IT WAS only my second visit to Italy. I don’t know why it took me 35 years to go back.
Temperatures were a little chilly—mostly hovered around 14-15 Celsius but felt more like 11-12 due to the winds. Pleasantly cool temperatures for brisk walking around the city.
I like to walk on vacation because I don’t get to do it in the concrete tropical jungle I live in where it’s usually hot and humid, dusty and dirty and where I’m often a magnet for mosquitoes and other insects. It’s the bane of my life. I attract the wrong species.
There’s also the danger of being mugged. To be fair, you can get mugged in Italy, too, especially in mafioso territory.
But we loved Napoli. And that’s where we got lost the most—in the historical city center, in the unsavory parts of town they call the authentic part of Naples—where one can easily lose one’s bearings in the maze of narrow alleys akin to the medinas of Morocco. But we survived.
We sinfully feasted on calorie-laden Italian confections so to ease our guilt, we decided to walk our calories off. We averaged 12 kilometers daily for two weeks. There were days when we walked up to 17 kilometers meandering through the maze of Italian lanes, lost.
It was fantastic—at least, for me. Under the right conditions, I love walking. My cousin ribs me all the time that my tours are the only ones wherein participants actually have to train before joining.
Mt. Vesuvius is not a long trek but it’s a steep trek. You don’t need to be an athlete to climb it but couch potatoes might need a stretcher half-way into the climb. Our guide in Pompeii told me she personally preferred Vesuvius from afar. Do you think that dissuaded me? It had the opposite effect.
At the parking lot, my sister and cousin sheepishly and almost simultaneously tell me, “Umm...go ahead. Don’t wait up for me. I’m just going to go as far as I can go.”
I’m so disappointed with these two. We haven’t even begun but they’ve already bailed out. Ten minutes into the climb, I feel like dying but I’m determined to go on. I stay away from the edge. I avert my eyes. I’m afraid of heights. But I plod on. I will not give up.
But guess what? We all made it to the top. After all, I was not the only braveheart. Truth be told, I conveniently forgot to tell them we were climbing a volcano on our vacation.
They say nothing beats the first time. Not always true. It’s like watching a film for the second time, you become aware of nuances that escaped your attention the first time around—nuances that give the story greater meaning and changes your perspective about everything.
My first time in Italy was magical. My second time was more profound—probably because I now paid attention to the most important things. And I understood better what I did wrong the first time around.
Life’s like that, too.