northampton, ma

The more you travel, the more it becomes a part of your life rather than as a means to get away from your life (speaking mainly of those who travel to take a break from the stress of home and work). When travel becomes a way of life it naturally leads to more time spent thinking about how your life is going, what is waiting for you at home, and even if travel is contributing to growth in your life or if it's an attempt to dodge reality. Or put another way, travelling makes one introspective, especially when travelling by oneself. I think it's absolutely a healthy process. You learn more about yourself and you grow at a faster pace than you normally would just doing the regular daily routine at home. It's accelerated maturation, and you achieve new levels of understanding. Of course, self-understanding doesn't translate automatically into happiness. Being very comfortable with one's thoughts and feelings isn't the same as being happy with them. Maybe it gives you the key to unlocking inner tranquility, but the road there isn't necessarily without bumps. This introspection can make you realize what you are missing. It can make you melancholic as it makes you more self aware. In the end, however, having to deal with these thought processes and feelings is a positive. It leads you in a direction. Without reflection you swim without getting anywhere.

I bring this up mainly because I have spent a lot of time on myself during this trip [note, I do not mean I have spent a lot of time by myself, actually I have been constantly with other people, perhaps moreso than any other of my trips, and to the point that I have to make a conscious decision to set off on my own on some days]. The slower pace of this trip has really lent itself to time to spent in contemplation. This contemplation happens on every trip, but especially so on this one. It was unsettling at first, even at times leaving me somewhat unhappy, but I am becoming more comfortable with it. Once in awhile you have to tell yourself to snap out of it, and enjoy the present. Writing is cathartic and helps this process. It isn't unfortunately a switch that can be simply turned off and on, but I'm getting a bit better at shifting gears. So I'll shift gears now, and do a bit of trip recounting...

Just by happenstance (what a sweet word) I ended back up in Certaldo again, due to being turned down by places in Sermoneta and Pitigliano for lack of room. In a case of bad luck turning good, I ended up here for the second time on my trip, only this time the town is having its annual street festival, Mercantia. Basically in a span of 9 days I caught the Palio in Siena, Umbria Jazz in Perugia, and now Mercantia in Certaldo [not to mention the street party in Rome on the night of Italy's win]. So it's been a great week and a half and a welcome diversion from typical tourist stuff ie. churches, museums, etc. And, in my opinion, Mercantia blows Umbria Jazz away. The festival is held in Certaldo Alto, the tiny old medieval part of Certaldo up on the hill. It's a natural made stage for street performances, with many nooks and crannies and little gardens and piazzettas. And the performances - excellent. Black angels walking down the street with bagpipes, white angels posing in windowsills, belly dancers from Argentina, knife juggling on a unicycle, an insane street band from New York City, bluegrass and the blues, and all sorts of other various performances. A very unique and enjoyable festival. Umbria Jazz was nice, but I expected such a large town as Perugia to be full of little stages and groups performing all over. Instead there were just two public stages and the rest of the groups were all hidden away in theatres where you had to pay to hear. I suppose that's fair enough, but I was looking more for a street festival.

I've spent most of my time in the last week just relaxing and recapturing the travelling mood/spirit that tends to fade away after you hit the trail hard for a protracted length of time. The two weeks with Dad were great, and I saw a ton, but after he left I was interested only in going somewhere and relaxing. So that's more or less what I have done here in Certaldo, and now after what's been essentially a week, I'm ready to move on and get back on the trail. I have done a bit here, seeing Volterra, San Gimignano again (this time just for the gelato), San Miniato and Pisa. San Miniato was probably my favorite of the daytrips, a lovely little town stretched out on a ridge with beautiful views all around it. The first time I came into Certaldo, aboard the train and gazing out the window, I noticed what appeared to be a town off in the distance with a big ruined tower on top. The view of this tower piqued my interest and I eventually figured out the name of the place, San Miniato, and even more eventually I got off my lazy ass and decided to go visit it. Twas a good decision. This is the beauty of travelling slow: you have the opportunity to go to places just off a whim, just because you saw it out the train window and it looked interesting.

I think tomorrow I'm heading off north to a little town near Stazzema, up in the Apuan Alps, to do some hiking. I decided yesterday that I either need mountains or beach, and the mountains just happen to be a lot nicer around here than the beaches. Plus, from up there I can go to the Gulf of Poets and get my Talented Mr. Ripley on, and Carrara, where you find the marble quarries. These mountains of marble look to be snow covered from the distance, but in reality are the source for centuries of Italian sculpture, ie. Michelangelo's David.

Lastly, in a pinnacle of travelling slowly, I have spent 30 of my 52 days thus far in three places: Rome, Certaldo, and Ischia. The Rome and Ischia stays were broken up into two parts, but nevertheless this is the slowest I have travelled yet. I think my last month (30 days to go now) will pick up the pace a bit, as I want to get to Pitigliano, Bologna, the Marches, and Abruzzo, with Sermoneta, Sperlonga, and Gaeta also on the list.