would direct us the right way.  We were taken aback with his Kiwi accent. Hurrah, someone who speaks English but best of all a Kiwi, offering his assistance.  How could we go wrong?  We did.  We took his advice.  We thought he must know what he was talking about, due to his telling us he had been staying in this little town for the past three weeks.  So we put ourselves in his hands.


Big mistake.


Ended up this 'helpful' Kiwi fellow sent us neither left or right, but insisted he walk us in a third direction to a busy town piazza from where he pointed we should head.  Big, bulky suitcases and us. Pulling these noisily wheeled cumbersome things all over all the large and history-filled cobblestones of piazzas, alleyways, streets and footpaths, looking for the hotel he so assuredly told us we would find.  So we walked. For miles.  For ever.  It did not take long for us to realise we were lost.  Totally lost. And no one we asked could help us.


Well, the short of it all is, we eventually did find our hotel thanks to a concierge from another hotel who spoke English, was helpful and directed us perfectly.


It turned out that our much yearned for hotel was less than the 200 metres we were told it was from the original bus stop.  Maybe 90 metres or less, and if that Kiwi man from Nelson had not interfered and misdirected us in the totally opposite direction, we would have taken a few steps one way and either found it or  decided it was the other way and turned back and found it.  Men, and maps, and directions, and knowing it all.  Made all the worse by being a Kiwi male.


So today , two days later and in a medieval town called Montepulciano, we were happy this was due to be a day where we did not have to worry about being lost, about being sent in the wrong direction, about heart palpitations due to the fear of being lost, again. Today would be the most beautiful day of starting our walking journeys through vineyards, pastures and olive tree orchards.


Last night we had met Michael at our amazing B&B, Michael the contact person who had all our information for the next 8 days of Tuscany and Umbria experiences.  Michael whose fabulous Italian good looks, tall and well built and bronzed Italian body with his beautiful Colgate white smiling teeth had both of us glued to him and his words, yet neither of us barely heard a word he said.


We think Michael informed us we would be picked up at 9.30 in the morning and taken to a lovely little Italian village called Monticchielo where we would be dropped off with our maps, walking instructions and let free to meander at will along the ancient paths of vintners, olive oil makers and goats. Without a care in the world.


At 9.30 this morning a pleasant Italian lady merrily drove us out of Montepulciano, through the Tuscany countryside, along the hot bitumen roads, over hills, down dales, over bigger hills almost as high as mountains, then to the village from where our walk would begin.


We alighted from the Fiat Bambina, she waved us goodbye, we tossed our day packs on our backs, grabbed our walking sticks and headed in the direction of the Directive 1 on our sheet of walking instructions.


We walk for ten steps, then faltered.  We looked up the street, down the street, across the fields and back to our instruction sheet.  Seems we had walked the wrong way for those first ten steps.  So we retraced them and walked in the other direction, for five steps.  Something just did not look as though it should have looked according to the instructions. 


We were atop a hillock, with only one little village bar-café near us, nothing else but countryside and certainly no chain gate that we were supposed to have walked through as per our first instruction. 


We visited the café/bar, where the attractive young lady behind the counter took one look at our map and instructions and informed us that we were not in the village of Monticchielo, the very village the map and instructions said we should be in, but we were standing in a village in the completely opposite direction.


Yes, of course we had our phones with us.  And yes, we did have contact numbers to telephone in case of help required.  And yes, some thick, but good looking Italian named Michael, had put incorrect telephone numbers on our information.  Nothing matched, no matter how we reassembled the telephone numbers.


And there was no such thing as public transport, car rides we could hitch, nor lovely pastoral footpaths and tracks we could traverse to get ourselves back to our own town and B&B.  We had no alternative but to trudge over the hot asphalt roadways,  over all the hilly and mountainous roadways back to Montepulciano, in the mid day sun.


This was yet another sticky situation SOMEONE ELSE had got us into. 


Some hours later we did arrive back at our B&B.  Tired, weary and each one nursing a very sore knee from the hard asphalt, big hills and unbelievable hike back. 


Tomorrow.  Tomorrow we are going back for more.  We have to. We paid for this luxurious, fun filled, hiking holiday some many months back.  All this weather worn and despondency stuff is supposed to be making us bright and perky, looking forward to returning home feeling buoyant and refreshed from the break.  We think, at the rate we are going, we may never find our way home at all.

We (or maybe, I) will have much to be thankful to Italians for

Ah, thank you Italy for inventing the parmesan cheese, which I have enjoyed so much over the past 4 days.  Thank you too, for inventing gorgonzola, mozzarella, spaghetti, lasagna, cannelloni, pepperoni, ravioli, tagliatelli, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Maserati; and oh, risotto, pizza and chianti.


Then you also produced Christopher Columbus, Galileo, Marco Polo and Pinocchio.  


Whilst busy inventing and producing all the above, you further added to your list of inventions the ambulance, eye glasses, fire places, the piano and the thermometer.  Then of course, was Eau de Cologne; where would we be without Eau de Cologne and romance?


Ah, all of that are but a few things Italy has given us that we  have probably never thought about in one thought pattern.  We knew it all, but when putting it together have to think that the Italians have been clever, inventive, creative and cuisine specialist throughout the centuries. And they created gelato, thank you Italy.


And the Vesper. And the espresso machine.


For the first time ever I realise that maybe the rest of the world should be thankful for Italian history.  Where would we be without a pizza and Pinocchio?.  And that's without contemplating Gucci, Prada, Armani and Versace.  I have never been blessed with any of their creations, nor ever will, but they have still given much to social history.


Oh, there is also the thermometer and the piano - they both came from Italy.  And the ice cream cone. The typewriter.  Oh, for heavens sake, Italy has been the inventor of everything we really need in our lives. 


Maybe I shall not be so dismissive of the Italian rugby team at the next world cup - after all, those rugby players have come from a fine line of ancestry who have been too busy inventing things to be creative on the rugby field.


The average life expectancy age for an Italian is 82 which is indeed an interesting fact when one considers that the average Italian eats 25 kilograms of pasta a year, whilst drinking 26 gallons of wine, soaked up with some huge amount of bread the figure which I forget right now.


I have spent the last thirty years trying my damnest to give up eating the oft referred to weight-gaining white pasta and white bread and red wine.  And here we have a nation living on the stuff and living long.  I feel in my bones that I was meant to be born Italian.  


Let no person scorn me in my future years to enjoying the pleasure of the red wine.  I shall remain idealistic in kerbing the white breads and pastas but will utilise the red wine as a life extending policy in my back-to-the-future now extended life.

         

Another ho-hum travel journey from some nobody

I shall call it - Travel Journal 1

How boring!

I went to the Churchill War Rooms in London the other day. For me it was a well spend few pounds for a couple of hours wandering the corridors of the underground rooms where Churchill and his war time colleagues spent many hours planning and mapping the strategies of defeating the enemy.  I have never understood why, but have always had a deep interest in anything Churchill.  My favourite reading over the past many years has tended to be the books in my book shelves about or by Churchill. 

After my couple of hours wandering the war rooms there was a great temptation to purchase yet another Churchill book from the inevitable souvenir room that one must pass through before being able to exit any museum or gallery.  I browsed over a couple of books I had not seen before and then resisted the compulsive urge to purchase.  I need not read more about him, but more to the point I need not have any more excess luggage to return to NZ with. 

I did however dally over yet another small handbook of Churchill’s quotes.  He was so magnificent with his quips and quotes – a skill I admire and envy in those who are adept at the quick and clever retort.  As I was about to set it back on the shelf the page opened to one particular quote of his which rang some personal tingles for me. 

‘It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to see further than you can see.’

It gave me the ‘huh’ factor when reading that.  His quote sums up how I have been feeling over the past many months since first heading out on this self-journey of heading back to the future.  I have spent endless hours trying to think, and look, and fathom what my life plans ahead of me should be but have found it most difficult to see any further than tomorrow, or the day after.  Not due to lack of vision or drive, but due to circumstances and lack of clarity to accept what has passed is actually in the past.

Since March last year each day has had so much past in it I could not see further ahead.  Thus, this is one of the reasons I am now on the other side of the world, seemingly meandering aimlessly.  It is my big (and expensive) step into clearing the past, not dismissing it, merely clearing it so that I can see further than the fog. So that I can see clear, fogless space ahead.

Only time will tell me when that fog has completely cleared; but something inside me tells me that what I am doing is right, is my only way of having it settle, emerging through it and being focused on a clear and positive future.  Sadly, I have to be realistic too – there is not a great deal of time in the future, thus need to make it worthwhile.

Hence, here I am.  In Rome.  With my sister.  Pooped, from a day of wandering the cobbled streets of ancient history, shouldering and being shouldered by thousands of tourists all on their personal urgent missions to get from one ruin to another, whilst ruining the other humans experiences of heading in the other directions.

Has been a good day though.  An excellent training day for those soon to come when we are to be walking anything from 14 to 19 kilometres a day for seven or eight days.  Indeed, on those days we may be yearning to be back in the city with thousands as at least when we needed it, there were ample cafes, restaurants, museums, churches, galleries, shops, parks and shaded trees we could take shelter under or in.

And we did.  We also kept coming across yet new ruins of history that we had forgotten were in Rome.  It seemed that each turning of each corner there was yet another postcard picture to be had.  Amusingly, we became bored with ruins.  Or maybe it was self-concern over our sore soles on our feet and weary souls of being a mere tourist among thousands?

Funnily enough, have come to the conclusion that this trip is more timely for me than I would have ever imagined.  I am already ‘city-ed’ out, and have been pondering for weeks now on why I had not been in my usual state of travel excitement leading up to all that has happened so far, and all that I have planned for while I am up in the Northern Hemisphere.  All the amazing plans that have been in place.  Such a lot most folk would only dream of.  That excitement that others have felt for me, just has not ignited.  It is most peculiar.  Most unusual.  It has bothered me why.  All I really felt the need to do was to get on the plane and get to England, Surrey.  Then get my feet on Italian soil.  Why? More on that next blog update.  I must stop, I fear my typing is disturbing a slumbering one.