Expectations

I try not to hold trips to my previous expectations, but my main expectations for Italy are history, food, offending a few people, and little blinking.  I expect to feel history in a way that I rarely have before. Having been to Venice before, if only for a few days, it is an amazing experience to sit in a cafe where Marco Polo began and ended his journey to China and sip espresso with a friend. Thinking of espresso, I can't imagine that any American has grown up without a serious respect for Italian cooking, and even if I have barely moved beyond Olive Garden I am no different. One thing I have learned through travel is that eventually you will offend someone. Whether it is a simple, yet hopefully inaccurate, assumption about Americans, or a cultural taboo that I break I simply won't always have the language skills to excuse myself. All of these, however, leave me with one expectation which has never failed to prove true on any trip I've taken. Seeing a new part of the world my awe will not allow me to blink any more than is physically necessary, and I am completely OK with that.