There’s something about Italy

Yes, there’s something about Italy and I don’t quite know what it is -whether it is the rolling Tuscan hills or its crumbling fortresses; the grandiose domes of its churches or the refreshing tinkle of its many fountains. What is certain is that there’s an inherent charm that seems to stem from its diversity. So perhaps it no wonder that its cities, landscapes and even obscure villages whose names are left out of all the guidebooks seem to have come to an unspoken agreement: to seduce the unwary traveller into leaving a piece of his heart and a part of his soul somewhere along its boot-shaped length. Italy has captured the imagination of countless poets, artists, writers and adventurers. But, you might ask, what is it about it that  you seek?

And my answer would be ‘I don’t know’. I don’t know what draws me to this land. For I do not claim to be a poet, and an artist I most definitely am not. So would adventurer be a more fitting description? Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. I’m just an {older} girl with a camera and a pen; a wanderer’s soul and a passion for eavesdropping on whispers of the past.

Yes, I am spellbound by Pisa and Siena and Venice (and Rome and Florence and … you get the picture) but I am equally mesmerised by those secret villages where no tourists venture and which even time seems to have forgotten. It’s been too long since my last visit and, everyday, I hear the siren call of this beautiful land a little bit stronger,   knowing full well that before too long I will have to break my shackles and answer it, so that I will, once again, be able to walk on ancient cobbled streets, beneath gravity-defying medieval towers, hoping to discover its secrets and trying to find that part of me which I had left behind on my previous visit. Or maybe it was the one before that. Or maybe it was a hundred years ago or even a thousand. Because time is relative here and Italy never feels like a stranger but more like an old friend with whom I can pick up a surreptitious conversation at exactly the same point we had left it the last time we met.

I am a dreamer and, like all dreamers, I live somewhere on the border between fantasy and reality. In Italy, the fantastic is never too far beneath the surface and I seem to tune it to it intuitively. Maybe that is the lure which, time and again, draws me there. Or maybe it’s something more mundane: like the food, the wine and that typically Italian outlook on life epitomised by the now immortal phrase: la dolce vita.

Oh Italy, even after all that soul-searching I am not any closer to pin-pointing where your magic lies. Which is probably why I keep on falling in love with you.