Innocents Abroad: 40 Years of Travel in Italy

Giddy and determined from cocktail party tales of adventure from the slightly inebriated folks who had gone before me, I first headed to Europe 40 years ago. 

I feared nothing. Today this simple sentence seems out of place, but I assure you that I am not claiming to be a reckless person with a pronounced swagger; I was simply and blissfully ignorant of the dangers that lurked on The Continent, an  innocent with a backpack. I avoided dangers by not thinking about them, as most of the travelers of the time did.

We were not driven by fear back then. We had put a man on the moon. We were going to be fine.

We were also disconnected when traveling. Perhaps pulling the plug was a good thing. You disconnected on vacation to recharge your batteries, to allow new things to flood your memory which until that time was loaded with only the familiar, the everyday. While folks at home were busy dismantling their 60s era bomb shelters and turning them into hellish little underground inlaw apartments, we were blissfully soaking in culture foreign to us. Our little brain cells were filling with ideas. We were alone with them. Facebook didn't exist. Cute cats were yet to be seen as star material unless they were jazz musicians.

Today the idea of travel has taken a swerve. We are connected. A cat playing with string is our new "Gone With the Wind." We are at home everywhere. We have tools in our pockets that take the place of maps, camera, guidebooks, a translator, and even a flashlight.

That changed things. Travel became active, meaning there are many, many more activities open to  the tourist these days. The idea of quiet contemplation in front of a 15th century painting is all but dead. We've seen it on the Internet.

Oh, look, a Byzantine cave church in Puglia! Like ancient explorers (who'd have been overloaded with gear), we stumbled into it, we saw that it was unrestored and dark as all get out. Lights!

These days there's no need to unload bulky kerosene bottles in order to fill big, sputtering lamps; where there are people there is also a bank of floodlights waiting to illuminate the darkness.

The modern traveler isn't just connected to the world wirelessly. More and more we demand an apartment or house over a hotel room--stimulating the feeling of being a citizen of the world. We learn to squeeze our hands into the little plastic gloves that Italians wear in the supermarket before pawing the vegetables. We sip from $2 bottles of decent wine and eat cheeses aged in caves instead of spray containers. We might learn how to handle and understand the brilliant mind of a donkey as he speaks to us with his ears or be taught to make odd little pasta shapes like Orecchiette, "little ears" made from semolina flour and water.

What we Americans have lost by allowing large, publicly-traded industry to supply our food can be regained by visiting rural Italy. You might be amazed at what a real chicken tastes like, or be stunned at the flavor of a simple lamb cutlet from an animal allowed to graze on herbaceous grasslands. No longer is travel a way to simply see and contemplate amazing new things, travel is a way to understand what we've lost as well.

So check out the things you can do today by clicking Experience Packages on this website. Like my waistline, the list is expanding as I type. Or better yet, search the web for things you like to do and create your own custom tour.

Intrepid? Head to the region of Le Marche over Easter and play a game that involves bashing hard boiled eggs together with an opponent. It's called Punt e Cul.

Terrorists? Nobody's ever been shot while bashing hard boiled eggs together in the Marche countryside.

Madness? At the first symptoms head to Puglia to dance the Pizzica Salentina.

There's a cure for everything on this big, wobbly earth--and sometimes it's quite pleasant.