My Magical Mystery Tour

In February, I travelled to Italy, Switzerland, and France. My travels to Europe are coming to a close, due to my advancing age and the cost, so this visit I thought a lot about why foreign travel makes my heart soar. I love change, so that’s a factor, but the magical, mystical explorations are my favorite.

The last time I had visited the Coliseum in Rome was fifty-two years ago. Memory is uneven. This time it seemed larger and scarier. Possibly because our guide said that ½ million people and 1 million animals died there in 26 years. My spidey sense heard their screams, and it chilled me to the bone.

The fountain statues in Rome speak to me. Walk a few blocks and I see another one. The human form in stone or marble thrills me. The Vatican came next. More Michaelangelo. I could have spent all day looking at his paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He painted from memory rather than forms or sketches. I free floated my brain to think about which one of the men he painted was his uncle, which one was his neighbor.

The statue of David, and other sculptures by Michaelangelo and others in the art museum, Gallery of the Academy of Florence. I swooned then I time travelled to the subject’s lives, to see what type of person they were, and how they sat still for so long to pose.

Gondoliers sang in the canals of Venice as they paddled me down stinky pathways of water. When I got off the boat, my body vibrated with happiness for twenty minutes. How strange that some people long ago decided to build a city on water. It’s fun to think about how people’s obsessions lead them.

In Switzerland, near Lucerne, I went in a tiny cable car, where I feel such fear that I thought my heart would pump out of my chest, to the top of Mt. Pilatus. At 7000 feet, I had a view of the top of the clouds, and on top of that, a line of snow-covered mountains in the Swiss Alps. I thought about explorers and mountain climbers, and, how I would both love and hate that job.

My hotel room in Paris overlooked the Eiffel Towel. I walked to its base many times in two days, and the romance of that city swept me away from myself and into the mysteries of the past.

The gardens of Versailles made me feel like I was a court princess, despite my abundance of warm clothes. I glided instead of walked. I heard the court’s laughter and felt their discontent.

Home now feels flat. Adventures will be small instead of huge. My focus will be on things that touch my life in small ways, but small can be exciting too.