When I was young and growing up in Massachusetts, I had an almost scary obsession with California. Perhaps it was the influence of TV, beaming images of the “Golden State” into my living room on a daily basis, but to me, California seemed like the Promised Land, and from an early age I dreamed of going west.
Years ago I studied Italian at the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco. We had a great class of 12 people who all got along famously and shared a love for Italy, the Italian language and our phenomenal teacher, Diletta. We were also a group of avid travelers. One night in class, a student named Andrew shared that he’d be missing the class the following week as he was off to Rome for a week. A couple of weeks down the road, it was my turn to announce that I would be away in Italy and would have to miss class for the following two weeks. Then our classmate Judy volunteered that she and her husband would be in Venice at the end of the month and that she too would be missing class. Diletta, shaking her head in a mix of disbelief and envy muttered, “You people run off to Italy the way I run to the grocery store!”
Let’s run off to Italy! Read more!My first trip to Italy was in 1998, and since then, to the best of my calculations, I have made over 25 separate trips and spent almost two years of my life in what now seems like a second home to me. I love Italy’s dramatic landscapes, its incredible food, its music, and the emphasis on enjoying life to its fullest. But the glue that has bound me to the country for an 18-year-long love affair is undoubtedly the cast of characters that has become such an important part of my life over the years. I will be eternally grateful for these people and the entrée into Italian life that they have given me – one which few tourists get to experience.
After a whirlwind first leg of my European travels in early November, which took me through Wales, England, Finland and Italy, I raced home to New England to grab some Thanksgiving turkey and a whole lot of birthday cake and spend the week seeing all friends and family, along with practical things like doing laundry and planning for Europe Part II in December.
After my brief “flirtation” with Wales and England, followed by my exciting adventures in Finland, I spent the last days of my November European trip in Italy, my casa dolce casa (home sweet home). I flew from Helsinki to Rome and picked up a rental car and drove into the city in the late afternoon. When I reached my guest house in Rome, I chuckled as I saw an open parking space that was perhaps 10 steps from the door to the building where I’d be staying for the weekend. I sometimes amaze even myself regarding my parking karma.
In my experience, life in general has many funny little ironies, and travel is one area of life where fate loves to have the last laugh. I had just arrived in Helsinki, Finland for a first visit to this Scandinavian capital and then planned to fly 500 miles north to Ivalo in Lapland, a region north of the Arctic Circle that covers parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. There I would be staying on a Husky Farm… not a refuge for overweight people, but a place where they raise and train huskies for dog-sledding. Visions of being pulled on a sled through forests covered in snow by six loyal pooches danced through my head – until I got the e-mail from the folks at the husky farm. “We have no snow here yet. There will be no opportunity for any dog-sled trips.”
In June of 2008 I realized another of my travel dreams by capping off a stay in Europe with a visit to a place I’d always longed to see: Iceland. I’d already seen Norway and Sweden, and while both were beautiful and offered many adventures, Iceland sounded more wild and more exotic. And given my fascination for volcanoes and hot springs, Iceland seemed to have the edge over its quieter Scandinavian neighbors to the east.
Continue reading “Is This an Episode of “Star Trek” or a Night in Reykjavik, Iceland?”
MATT: AT HOME IN THE WORLD 