Italy

Learning how we wanted to travel

Italy was an important trip for us. Georgia had been our first personal international trip, and it had also taught us a few lessons about what could go wrong when we made the wrong choices. Italy became the next experiment: could we travel with much less planning and still have a good experience?

The answer, over ten days, was a very definite yes.

We travelled from Dubai to Rome on 16 August 2016 and returned from Zurich on 25 August. The broad plan was simple: enter Europe through Rome and leave from Zurich. Everything in between could be decided as we went.

Why Italy

One of the practical reasons for choosing Italy was that the Italian embassy in Dubai made the Schengen visa process relatively easy for us. But the trip was also about experimenting with European travel, particularly the possibility of moving between cities by train.

We had learnt from Georgia that location matters. On that trip we had chosen a hotel far from the centre of the city, and travelling back and forth became a constant challenge. We had also booked accommodation through Booking.com that turned out to be a house hosted by a couple rather than the kind of hotel we expected. We did not enjoy that experience and changed immediately to a nearby hotel.

In Italy we tried to make better choices without turning the whole journey into a rigid itinerary.

Rome

Rome seems to have history in every corner. We visited the Colosseum, Vatican City, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon and Piazza del Campidoglio.

The Colosseum was a particular favourite. One evening Pragati decided to rest at the hotel, and I travelled alone back towards the Colosseum with my camera. Having the freedom to go out simply to photograph something I wanted to see was one of the small pleasures of the trip.

We used the city sightseeing bus as well as local buses and other public transport. Rome was our introduction to travelling around a European city without needing a car.

The city also set the tone for the trip in another way. We were not trying to understand Rome in a single day or reduce it to a checklist. We were simply moving through it, stopping where something caught our attention and allowing the city to become familiar at its own pace.

The journey north

From Rome we took the train to Florence. We had not planned every detail in advance. The next stay and the next journey were booked as we moved along.

Florence was partly a stop between Rome and Venice. We did not spend a great deal of time sightseeing there, although I remember walking around Piazza del Duomo in the evening.

The main reason for stopping in Florence was to make the journey to Pisa.

Pisa

The train from Florence to Pisa was itself memorable — a double-decker train, something that was new to us at the time.

After getting off at Pisa station, we took a bus to the Leaning Tower.

And yes, Pisa was exactly what you expect it to be: the tower was tilting. Seeing it in person after having seen it so many times in photographs was still a wonderful experience.

There was something satisfying about that stop precisely because it was simple. We did not need to spend days there. We arrived, saw the tower, photographed it and moved on.

Venice

Venice was beautiful and had its own rhythm.

We stayed near the Rialto Bridge and visited St Mark’s Square. The weather could change dramatically. At one point it suddenly started raining. Within minutes vendors appeared from different corners selling ponchos, and then just as quickly the rain passed.

St Mark’s Square had a character of its own. If I return to Venice, I would spend more time there rather than trying to cover too much of the city.

The accommodation brought another lesson. We had booked a place near Rialto, but the directions and arrangements for getting the key were not clear. We made a call after reaching the area, and someone from the crowd came looking for us, asked our name and handed us a key. The room was on the second floor, breakfast was in the kitchen, and when we left we were simply told to leave the key near the door.

It was another reminder that accommodation booked online does not always look like the conventional hotel experience you imagine from the booking page.

Milan and the journey to Zurich

Milan was barely a stop for us. We changed trains there and did not really enter the city.

That was intentional in a way. This trip was not about ticking every famous attraction. It was about discovering how land travel between European cities worked and seeing how much could be done without planning every hour.

From Milan we continued to Zurich, which was our planned exit point.

Zurich

Zurich surprised us with its public transport. Buses, trams, trains and ferries all seemed to fit together seamlessly, and everything was remarkably clean.

We chose to stay near the station, which made much of the city accessible on foot. After the movement through Italy, Zurich was a comfortable place to slow down for the final two nights before flying back to Dubai.

Looking back, Zurich was almost the natural conclusion to the experiment that had started in Rome. We had spent the trip moving between places, learning how to use trains and public transport, and making decisions as we went. By the time we reached Zurich, we had become comfortable with that way of travelling.

What Italy taught us

The biggest memory I have of Italy is not one monument. It is the experience of making decisions as we went.

We arrived in Rome knowing where we were starting. We knew we would eventually leave from Zurich. In between, we booked trains and accommodation along the way and let the journey develop.

There were plenty of moving parts, but everything fell into place. Over ten days we travelled through Rome, Florence, Pisa, Venice and Milan before reaching Zurich, with no major glitch.

That gave us something more valuable than a successful holiday: confidence.

Georgia had taught us that travel does require some thought. A hotel far from the centre can make every day difficult. An accommodation listing can turn out to be very different from what you imagined.

Italy taught us something different: travel can be fun even when it is unplanned, provided you make the right choices.

That lesson stayed with us and gave us the confidence to approach many of our future journeys with less fear of uncertainty.

Looking back

Italy was therefore much more than a trip through some of Europe’s most famous cities. It was the point at which we began to understand the kind of travellers we wanted to be.

We did not need to know exactly where we would sleep a week later. We did not need to plan every train before leaving Dubai. We could walk, use public transport, book something along the way and adapt.

The uncertainty did not make the trip difficult. It made it more interesting.

And that is probably what I remember most about Italy: we learnt that we could travel.