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Published: February 16th 2008
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Norero Family Tomb
Tracey's family tomb in Rapallo, Italy When Mary and Bobbi were visiting us, we found we loved Italy so much that we decided to return on our way back from Poland. We decided to save ourselves and our rear ends two solid days of sitting in a train and fly from Krakow, Poland to Milan, Italy. The plan was to see Rapallo, where Tracey’s great, great, great grandfather came from, Florence, and then Venice during carnival.
1st stop, Rapallo. We spent the night near the Milan airport then took the train to Rapallo. We were only there a day, but it really was a neat little town. It was a small, seaside town with a quiet marina (and some fancy looking boats!). The town was always bustling with people, and they were always visiting with each other…a non-stop social hour. The pretty walkway by the marina filled up with people at night and in the morning, as people took leisurely walks with their families. One thing that we were reminded of in Rapallo is how differently the elderly people in Europe seem to be from a lot of elderly people in the U.S. In Rapallo for example, there were lots of men and women in their
70’s and 80’s out socializing, whether it be at restaurants later at night or out visiting by the bay with a group of friends. And they dressed to kill, too! The women were completely color coordinated, wearing pretty dresses, nice coats, shoes and handbags to match. No 5:00 blue bird specials in casual restaurants like Carrows for these folks! Overall, it was just a very laid back town, where you can tell people take a lot more time for each other and a lot less time working overtime. Tracey’s aunt and uncle had visited Rapallo some years back after tracing the family history back, and so we knew there was a family crypt for the Norero’s, we just didn’t know how difficult it would be to find. It turned out to be very easy, right up the main walkway in the only cemetery in town. It was definitely old, and from the condition it was in compared to others like it, we’d guess it was from the 1800’s. But it was neat to see the place where your relatives came from.
Next it was on to Florence, a city we had heard was just incredibly beautiful. First things first:
Florence was beautiful…there are gorgeous buildings with lovely statues, cute cafes and picturesque bridges crossing the river. However, Florence is where the fatigue from traveling really just knocked us down hard, and we simply weren’t in the state of mind to appreciate what it had to offer. We had already been feeling it, and both of us had been sick for nearly a month. When we got to Florence, it was cloudy, cold and rainy AGAIN, all the museums were closed the day we planned to go around, and while there was beautiful architecture to see…well, it was more of the same kind of buildings we’d seen all over Europe, just in a much smaller area. So we became what we were bound to become after being on the road for a long time…jaded, tired, uninterested travelers who had seen countless churches, pieces of art and numerous examples of architecture through the centuries and just couldn’t care if they saw more.
It really sounds terrible to say that, doesn’t it? But it was just true, because it just gets to be incredibly tiresome…packing and moving your 30 pound backpack every couple of days…finding your way around a new city
when you just started to get your bearings in the previous one…learning key phrases in another language…trying to decipher what is on the menu and not having a clue what you ordered…wearing the same three shirts all the time…not being able to count on reliable heating or hot water in your room at night…not being understood by anyone…having another crappy mattress with springs that stick you in the back. And after a while, even the most spectacular sights in the world become just another thing to see and snap a quick picture of. While we are incredibly glad and grateful we’ve had the opportunity to travel as much as we have, and experience all that we have been able to, there comes a time when you just have to stop and rest, to be able to become appreciative of your good fortune again. So we decided against Venice, even though Carnival was happening then. We just wouldn’t have enjoyed it. We’d love to come back to Italy some day, but in warmer weather and when we’re fresh and ready to appreciate all that it can offer.
Instead, we decided to head on to Greece and find a place to
just rest for a while. So we caught a ferry from Ancona, Italy to Patra, Greece. That 22-hour ferry ride wound up giving us some of the most restful sleep and filling food we’d had in a long time. There’s something very peaceful and sleep inducing about falling asleep in a very dark room, comfy bed and gently rolling boat with the distant hum of the engine in the background. We barely woke up in time to get off the boat! As we got off the ferry in Patra, our only mission was to find a place where we could get the kind of rest that we had on the ferry.
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