It's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium, or, Melody's Whirlwind Trip to Italy

O.K., there are positives and negatives attached to almost everything; perfection awaits us in another life.  So let’s get the negative stuff out of the way first.  The most negative aspect of my long-awaited trip to Italy was that I and my friend Pat were fighting exhaustion virtually the entire time.  The tour we were on – Perillo Tours’ Marco Polo, for the record -- was grueling, probably more appropriate for people twenty years younger than we, people with more energy at their command, and certainly more stamina.  Our group of 36 included a few in that category, though it seemed to me that most of the folks were somewhere in their 50s.  Pat and I, with our 1947 birth year, were probably among the oldest of the “couples,” (as all but three women traveling alone were).  One lady was 78, and her husband was probably a couple of years older; they proved themselves amazingly resilient.  But poor Patricia, with her carefully controlled leukemia, and me with my never-very-high energy level, were anything but. 

Patricia, as a retired lady of leisure, is accustomed to getting up about 9, feeding the dog, having a cup of coffee & a cigarette while she reads the paper (and her smoking was moderately problematic throughout the trip, as none of the hotels permitted it), having a breakfast pastry and another cup of coffee before taking a shower, and finally being ready to tackle the world about 12.  Although I am still a working stiff, I, too, am accustomed to fairly leisurely mornings, since I don’t usually have to be to work until 11; virtually never get up before 8.  But here we were, dragging ourselves out of bed with the 6:30 wake-up calls, on the bus by 8 a.m., doing a lot of walking when the bus got us to wherever we were going, being given a lunch break of an hour to an hour and a half, with no additional time for resting, before we did it all again for the afternoon’s excursion.   I’m accustomed to resting frequently, usually take a nap after returning from my 4  1/2 to 6 hour work days.  But on our tour the only way to get some rest was to say no to some activity or other, which as a matter of fact we did, twice.  In Florence we did not go to one of the free dinners, because Pat was utterly dead from the day’s activities, and I couldn’t bring myself to abandon her for the evening (naturally it was the dinner that everyone said was the best of the three we’d so far been provided with).  And ultimately I opted out of the final afternoon excursion, in Rome, because I knew I simply had to rest.  After doing so for a couple of hours, I was able to go out for a walk, to the famous Spanish Steps, about 15 minutes from our hotel, and also to the nearby Trevi Fountain.  I was still back at the hotel well before the exhausted excursion folks returned.

While Pat and I may have been especially hard-hit by the rigors of the tour, they were hard on everyone.  Diana (names have been changed to protect the innocent), one of the ladies who was making the tour on her own, said at lunch on the next to the last day, “I am so tired of being tired.”  And all of us at her table laughed uproariously in rueful agreement.

The other major negative, as far as I (and I think a number of other people) was concerned, was that there was insufficient time allotted to be able to just enjoy the sights we were seeing.  Except for the church we visited in Padua, we always had a local guide, giving us historical facts in heavily accented English, through the little earphone sets we were given.  So there you were, marching along, trying to catch what was being said, at the same time that you were trying to take in all that you were seeing.  And naturally at times something just cried out to be photographed.  Now, admittedly, those folks with smart phones were at an advantage when it came to taking pictures.  They could just point the phone at the desired image, shoot, and keep on walking.  Some of us had slightly more demanding cameras, and mine was especially demanding, as it was new, and I really didn’t know how to work the damn thing properly.  Time and again the group would have moved on, while I was still trying to get a shot – sometimes impeded by people from other groups (there were a kazillion tour groups, which is actually another negative, but one that Perillo Tours can hardly be held responsible for), and I would then have to go hurrying up the hill, or down the street, or through the church, trying to relocate them.

And sometimes it wasn’t even a matter of wanting to take a picture, but of just wanting to be able to sit and enjoy the scenery for a while, luxuriate in the realness of actually being where you were – hey, dig this: I’m in Venice/Florence/Siena -- or to go off and explore on your own for maybe an hour. One of the few opportunities we had for this sort of thing was on the morning we left Florence for Rome.  We drove first to Michaelangelo Square, with a glorious view of the city spread out below us, the hills in the background.  We were able to spend a relaxing half hour drinking in the view, taking pictures, checking out the little souvenir stands (not so many as to be obtrusive).  It was magical.  

I think the core problem is that it is just a mistake to try to do four major cities, a stop-over in a minor one, a wine tasting, and a long day trip to an ancient city raised from the volcanic ash, in eight days.  That’s what produces both the exhaustion, and the lack of free time to explore more in each place.  So there you go, a word to the wise.

But, coming up: the positives.