The GoGlobal Blog

Author: Blanca Vega

I am embarking on this adventure, leaving home not from the US, but from Nicaragua. I am a sophomore majoring in Visual Communications with minors in Marketing and Communication Studies hoping to embrace the beauty of new cultures and aesthetics in this trip. As an international student at Loyola, I wish to keep on expanding my knowledge of the world and my love for travel through this experience.
Napoli, Monte Vesuvio, Ercolano, Pompeii

Napoli, Monte Vesuvio, Ercolano, Pompeii

The bustling streets follow you wherever you go, a maze of stores.  Amidst the castles and the seaside views, you find yourself going back to trains, for this bustling port, is just that, a layover for your adventures. You get to know it for a while, and then embark to travel back in time.

Two days you ride in the beaten tracks. Two days the skies cry. Two days you are met with clouded views. But there lays the heap of rocks, the giant, Vesuvius. You climb it.

Descend only to come face to face to the remains of the city the giant has destroyed. Subtle hints of life peek behind the occasional ray of sun and then splattered against the wall, lies in brushstrokes the daily life of an ancient town.

You see the remains of the cities that once were. Everything still and soundless, until you take the train back to the bustling streets.

 

 

Venezia

Venezia

7am, you descend and all you see is stillness. Water simply sits, waiting for the passage of life and lights are rising, not quite awake yet. Enveloped in the shadow of dawn we arrived; enveloped by the cloak of night we left.

Venezia, the strong woman we fell in love with. She loves us back, but has let us go. Sometime, we will hopefully return to her.

She welcomed us with a three day feast, the carnival. A masquerade on every street corner, confetti popping, colors bursting, people hiding behind masks, cloaks, and large dresses.

Venezia, the city where we joined the feast and all our tourist inhibitions. Whom we bid adieu, riding away in a gondola in the light of the sunset.

 

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Benvenuti a Italia

Benvenuti a Italia

The moment your feet find themselves wondering through cobblestone streets amidst the foliage of orange and lemon trees blossoming, you realize you have never been happier. And as you explore through hidden alleys, you slowly realize that the convoluted streets always meet and somehow you end up back where you started or close to the river, where you easily find your path back home.

Rome so far has been endless walking and endless discovery. An ephemeral place where green shutters contrast against brick walls with ivy crawling on them, where you can plan where to go, but in the end, you always get lost in a beautiful way.

Two weeks has been all it has taken for the nostalgic aura of the city to enthrall me. And for all the small towns in Italy we have visited thus far (Caprarola,Paestum,Vietri sul Mare, Agropoli, and Montecassino) to keep me wishing to seek more; the constant presence of a cemetery of buildings transporting you. And the wine, the bread, and the olive oil, the Mediterranean triad, just begging to be savored. And of course, the gelato…

 

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