For as long as I have known Arthur going to St. Peters Basilica has been on his bucket list. Since Arthur isn't Catholic I originally thought this was a little strange. Then three or four years ago he started saving for a trip to Italy to see St. Peters with a stock savings plan through work. I will admit that was thinking to myself, "It's great to be putting away money but we probably won't actually use it for Italy but we may have other things we need to pay for down the road like a house, car, etc that it will be great to have money already saved up." About a year ago the savings plan came due and he sold the stock and asked when we were heading to Italy. After a month of going back and forth I finally jumped into the idea of doing this trip. I tossed in the idea of doing several countries in Europe because who knows when we might get the chance again but it finally boiled down to two weeks in Italy to really experience Italy.
For the past year we have been preparing for Italy as if it was a university study abroad program. We listened to lectures, read books, watched videos-- many by college professors in preparation. We studied Italian, learned about the ancient Romans, watched videos on architecture appreciation, read books on art history with a focus on the Italian Renaissance, and learned about contemporary Italian culture. For the average traveler this might be a little much but we wanted to know about what we were seeing and doing. Prior to this study I would not have been able to distinguish a Gothic church from Baroque or a Giotto painting from Carvaggio. But oh my there is a difference. We were excited to see certain works of art in person I didn't know existed before this that made the museums so much more fun. Understanding Roman architecture made the ruins on brick and rubble come to life.
If I am honest the part I spent the most time on was learning Italian-- usually on a daily basis for the last year-- and I was disappointed by my level of actually being able to use it day to day while traveling. However everything I learned was self-taught through internet resources and I had never actually exchanged any words with an Italian speaker until we landed in the country. My reading skills were pretty good, listening was about 25-50% comprehension, and speaking we were able to get by. A lot of the time people knew some English so it was just easier to default to English and my Italian words did not come out of my mouth fast enough for fast paced interactions. Was it necessary to study a language for a year before traveling-- not at all. But my motivation was to also learn a language. Learning as always come very easy for me except for languages. I wanted to see if I could learn another language and to what level. Am I fluent? No, not even conversational with speaking since it is very hard to practice this by yourself. However I could ease drop on phone conversations and guided tours in Italian, read signs, and most importantly order gelato.
Outside of studying for this trip there was the planning aspect. Since we didn't go with a tour group we were responsible for making all the reservations, figuring out details, planning an itinerary. My two thoughts on this are: thank goodness for the internet and email and I might be a Rick Steves groupie. First, how did people figure out any info before the internet? I looked up directions, bought train tickets, reserved museum tickets, and booked hotels on the internet. This is another time my Italian came in handy was emailing to make hotel reservations especially since we stayed in a few convents which are less touristy and the nuns were less likely to communicate in English. As to being a Rick Steves groupie I poured over his guide books for Italy, Rome, Florence, Tuscany, etc. We watched all of his TV shows on Italy to figure out where to go. Arthur gave me a hard time that I wouldn't even eat at a restaurant unless it was recommended in the Rick Steves guidebook. This is basically true but why reinvent the wheel if people have done research and have already figured out what's the best. We would have missed basil gelato if not for the suggestion in the guidebook and that would have been terrible.
Also to get ready for the world of international travel we realized that we needed to catch up with the 21st century and get a credit card and a smart phone. It is nearly impossible to make hotel reservations with a debit card overseas. This required more visits and calls to the bank than getting a mortgage on our home-- not even joking. And in the end it still didn't work and we had to get a credit card. We only used our debit card to get cash from ATMs but the credit card was handy for train tickets and paying for hotels. The smart phone is essentially a Swiss army knife for travelers. I am still not convinced that I needed it for my everyday life but one the road it was great. We used it as our camera, we could email to confirm reservations, text or call our parents to reassure them we didn't fall off the side of a mountain. I used it a lot to screen shot guidebook pages or trail information. We had a navigation map using GPS to know where in the world we were after we got off the subway and an app with train schedules and stops so we knew when our stop was coming up. Additionally we had the Rick Steves Europe app which had podcasts about Italy and Europe which was our entertainment on the train or audio tours of the bigger sites so we didn't have to pay for guided tours. These were the best!
The final step before our trip was packing. We were going to be gone for two weeks, using only public transportation, and traveling all over the northern half of Italy so packing was key. We needed to be able to carry all of our stuff easily through train stations and while walking up to 30 minutes to our hotel. Since we were seeing a lot of ground that also meant being in a new place every 2-3 nights so packing everything up frequently. We decided to just take backpacks as our luggage. This made a huge difference in our trip but apparently is out of the norm since we were frequently asked where our luggage was when we arrived somewhere new. We each had 2 pairs of pants, 4 shirts, a sweater, a pair of hiking boots, and a rain jacket. We did do laundry in our hotel every few nights and were glad we don't have to wash clothes by hand in a bidet all the time. We had a small pack we used as our day bag for the guide book, water, snacks, sweaters, sunglasses, and emergency travel kit. I think our packs weighed in at 15 pounds. It was a nice change from our true backpacking trips since we didn't need a tent, several days of food, etc. If we needed something we could go out and buy it-- we were in Italy and not a remote island only accessible by ferry boat.
I love logistics and planning. I am contemplating a second career of being a travel planner or tour guide in retirement. So I enjoyed all the prep work for the most part and I feel more comfortable if I am prepared for what is coming. Some people like to travel without reservations and have the flexibility to go where they want or stay longer. However for us on our first international trip knowing what to expect was helpful since there was enough other "unknowns" (like figuring out how to flush the toilets). The planning helped us get started off on the right foot four our trip which really made the trip a great experience. It also helped decrease the stress of making decisions on the fly or getting lost (as much) which was probably very helpful to maintain the peace in our relationship while traveling for 2 weeks with each other. Omnia Vincit Amor.
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