I suppose it is true, as with their “normal” lives, that people come to Italy for pleasure, for aesthetics, sightseeing, landscape, seeing… I came for knowledge and insight.
I brought clothes for Rome, Naples, Crotone, Palermo… But I did not think to bring clothes for 2000-3000 feet higher. Almost all clothes combined did not keep me warm at 3114 feet in the wind for sunrise.
No Russian on ashamed of their country these days should be taken seriously
Unable, even with asking, to locate a plastic spoon in barely-inhabited Caltabellotta, I brought this yellow spoon with me back from an ice-lemon at the hot-day ruins of Agrigento… Nearby, I have the choice of an at least four-day-old pizza, or my own four-day-old lasagna! The lasagna is cheaper (paid for in Palermo), nearer, I eat in my room,… and I have some wine by the hotel owner. Viola! But the main element is the yellow spoon.
I read how Henry David Thoreau preferred a swamp, what he described as a sanctum sanctorum, to any refined garden in a city. Dante met other swamps… And Petrarch descended the mountain under the influence of Augustine. Tomorrow I go to Ostia in pursuit of Augustine and Monica.
Stephen Lapeyrouse . . . Notes Dropped Along the Way 