Andalucian adventures complete, we have moved on to the second country of our travels – Italy! The land of pizza, pasta, wine, gelato…and I guess there are some historic sites here too??
This is the fourth time we have visited Italy together, making it our most frequented country as a couple. Given this month is the month of St Valentine’s Day, forgive me some romantic nostalgia, while I mention Italy was also the first trip we took together. Happily the first of many!
Ricki certainly outdid himself when he surprised me with the four night trip to Venice as a present for our first Christmas together1 …. Before you swoon too much, the romantic moment was brought swiftly back to reality when he told me in no uncertain terms, that he was not going to be proposing. Good to know where you stand I guess!
Some pics from previous Italian ventures
Since then, we have also seen Sicily and Milan, and now we add Rome to our list. Despite the title of the blog post, our journey here did not involve roads, purely planes and trains. Unlike the Venice trip, not an 8 hour Megabus in sight thankfully!
It was lovely to be checked into our Airbnb by the owner herself, and we are really enjoying the spacious 1930s apartment. It’s nice to be staying in an Airbnb which is less than 50% Ikea furnished for once!
Some of our most memorable Airbnb stays have been in Italy actually. The second ever Airbnb we stayed in was in Palermo, Sicily. While we enjoyed making our way through the classical music CD collection for a bit of ambience, we were a bit more surprised by the photographic icon collage. The likes of Muhammad Ali and Madonna didn’t raise too many eyebrows from us, but I never thought I’d see the day Hitler and Mussolini would be on our bedroom wall.
Then there was Milan where the host seemed to have misread “2 guests” as “plague of locusts” and practically offered up a full pasticceria. Token bottles of wine as welcome gifts now pale in comparison!
Back to the present, and the notable feature I’m enjoying the most in Rome is the neighbourhood birds. I was a bit disappointed I never managed to get any shots of the parakeets in Málaga as they were too high and quick. To my delight, here they sit right outside our window most days. To our host’s irritation, they have been lured in by the building’s orange tree, which they are rapidly decimating.
As a general comment on the career break itself, given our first month is up, I’m happy to report we still feel like it’s been a great thing to do. I know that seems obvious, but who knows, perhaps we might have found ourselves pining for our draughty Victorian flat or the rigidity of our work schedules… No, in all seriousness, there is always a chance we could become homesick or feel purposeless and a bit of anxious or even guilty with the lifestyle change. We are enjoying ourselves though and remain immensely grateful we can do this. Maybe it’s a natural thing for the start of the year, but there have been a couple of articles recently that have reminded us of the importance of doing things while we can, which felt quite pertinent.
Without wanting to contradict myself too much, we have also decided though that we need to do…less. After our month was up in Spain, it seemed wise to have an honest discussion about how we thought it went, and anything we needed to change up. The mutual feeling is that we had done perhaps too much. You might recall from my initial blog post or “About us” page, that we are trying not to treat this year as a holiday. It does feel like we got a bit excited in January and fell into that trap. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t living it large or blowing our budget. But as I think I’ve mentioned, we also want to use this year for creative pursuits and studying personal interests. Somehow, January slipped through our fingers and we barely found time for either of those.
We had a great time in Spain, and I don’t think we regretted any single thing we did in particular. We also met our objective of doing things we wouldn’t typically do, like the walks around El Torcal and up Pico Huma. But the lesson we want to take for Rome, is that we perhaps need to be a bit more selective. There is always the option to return. In fact, the superstition of the Trevi fountain is that if you stand with your back to the fountain and use your right hand to toss a coin over your left shoulder, this will apparently ensure good luck and that you will return to Rome in the future. How convenient! Although we’ve already visited the fountain, we haven’t actually tossed a coin in – after all, we have a month to make sure the city passes muster!
I have no doubt we will find Rome to be a fantastic place to spend time though. Similar to Venice, it has the characteristic of making you feel like you’re on a movie set.
It’s no wonder so many artists and writers have been inspired by the Eternal city – if Ricki and I can’t get motivated here, we’re doomed!
As if to act as a reminder of this, one of the sights we live within a 5 minute walk of is the non-Catholic cemetery. Most notably, this is where John Keats is buried, as is most of Percy Shelley (Mary Shelley took his heart back to England). You aren’t permitted to share photos of the cemetery on social media unfortunately, as it is quite something. Others less goody-two shoes than me have though, and I can send pics on my phone, so take a look online or let me know if you are curious!
I often find cemeteries beautiful, but with the sun filtering through the cypress trees and alighting on the elaborate graves, I can definitely think of worse places to spend eternity than this one.
“It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”
Percy Shelley
I understand the rationale for the non-sharing rule, it’s not as if the dead can consent to their “image” being distributed. I admit I don’t know a huge amount of Keats and Shelley (though I should pay a visit to the Keats-Shelley House here to find out). But from what I do know of their characters, I picture them as the influencers of their day and can’t imagine they would object! Romantic poets aren’t exactly known for their shy, retiring natures are they?
On one of the first days after arriving, Ricki suggested we go on an afternoon stroll. I was expecting something casual, but you know you are doing well when a “stroll” includes passing by the Circo Massimo and the Colosseum!
We haven’t quite made it inside the latter yet. Our first weekend coincided with the first of the month, which signals free entry to many tourist attractions. We certainly made an effort to get up and out to the Colosseum first thing. Despite both knowing it would be busy, there was still a bit of friction as we each took a differing view on whether or not to go for it and stand in the hour plus line. Conscious of the crowds waiting around us with baited breath, we managed to avoid a Caesar versus Pompey reenactment and decided to make the most of our morning with a walk around the centre instead.
We’ve also done a similar route after dark, given how beautiful Rome is in the evening.
Now looking forward to seeing some more of the sights up close. I’m sure there will be plenty to add to our existing collection of Italian memories!
- In return, I think lucky Ricki got a cardigan…which at least he still wears occasionally! ↩︎
A Place Both Wonderful and Strange - Tash & Ricki's Career Break Travels 
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