Better Than Olive Garden: My Week in Italy

Our first stop in Italy was Venice, the week we were going happened to fall on the week of Carnival: an annual Venetian festival that dates back to the middle ages. This was an amazing event to be a part of, seeing all of the costumes and buying my own handmade carnival mask was so immersive and fun. It only added to the beauty of Venice. This was an unforgettable experience and I was so lucky to get to share it with some of my closest friends. However I would be lying if I said it was perfect, while in Venice I was starting to feel the first symptoms of a nasty cold that would follow me throughout our journey through Italy. I also couldn’t help from feeling like I wasn’t doing the “right” activities. I worried I wasn’t going to enough museums or art galleries, I wasn’t checking off everything on the typical tourist bucket list. We spent most of our days walking around, eating, people watching, peeping into old churches. This made me feel like I knew the city better but when I thought about what I’d actually done on any given day I came up with a pretty short list. 

I resolved to stick to an itinerary in our next city: Florence. I wanted to walk around and experience the city but I thought I needed to better balance that with “cultural activities.” I went in with the best of intentions but everything didn’t exactly go to plan. We got to Florence on a Sunday and left on a Tuesday and were disappointed to find a lot of the museums we wanted to visit were closed the days we wanted to visit. We did our best to adapt our plans, but it was harder to wander around the city when it was raining the majority of the time we were there. We saw a lot but we missed some things too. So we changed the plan again and booked a bus tour last minute, we visited Siena, San Gimignano, and Pisa. Aside from Pisa I had never heard of any of these places but this was a great day trip. San Gimignano especially was a great hidden gem that I wouldn’t have thought of visiting otherwise. We got to meet people on our tour and had a great day. It was pretty tiring to do so much in one day but very much worth it.

The next day we moved on to our next destination: Milan. We got up early to catch our train, but not early enough, we quickly realized we were going to miss the train we had booked, so we had to shift our travel plans and once again roll with the punches. Several booked and cancelled tickets later we finally made it to Milan, but when we got there instead of seeing the city, I was fairly sure I would only be seeing the Hostel bed. I was exhausted and starting to feel pretty sick, my bag suddenly felt very heavy and the room very hot. Whether I wanted to or not I was going to need a day to rest. It was annoying to have to miss a whole day of my vacation and be pretty out of it the rest of the time we were in Milan. We saw a lot and I enjoyed the city anyway but we could have done more. I’ve struggled with this in Paris as well, when you’re studying abroad it can be really tough to stay in, you have to consider that part of being abroad is living in the place your visiting and living somewhere means taking days to rest, just like you would at home. 

This trip was a good reminder for me not to over plan, life happens and there are always going to be things out of my control. There is no “correct” way to travel, everyone does it differently. The must-see things for one person might be okay to miss for someone else. Sometimes its better to rest than push yourself so hard that you can’t keep going. It’s impossible to see everything and I’m really grateful for the way I experienced every place I’ve traveled to. The beautiful thing about Italy is how each city feels so distinct and every place I traveled I got a taste of what life is like there and there’s plenty more to see in Italy when I go back someday.