A long long time ago (if I can still remember) I took my very first solo trip. Not just my first solo trip abroad, my first solo trip anywhere. It all happened rather fast. I was walking in downtown Toronto, on my way back to my dorm, and I passed a travel agent with a sign in the window that advertised flights to Rome for $499. Yes, in those days we still used travel agents. Intrigued I popped into the store, and 15 minutes later I walked out with a plane ticket. I really didn’t give it a second thought. I had some money saved up, I’d never traveled on my own, and I wanted to, so I did. I hadn’t been out of Canada and the continental US since I was 7 years old. I’m not sure what caused me to suddenly have the desire to roam, but it hasn’t left me since.
I spent the majority of my short trip in Rome, with a brief 2-3 day trip up to Florence, stopping in Pisa on the way back. It was almost overwhelming to be in what seemed at the time to be a completely foreign world. Not so much the people, most of whom were very kind, but to be in a place so ancient. Here in North America we tend to think of old as a few hundred years. Civil and revolutionary war battlefields, or maybe early fur traders routes, that sort of thing. But in Rome I was walking on stones that had be walked on 2000 years earlier. What were the people who walked on those stones thinking? What did they know about the world? What were their passions and goals in life?
I’ve forgotten a lot of what I saw and did on that trip. I didn’t take very many pictures, and most of the ones I did take were lost. I have a handful of low quality photos that I uploaded to Facebook back in 2007, before they allowed you to keep higher quality versions. But the main thing I remember was how it awoke in me a desire to make my traveling not just about adventure, but about learning, and experiencing what life is like for people around the world. Oh, also I forgot the sleeve of CDs for my Diskman at home (remember, this was 2002) and so I spent the entire trip listening to the Weezer album “Pinkerton” on repeat, as it had been in the Diskman when I left. Not a bad trip at all!
I started off with classic Rome, visiting the Colosseum, Pantheon, Forum, etc. It was here where I started to feel overwhelmed by just how ancient everything was. Also, didn’t I have some sweet 2002 style, with my flared corduroy pants and hoody?
The next day was primarily St Peters, the Vatican Museum, and Sistine Chapel. I finished it up with a stroll through the city at night, unable to find the Trevi fountain using the terrible maps in my guidebook, until I accidentally stumbled upon it.
St Peter’s basilica and square
Trevi fountain and some Roman reproductions of Greek sculptures at the Vatican museum.
This is the holy door. It’s only opened every 25 years. The next time will be in 2025. The mystery enthusiast in me loved it. The engineer in me through it was pretty inefficient.
The rest of my 8 days was spend seeing more churches and parks than I can count. I loved the train ride up to Florence, and back down the Pisa, oh how I wish we had a useful train system here in the US, it’s just such a relaxing experience. When I got to Pisa they informed me the tower was closed, and I angrily stomped my way back to the train station to have a good grump while I waited for the next train. It was here that I learned that McDonald’s served beer in Italy, which 19 year old me found very amusing. I also spent a full day walking around Hadrian’s Villa, which I would highly recommend to anybody visiting Rome. It’s a massive and beautiful set of ruins about 30 minutes outside of Rome, originally built as a retreat for Emperor Hadrian. Pools, gardens and sculptures abound. You can spend the whole day hiking around and still not really take it all in.