What Dreams Are Made Of

[fblike] Samantha Dinga

Italy 2014: Take 1 – My personal Italy experience didn’t go exactly as expected. On New Year’s Day, I met the Gatton group at the Nashville airport bright and early only to find that my passport had expired one month before our departure date. That put a bit of a damper on things. So I sent my friends off with hugs and promises that I’d meet them there, and waited for my mother to come and take me to Atlanta’s regional Passport offices. After three days of scrambling and watching as tons of beautiful pictures were posted, with the help of my lovely mother, I finally had a shiny new passport in my hands.

Italy 2014: Take 2, City 1 – After long flights from Atlanta to Paris and finally to Venice, I finally met Tim in Venice’s airport, and we took a train (sadly no Venetian canals for me) to meet our group in Florence. I was met at the hotel at around 9 pm by a group of my friends, with hugs, and a lot of complaining that I had to unpack quickly because they had waited to eat dinner for me. We walked outside to see Florence still lit up for the Christmas season, passing the beautiful and massive il Duomo just a few blocks from our hotel. We spent the next few days seeing beautiful sculptures such as the statue of David, being toured around Dante’s hometown, singing together in cathedrals with wonderful acoustics, and posing like the tourists we were in front of Pisa.

Italy 2014: Take 2, City 3 – We bussed from Venice to Rome, and proceeded to all become Lizzie Maguire, frolicking around Rome knowing that this is in fact what dreams are made of. We found what we consider to be the best gelato in all of Italy, and ate what was probably the best meal of my life in a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Seriously, I don’t know what was in the lasagna, but it was probably magic. We spent our time in Rome going through all of the major destinations, such as the Coliseum, which had a habit of popping out of nowhere as we bussed from tour to tour despite its size. We saw the Trevi Fountain (which was even more than Lizzie Maguire made me believe), visited the ruins of Pompeii, and went down to the Vatican City and the Sistine Chapel, where some of us even got to return and be blessed by Pope Francis himself!

Italy 2014: A Summation – There is no question about why the world raves about the magnificent art in Italy. Even the hallways and ceilings were breathtaking, not to mention the exhibits themselves. The food is worth every hour we flew, and I am convinced that I will be disappointed at every meal I eat for the next few weeks as a result. Outside of all of our touring, I met a lot of great people as I travelled. Though I’ve lived with everyone on the trip for (at least) a semester, I believe that I’ve forged friendships that are tied forever by the bonds that only 10 Euro gelato, Tim Talks about our dreams themselves, storytelling during Mafia card games, countless rounds of our favorite Spaghetti-Western card game “Bang!”, and dozens of verses of “the ants go marching…” can create. Italy was beautiful, as are all of the great people I had the privilege to travel with. This was in fact what dreams are made of.