Traveller’s Tales – The Bite
It’s not a painful bite. In fact, it’s a bite you might not even notice at first. But once you have it, the symptoms stay with you forever. Ask anyone who has been bitten and they’ll tell you when and where it happened. After all, catching the travel bug is a life changing experience.
For me, it happened on my first overseas trip. The adrenaline and excitement kept building in my body as we raced down the highway in our sleek black Mercedes shuttle. For the most part, everything looked the same as home. Rolling hills were the backdrop to a blur of cars. The closer we got to the city, the smaller the cars got and the rolling hills were replaced with billboards. Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Armani, the list – and billboards – go on. It was then that I knew I wasn’t at home anymore.
We entered the city limits through a stone wall that reached towards the Gods. Winding through the streets, face pressed against the window of the shuttle as I watched tanned skin, camera-operating tourists and ancient ruins from a completely different lifetime go past. But it wasn’t until we turned a bend in the road and I caught site of the Colosseum – magnificently grand, preserved in the City Centre like a giant of history – that I felt the bite.
Ah, the travel bug, felt by millions worldwide and the itch that keeps many cities and countries afloat. If you’re like me, you start planning your next holiday before the one you’re currently on has even ended. Before the day was done in Rome, I had already decided I needed to come back. It wasn’t just the fresh pasta that made my mouth water and my eyes tear up. It wasn’t just the post breakfast, lunch and dinner gelato that brought the heat radiating from the concrete city to a bearable level. It was a feeling inside. It was thinking of the millions of others who set eyes on the Colosseum through the centuries. It was an instant connection to history. In that moment, I felt true passion, respect and euphoria. It was a feeling I knew I needed to chase.