(no subject)

[sophistry]

I made the mistake of browsing some country-themed LJ icons, and suddenly I want to revisit Italy so badly, I can literally feel it cramping up my chest. Sirmione, Verona, Venice, Rome, the bay of Naples (you've never seen anything like the view from Vesuvius); down to Sicily and Taormina, Ortigia in Syracuse, Agrigento. The smell of sea-salt, olive trees, cedars and cypress, brick and marble and travertine, fountain water; living history. I'm the same with Oxford; I only spent two days in the city proper, a few summers ago, but I spent most of them just dazed: walking, and looking, and breathing, like I could keep the sense-memory of sun on limestone and the greens in my lungs and nose forever.

What about you, flist? What places make you catch your breath, and go yes, this?

Comments

[padfoot]

Rome did it for me, too. ♥ I love Italy, so much.

[sophistry]

This probably has more than a bit to do with the fact that I've been taking Classical Studies, in some form or other, since starting first year, and before that had been soaking up things like big, lavishly-illustrated children's versions of the Odyssey and Greek myths since I could read. But the first time I saw the Colosseum - age fourteen? fifteen? on a school trip - I cried like a little baby. I don't think I'll ever really be able to convey what it was like, that first time, standing as near the centre of the arena as the planking would allow, and just looking... up.