I embarked on my first trip to Europe one misty morning last October. After consulting my best friend Brooke about the fashion of Italian women (she had spent a semester abroad in Florence during our junior year of college and said “Absolutely no pashminas. Italian women don’t wear them. No flip-flops. Leather is OK. But remember, less is more!”), I crammed a Diane von Furstenburg suitcase full of clothes and shoes, a couple Italian phrasebooks, and headed to Rome. I remember feeling buzzed with excitement the night before we left. The food! The art! The fashion! The history!
From the moment we were picked up by a handsome driver who gave us an informal tour of the city to when we packed up and said goodbye to the flamboyant front desk host at our cozy hotel, Rome did not disappoint. Although we both caught head colds from travel and jet-lag, nothing could have dulled what Miek and I were seeing. I am Catholic but have never been terribly “religious”. Over the years I have cobbled together the framework of my spiritual beliefs in a way that many of my generation have…distancing ourselves from the confines our parents and grandparents experienced. But the Vatican, and St. Peter’s Basilica, and the tiny, medieval churches we stumbled across during our afternoon walks, made me feel closer to a “higher power.”
The pasta was a religious experience too. I had the best espresso I have ever had. Dinner was an event.
As we rode the high-speed train through the Tuscan countryside on our way to Florence for the day, I was seated next to an Italian scholar. A professor perhaps, maybe a doctor. As he studied his journal article, I looked past him to the ancient stone farmhouses and rustic landscape. When we walked the Ponte Vecchio, I felt connected to the merchants who sold their wares there on the bridge hundreds of years ago.
I felt at home in Italy. I felt comfortable in the sunny piazzas, nibbling on a piece of bread with cheese, sipping a glass of the best “house red” ever.
Surrounded by art and history, I felt connected to humanity in a new and different way. I will go back.
xo Al
Hot Off The Dress 