Dipping Cookies into Wine

Several days into our journey, we're finding that people like to ask, "what do you think? Is it what you expected?"

I now realize, I never know what to expect from life until it is lived.

Every experience here adds one more touch--it makes me say, now that really made the trip."

The charms of Venice appear around each bend and bridge. Since then, we spent a day travelling by coach alongside the Alps and through the Appenine mountains into the rolling, slumbering hills of Tuscany. 

The views made the trip.

Having stopped at a Tuscan winery to sample seven wines and a shot of stinging grappa, we were treated to a feast of simple, luxurious Italian staples: handmade pasta in a light sausage sauce, salami, sopressotto, cheese, olives, sun dried tomatoes, crusty bread, bruschetta, and tiny biscotti to dip into one particularly sweet wine.

Dipping cookies into wine--that made the trip.

Afterward, we visited Pisa. Turning the corner into Miracle Square, the leaning tower made us gasp--the icon of all icons. Perhaps I did not carry an expectation--the gasps of our other 42 travel partners makes me think that none of us knew what to expect.

Is Italy what we expected? No--rarely do I imagine a place where each experience can be labelled, "that made the trip."