italy: february 2023
Sunday, March 24th, 2024
Just over one year ago, I travelled to Italy with my friend Noah. Having prioritized travel with the boyfriends of my twenties, it had been far too long since I had been on an adventure with a friend. And now I can still look at these photos fondly, without a hint of grief or remorse for the romantic relationship lost. What a concept.
We flew into Rome and celebrated Valentine’s Day in the pink glow of sunset. The Trevi Fountain was bigger and more magical than I remembered, the Colosseum was breathtaking and we couldn’t stop walking by the Pantheon. Literally. Noah’s mom asked us over the phone, “Have you seen the Pantheon yet!?” We laughed. Yes we had, we couldn’t STOP seeing the Pantheon, it actually would be nice NOT to see the Pantheon. We walked through the gardens at the Villa Borghese and took a guided tour through the museum. This was a first for me and ended up being one of the highlights of the whole trip. Noah didn’t even mind when I broke the rules and climbed a stone wall to get a photo of the blooming daffodils. Anything for the shot. Especially of gardens.
Florence was next and it was all wood smoke and rosemary. These scents followed us around the city as we lined up for cured meat sandwiches and marvelled at the Duomo. Noah loved the energy in Rome, but there was something about Florence that appealed to me. It felt rustic and cozy and I was extremely grateful to be visiting in the wintertime. I would recommend it to anyone. We visited the Boboli Gardens far too near closing time and ended up getting verbally harassed by the repetitive loudspeaker announcement to kindly, get the fuck out. Desperate for the shot (again), I ducked into a small forest path and began to run, at my fullest speed, away from the guard. It didn’t work- she blew her whistle at me and I relented. But, we returned a second time because it really was that beautiful. After this second visit, we popped into a small paper store near the entrance and that is where I found the journal that I would write in for months to come. The source of the inspiration behind launching the journal on the blog at all. I will always be grateful to Florence for that.
Orvieto was our final stop and something we booked a bit last minute, while we were still in Rome. We knew that we wanted some sort of small town at the end of the trip, something to contrast the experiences in Rome and Florence. Then a friend of Noah’s insisted on Orvieto and we found the loveliest apartment belonging to a family who had lived there for generations. Booked, immediately. And honestly, it was perfect. Little Orvieto was nestled among sprawling green hills that turned golden in the sun. Climbing up the old bell tower rewarded us with a glute workout and one of the most stunning vistas of my entire life. We took a bottle of wine to watch the sunset over these hills and were treated to a free show from the local birds swooping in formation across the warm sky. We shook our heads in disbelief at the magic, and I still do, even now. It’s amazing how travel can give you those serendipitous moments that confirm you are indeed in the right place, at the right time.
The whole experience did feel very wonderful and fated. I have more of a propensity towards the “woo-woo” than Noah does, but even she could not ignore the countless times we saw repeated numbers. Everywhere. The book that I read on the trip, The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (excellent by the way), is set in Florence and explores the life of Lucrezia de Medici. I saw her sister’s portrait hanging in the Uffizi. And when I finished that book on the plane ride home, the final page was 333. I am not quite sure what these things were trying to tell me, but maybe it was that my priorities were finally more aligned. I was decentering romantic love from its position at the core of my entire life and instead, began investing in myself and in my friendships. I finally faced the heartbreak that had occurred about five months prior and had been willfully ignored. I began to write more frequently and took photos for no other reason than pure pleasure and inspiration. I look back on that time and see all the healing, even more than I was aware of at the time. I remember writing on one train ride that my heart was broken and sad and something about that simple acknowledgement began to set it free. Now, one year later, I am choosing the photos that I want to frame and I have nearly filled the journal from Florence. Only a few more lined pages remain empty in a book that chronicles a year of massive growth and healing and a returning to self. Beautiful things that all started with a good friend, several glasses of wine and countless laughs in the cobblestone streets and gardens of Italy.