Ten Days In Italy

A Trip To Remember

We spend ten days in Italy from May 29th to June 7th 2015. Those are among the best days of our lives.

It has been twenty five years together and we decided to be celebrate it in Italy. It seems like many people share this idea. We met two couples, a Pakistani American from LA and a Caucasian one from England. Both were there for their silver jubilees.

Many reading this would have been to Italy. It is a popular vacation destination. What I write here and in subsequent blog posts may not seen new to them. To me it was a lot more than I had expected. It was an enjoyable vacation, to say the least; and in addition to that, I did not realize how much Italy has to offer to a visitor.

For a very long time, we are not used to hear good things about Italy, It is in record debt and what I remember growing up was an ever changing corrupt government after another, not much different than the situation back home.

But what I realized on the trip was that not only being the inheritor of the Greek philosophy and legacy, Italy was also the real birthplace of what we know as the Modern Western Civilization. It was the place of Renaissance, not only in the cultural and art world, the ground breaking scientific discoveries were hatched in what we call Italy these days. Whereas the harbinger of the Dark Ages i.e. the Fall of the Roman Empire happened there, the rebirth, Renaissance, is also primarily an Italian phenomenon.

To be correct, it is not exactly an Italian phenomenon as I learned that Italy is a relatively new concept, even younger than USA. It was a fractionated place with lots of local states. It was only the events of the late 19th century that brought it together as one nation. I always wondered that in the colonial era we see hardly any Italian colonies, (besides Libya and Somalia); now I know why. There was no big country Italy with a strong Navy to conquer the world. Perhaps Venice alone was a local maritime power and had its area of influence beyond the traditional land of Italy.

What we did was the routine first time tourist essential for Italy: four nights in Rome, three in Florence and two in Venice. We had day trips to Naples and Pompeii while in Rome and to Sienna, San Gimigniano (Tuscany) and Pisa while in Florence.

It was warm and not terribly hot, we stayed in hotels close to the center of the cities and used public transportation a lot. Should have seen a lot more than what we saw, but still having a hard time to absorb what we have seen.

We saw a lot of Vespas and Bengalis, Bangladeshis to be exact, much more than the Africans, selling stuff on the streets. We did have Italian cuisine but could not resist Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Kurdistani food.

It was the right place and the right time for the occasion; could not have been a better place. Tipu Ahmed, APPNA's event planner, had helped us plan our trip to Spain a few years back, and he did the same this year. We had excellent plans and arrangements, and still economical. I will recommend that to those not comfortable chalking out their own plan.

Allow me take you with me as I retrace my steps back to Italy. You may find something interesting as we go along.