ITALY

I was only 48 or so when I left South Africa for the first time to go overseas. Marriage and children kept me busy and the time was never quite right. As I kept up with world affairs, had seen pictures and movies on most places in the world, I didn't feel the need to travel. I had seen the pictures so why did I have to go. I thought I knew it all and was quite proud that I had never left my country. When opportunity knocked I went and what I found shocked me. What I learned was immense and what I saw.. I will never forget.

I was privileged to go to Italy and Sicily on my first trip and all the books I had read came magically to life.

The reality was so much more than the story.

I actually stood where Julius Caesar had stood, I touched the houses that Pompei covered with ash and I sat on a wall that a Roman General had surveyed his troops on. I stood on a floor that Galileo had made with his own two hands. I stared at the impossible ceiling that Michael Angelo had painted, fought over, lived and died for.

I stood in Assissi where St Frances had lived and worked.

I viewed Florence from up high and it was if time had stood still. Churches here are plain and spartan due to the Hugenot infuence. They didn't prepare me for St Peter's Basilica. My eyes saw and my brain went into overload with the beauty I had before me. When I came out into the piazza I started to cry as what I had seen was just to much for me. How short sighted and insular I had been. How pridefull and stupid. Nothing can compare to the actual, the sight, the smell and the feel. I walked in the footsteps of Francis Ford Coppola. I stood in the place where he had worked and dreamed his movie to fruition. I sipped a lemoncita, the same recipe that he had tasted and drank 16 times a day. I sat in the chair he had probably sat in, worrying about how he was going to finish.  I walked up Mount Etna and drank the wines cultivated in it's mineral rich soil.  History had come alive for me and the reality was so much bigger than my mind had comprehended.