Il romanticismo italiano

Finally, finally, finally, after a lot of maths, geography, history and logistics, we made it to Italy. Spent a day in London before heading off to Italy. The journey started from Venice and ended in Rome with Florence and Pisa in between. 4 days, some hectic travelling and a marvellous holiday. So lets see how we spent those days without a clue of passing time:

It always starts with the air and stepping onto Marco Polo I wondered if the air would smell of the ocean. There was no clue of it during the hour long ride from the airport to the Piazza de San Marco in the water bus and I didnt miss it. The pristine (almost) water and the albatrosses squaking on the poles bode a good start of the day. The water bus travelled around the perimeter of most of Venice and I got to see what I only had seen in movies till date - simple houses standing side by side on the edge of the dancing waters. They left little space between them yet it didnt seem congested for some reason. May be the prevailing serenity swalloed the send of uneasiness which possibly never existed in the first place.

I won't mention San Marco since there was nothing different with it - A piece of dying history flooded by tourists, ristorantes, road side shops selling fancy masks (really beautiful) and some locals ready to mug you at the first chance. But for Venice, I would allow myself the foolishness to think that the city was carved under the sea by Poseidon and then pushed out to the surface for the world to admire. The homes never seem separated from the sea, they just appeared like a part of it, an extension of itself that the sea would neer give away. Wife described it as beautiful, paradise and hoped that global warming would never engulf it.

We moved to florence in the evening and it welcomed us with rain. I loved walking in Florence. I trotted the narrow lanes between old buildings over pebbled streets and wondered if the Stendhal Syndrome hits me. It didn't.

A perfect line to describe it would have been 'We moved back in time,' but I won't use it since I lost the very track of time in the first place. The place was so beautiful, living yet serene, new yet old, a place where the past and the present would dance hand in hand every moment of the day. Ricardo, the hotel manager told us to visit Piazza le MichaelAngelo and he said that if I didnt see this, I didnt see Florence. I imagined that place to be a couple of statues, a fountain in the garden. But after a tiring trek (!!!!), we came to know why we wouldn't have seen florence without seeing it. It's a flattened platform on the top of a hill with a bronze statue of David (replica) in the middle. The hill overlooked Florence and from there I came to know that my assumption of Florence as another metropolitan city was wrong. Its a city sitting in the lap of mountains which on that day were hidden under the clouds that marked their edges. If we talk about man made dwellings, nothing could compare an Italian town.

I would skip the trip to Academia and rush to Pisa where I saw the Leaning Tower. Il Torre as the italians call it. There is something about Italian. It can make you fall in love with it again and again and again. Something that I didnt find in any other languages I touched. So, Il Torre, the twisted page of history which is tilting more and more as we speak. One fine day it would crumble to dust and history would be erased. History is a strange thing to me because though I never liked it, yet always believed that it tells us about our roots. Without history, human race would be an orphan - a massive civilization with no trace of where it came from.

We travelled to Rome during the day and now I am sure that the best way to see a country is by train (or by a car provided you are not driving). Having boasted the English countryside for the past three years, I now officially gift that accolade to Italy. Italian countryside is beautiful, much beautiful.