Twenty Years Ago

It is almost 20 years ago that we returned to Perth after our first trip to Italy together. Since then we have visited Italy 17 times, bought the apartment we dreamed of, and have met dozens of interesting and friendly people on our travels to 19 of the twenty regions in Italy. We have yet to visit Aosta Valley – but we have plans!

Hence the title of our blog – Just2Italy. When people ask where we are going for our holiday, we reply “Just To Italy” almost apologetically as we’re sure that they think we would want to go somewhere else. However, our curiosity was stirred by what we had seen and experienced, the impulse to return so strong that we went again in September 1999. Initially we wanted to see famous sights but moved gradually from a position of observing to one of experiencing the culture and daily life through the people we met. When you travel to a place more than once, you see differently: on subsequent trips you notice details previously missed because you are feeling more relaxed and familiar. By visiting and revisiting, we’ve acquired a sense of continuity and belonging.

This space is for us to share some information about out-of-the-ordinary and intriguing places we’ve visited – intentionally and sometimes accidently – to inspire you to visit them too. We’re rarely disappointed in an Italian town – except perhaps Legnano near Milan and that was an interesting and unforgettable experience.

We’ve had many interesting experiences in Italy and interesting can mean many things. It’s interesting to learn about Hannibal and his elephants travelling from Spain to invade Italy from the north – it’s also interesting trying to find a hotel in Florence on New Year’s Eve. Not for New Year’s Eve but on New Year’s Eve. It’s interesting to visit a hairdresser who doesn’t speak English and walk away with the style and colour you intended. It’s interesting trying to select a dish that isn’t horse in a horse restaurant in Venice.

During our first trip to Italy at the end of 1997, we were constantly captivated and intrigued. We were there for nearly 6 weeks with only two nights’ accommodation booked. The trip was a succession of impulses. We left the routine and safety of home and ventured into the unknown.

We had both separately been passionate about all things Italian for years and this was the second trip for each of us. I’d been on a Contiki tour and Rob travelled with uni friends in the late 70s. I remembered most of the destinations I visited on the Contiki tour by the type of liqueur we drank – Sorrento was Tia Maria and milk, Vienna the fruit flavoured schnapps, generally something sweet – or by the particular physical discomfort experienced – trying to get warm in the tents at 7 Hills Camping in Rome in July, or trying to get barbequed ribs from the plate to my mouth without eating the mosquitoes in camping Venice!

My interest had been stirred in my Italian class in Year 8 when the magic of the language promised me that an exciting and different world existed in Italy. It was the idea of something separate and diverse which appealed. I also went to school with quite a few Italians and was intrigued by their otherness, their sometimes curious families and food, and the way they spoke that beautiful and bewildering language which excluded but still beckoned me.

Rob’s passion started with the Fiat his father owned when he was young. We won’t talk about how many Fiats he has owned since then and some of them didn’t even need pushing to get going. A few did though and it was a family activity to push the car down the drive so that it could roll down Lennard Street towards West Coast Highway and hopefully start before it had to be pushed back up the hill.

Twenty years ago in Perth there weren’t many Fiats on the roads, as they weren’t sold in Australia between 1989 and 2006, so it was only an occasional time that Rob exclaimed “Fiat!” And that was fine. Occasionally it was interesting. However, when we walked around Rome, he was on repeat. Fiat. Fiat. Fiat. Our daughter Becka made a rule one holiday – that he could only do Fiat spotting when he saw a different model which did pare it back and almost made it worth looking, although it’s better to tell me to look at a red car, or a yellow car, than to yell Fiat! Otherwise my head is spinning like Linda Blair in The Exorcist trying to locate one. Rob saying ‘128, Panda, Tipo or cinquecento’ was more of a hindrance.

The first train rides in Italy took us to places that we’d never heard of. The train from Lucca (near Florence, in Tuscany) to Turin hugged the Ligurian coastline from Viareggio to Genoa. Every now and then we glimpsed the sparkling blue and gasped with excitement. We were alternately in darkness as the train slid into a tunnel or being blinded by the splash of light as it exited. The expanse of turquoise and sapphire was startling. We weren’t children but we felt like it. We were in love with each other and in love with life. This life. The one we were having on this trip – sitting in a 6 person second class compartment trying our first conversations in Italian with people who shared food and stories and being jolted around very exciting bends on our way to Turin and, for Rob, car heaven.

There were many ruined buildings along the way. In fields. On the outskirts of towns. Deserted and often only a pile of stones. But the seed of the idea of buying a house in Italy was planted after Rob pointed out the first renovator’s dream somewhere between Turin and Modena. It was never a goal but rather a fantasy. A romantic dream. It wasn’t until 2006 that we visited a real estate agent for the first time in Barga. And again on the same trip, we looked at properties in Vasto. This was always a sign that we had connected with a place and never wanted to leave! It’s hard to remember the crystalising moment that we realized that we could buy a property in Italy but it was probably 5 years after the first visit to a real estate agent – Agenzia di Immobiliare.

We don’t have a bucket list. Having been so many times, we have lost that desperate need to see a particular place and in the process have discovered many out-of-the-way places where only locals visit. We either don’t plan, which has resulted in some crazy itineraries, zig-zagging back and forth across, or up and down the country; or we plan a week ahead which allows us to stay longer when we want to, or very rarely, to move on a day earlier – or if it rains. We want to share the magic of a train ride in Italy, the magic of making new friends and speaking Italian to them, the magic of discovering a new view or new food.

Welcome to Just2Italy.

Lynne and Rob