Over 2,200 kilometres by car. Nearly 150,000 steps (if the pedometer is to be trusted). A couple of thousand shots that should yield at least a couple of hundred additions to my public photostream. Six regions of the country that had dedicated stops on our itinerary. A dozen cities that we have not been to before (and one much loved one that we made a short return visit to, literally in the spur of the moment). One new country that we never set foot in in the past. Dips in two different seas on the opposite coasts of the peninsula. Ten UNESCO World Heritage sites to add to our roster. Three great afternoons spent in the company of our eldest child.
Admittedly, our choice of destination for a summer sojourn was shaped in large part by the fact that Becky was spending a semester at the University of Urbino. Italy is clearly the country we have visited the most on our travels, so in order to spice it up this time around we purposefully built our itinerary around locales that had escaped our attentions in the past. My recently acquired “obsession” with the UNESCO list proved to be quite useful given the number of locations on that list that are in Italy. We lingered in some places and took transit detours or targeted getaways to others. As I will be working through the photographs, I will be posting the highlights of each stop in this space.
Every day left us with something to remember, be it grand squares, great museums, or local customs taught to us by our own Italian resident. And on our last day, a crazy idea to spend the evening in Venice shaped up as the time whittled away. Although La Serenissima was not in our original plans, we were less than an hour away from it, and changing plans in midstream comes naturally to us. Riding vaporetto linea 1, crossing little bridges, strolling through narrow streets and cozy squares, listening to music on Piazza San Marco – it was a perfect coda to a fantastic trip.