What did my trip to Italy teach me?

I used to think that traveling was necessary in order to see beautiful places, take photos, taste unfamiliar food and bring home a suitcase of impressions, which can then be disassembled for several weeks. I made up routes in advance, saved interesting cafes, marked the sights on the map, and tried to plan for literally everything, including the weather, transportation, and a backup option in case of rain. I wanted every trip to be perfect, because vacations don't happen that often, and the money I spent, it seemed to me, should definitely pay off with unforgettable emotions. But one day I went to Italy and came back with a completely different understanding of travel, and of myself too.

Italy, which I went to for beauty

I started my trip with Florence, a city that has long existed in my imagination thanks to photographs, films, and endless stories from other travelers. I imagined old streets, cozy cafes, bridges over the Arno, beautiful squares and that special Italian sun in which even an ordinary cup of coffee looks worthy of a magazine cover. I prepared thoroughly: I made a route by day, marked the museums, selected several restaurants, and even calculated how long it would take to get from one place to another. If diplomas were awarded for careful travel planning, I would already be confidently teaching this discipline.

The Ponte Vecchio Bridge

On the first day, everything really went almost perfectly, and I enjoyed walking around the city, looking at the facades of buildings, photographing storefronts, and checking my phone from time to time. However, by lunchtime, I discovered that instead of enjoying myself, I was beginning to feel strangely anxious.: It seemed to me that I was staying too long in one place and might not have time to watch everything else. While I was admiring the beautiful square, the next point of the route was already scrolling through my head, and for some reason during lunch I checked my watch, as if I had not had a dream trip, but a responsible work shift with a strict schedule. The funny thing is that I came to Italy for a vacation, but I managed to turn my own vacation into a project with deadlines, checkpoints and an internal boss who constantly demanded to speed up.

The day when everything didn't go according to plan

On the second day, I decided to take the tram to one of the attractions along a pre-saved route, but I realized pretty quickly that I had taken a wrong turn. At first, I calmly looked at the map and decided that nothing terrible had happened, because even in an unfamiliar city it is impossible to get lost completely if you have a smartphone and at least a little common sense. Ten minutes later, common sense was already silent, the smartphone showed a route that for some reason I could not compare with the surrounding streets, and I stood near an unfamiliar intersection and felt my wonderful tourist mood slowly evaporate.

Florence Tram

I tried to go back, but in the end I went even further, and then I found that the charge of the phone had noticeably decreased exactly when I needed it most. To top it all off, it started to rain, and I had to find shelter under the awning of a small store, clutching my bag and wondering why people always look so carefree in photos when traveling, and at that moment I looked more like a drenched person who accidentally lost an argument with the navigator. I was annoyed, tired, and almost ready to cry out of frustration, because it felt like I'd ruined my precious day.

That's when, for the first time in the entire trip, I stopped trying to fix the situation immediately. I just stayed under the awning, waited for the rain to ease a little, and looked around instead of frantically searching for the right road again. An elderly Italian woman stood next to me with a bag of groceries, who said something to me in Italian, smiled and gestured to the sky, as if we both understood perfectly well that the weather sometimes has its own plans. I didn't understand almost a word, but for some reason I smiled back, and the tension I'd been carrying around for the last half hour suddenly became a little weaker.

The most unexpected walk

When the rain stopped, I decided not to try to catch up with my own route anymore and just walked down the street, which seemed beautiful to me. I didn't know where it would lead, I had no idea how long the walk would take, and for the first time in several days, I didn't feel the need to immediately find out all the details. On the way, I came across a small bakery, several old houses with green shutters, a cozy courtyard, and a cafe with tables and chairs wet from the rain.

Sicilian Round Buccellato pie

I went into a bakery, bought a pie, and to be honest, I barely pronounced the name, but now it seems to me that there is nothing complicated about it. I went on my way, enjoying the fact that I had absolutely nowhere to rush. Then I found a small cafe, ordered coffee, and sat by the window, where I could see people returning to their business after the rain. No one paid attention to the fact that I was sitting alone, no one demanded that I go somewhere immediately, and no one except my own inner critic thought that I was wasting valuable time.

I was looking at the street and suddenly realized that for the first time in the last few days I was really where I came from. Before that, it was as if I was always looking at Florence through a list of attractions that I had compiled myself, and completely forgot to notice the life around me. And now it was good for me to just sit, drink coffee, look at passersby and feel the smell of fresh pastries mixing with the aroma of wet stone.

At that moment, I realized that the warmest memories don't always appear where you had planned them in advance. Sometimes they start with a wrong turn, a dead phone, and rain that you didn't order at all.

I stopped being afraid that I would miss something.

After that day, I began to gradually change my attitude towards traveling. I still wanted to see the famous places of Florence, but I no longer perceived every failed route as a personal defeat. If I wanted to stay in the square, I stayed, if my legs were tired, I sat down to rest, and if I happened to find a beautiful street, I allowed myself to walk along it, even when it was not marked in my saved places.

The Arno River

One morning I went for a walk without a detailed plan and found myself near the Arno River, where I watched the reflections of buildings in the water for a long time. I could have been standing in line at the museum or rushing to another famous landmark, but instead I just enjoyed the silence and the soft morning light. It suddenly became completely unimportant to me how many photos I would take and how many points I would have time to mark on the map, because I finally stopped measuring the quality of my vacation by the amount I saw.

It was probably then that I first felt the real freedom for which people go on trips. Not the kind of freedom that is beautifully written about in books, but a completely simple one: the ability to decide for yourself how to spend the day, not scold yourself for being tired and not try to turn every minute into a useful achievement.

What Italy has taught me

I didn't return home as a completely different person, and I don't want to pretend that one trip can instantly resolve all internal issues. I still sometimes worry about small things, make too long to-do lists, and can spend half an hour choosing between two completely identical options. But after Florence, I began to notice more often the moments when I create unnecessary tension for myself, trying to control what is impossible to control completely.

Piazza della Signoria

I realized that I don't have to do everything perfectly to enjoy life. Sometimes you can make a mistake with the road and accidentally end up in Piazza della Signoria, choose the wrong restaurant, get caught in the rain, or spend half the day completely differently than you intended, and still return home happy. Moreover, it is precisely such imperfect moments that sometimes become the most vivid memories, because they do not have a pre-conceived scenario and the need to meet their own expectations.

I also learned how to navigate the transportation system. Traveling by public transport is cheaper, but the main thing is that I realized how to hear myself better. If I'm tired, I no longer need to prove to myself that I can walk another ten kilometers; if I want to be quiet, I don't have to fill every free minute with conversations and activities. And if something doesn't go according to plan, it doesn't mean that the day is ruined, and I haven't prepared well enough for life myself.

The most important souvenir

On my last evening in Florence, I walked through the familiar streets I had passed in the early days. I looked at the buildings, recalled my little adventures and smiled at how much I was worried about the lost route, which eventually gave me one of the most enjoyable days of the trip. I no longer wanted to have time to go somewhere else, buy another souvenir, or make sure to take the perfect keepsake photo, because I felt that I was already taking the most important thing with me.

I took home not only photos, several postcards and memories of delicious Italian coffee, but also a new attitude towards my own mistakes.

Now I knew that not everything in life needs to be controlled, that random turns sometimes turn out to be more interesting than pre-laid roads, and rest should not turn into a competition in which I appointed myself both a participant and a strict judge.

When people ask me what my journey has taught me, I usually reply that I have become calmer about the unexpected and have learned to allow myself spontaneity more often. But to be honest, Italy has taught me much more.: You don't have to wait for the perfect circumstances to feel happy, because life doesn't only happen when everything goes according to plan.

Sometimes it happens in the rain, on an unfamiliar street, over a cup of coffee in a small cafe, or at the moment when you finally put your phone away and just look around. And now, when I think of Florence, I don't think about how many sights I've seen, but about how one day I accidentally lost my way and for the first time in a long time I stopped being afraid that I was going the wrong way.