Neema Ejercito (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer
Italy was one of the first countries in Europe that I ever visited. My husband had been raving about the country as one of his favourites, so my expectations were really high. Italy was not one to disappoint.
My husband’s and my way of travelling is not the point and click, let’s-get-to-all-the-attractions kind of travelling. We’re more the let’s-take-in-the-local-life kind of tourists. We’d rather sit in a cafe and go people-watching, even if it would mean missing out on a scheduled museum tour. We prefer to walk through a park with a friend or two rather than taking in a famous church, market and shopping mall in one afternoon. We like getting lost and finding our way back.
That being said, on our first day in Rome together 12 years ago, as our cab made its way to our hotel right in the heart of tourist-filled Trevi, I was amazed how its current structures had grown around the ancient ruins of this once-magnificent, almost god-like city. I didn’t have to look far to see sculptures, stone walls and obelisks. I marvelled at how Roman pedestrians seemed to take these for granted. But then I imagined myself feeling much the same way as I rushed off to a meeting in Intramuros, focusing on the traffic rather than Manila’s fair share of magnificence.
When we took to the streets the next day, we walked into the churches we chanced upon, whether they were well-known or not. Outside one of them, I took a photo of a bust, marvelling at how smooth the stone had been cut and formed, how the skin was really made to look like that of a human’s. Sculptures like these were all over the city. To think, what kind of craftspeople the Romans used to be!
We went to Venice a couple of days later, and though I had heard of this city of love countless times, there really is nothing like experiencing the real thing. I did not want to leave. My heart was smitten. I was already planning on how to stay there longer, what jobs my husband and I would do, what kind of lives we would lead, how we would raise our kids and what kind of schools they would attend. Truly, Venice was for lovers and dreamers. I remember feeling the serenity of the city’s atmosphere as we had cappuccino on our first day there, watching a mother and child as the mom got herself a cup of coffee and a gelato for her daughter, who contentedly sat on her mother’s lap.
I did grow to detest the cobbled streets, especially when my husband and I got lost for the hundredth time, but the photogenic vistas of the city just took our breath away. Being photographers ourselves, we just marvelled at how every nook and cranny seemed to just be filled with beauty that seemed to be waiting to be discovered only by us.
On our last couple of days back in Rome, we checked out the top reason my husband loves Rome so much, the Vatican. And just to show how much of a “feeling local” type of tourists we are, we didn’t even book to see the Sistine Chapel, we just walked around the Vatican without having to feel pressured with time to take in what we should. We stayed there the whole day so we could capture a praying man and a view of the Vatican at night, just to mention a few sights.
I think that is the beauty of travelling, that it seems to hold different meanings for the traveller, even if we all go to the same place at the same time. Because the beauty of travelling may not necessarily be in where we are or what we see, but what we bring to it and where we are inside. So to all fellow travellers like me, whether we are travelling far to some distant place, hoping to check it off our list, or just to get to work, let’s keep our senses alive to the beauty that reaches out to us, even if, or rather, especially because it is already inside us.
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Neema Ejercito is a professional writer, director and creative writing mentor. Her 3D edutainment series for beginning readers, AlphaBesties, is showing in YouTube Japan and Prairie Kids. When she’s not writing or mentoring, she manages her household with her very supportive husband and three children.