Love of Travel - 'Love of place.'

February 14 2012 , Written by thediversetraveller Published on #365 Travel, #Love, #love travel, #Muriel Sparks, #travel, #Travel Beyond the UK, #Travel quote, #Travel Write Now (stories and news), #travel writing, #travelling, #Tuscany

Life on a typical Tuscan street

"It isn't necessarily the great and famous beauty spots we fall in love with. As with people, so with places; love is overseen, and we can all find ourselves affectionately attached to the minor and the least obvious. I do not have an art historian's response to places. I can discern and admire a late-Renaissance gate, a medieval street, a Romanesque church, Etruscan wall, but my first thoughts are for the warmth of the stone or for the clouds, when they look like a 15th century painting with a chariot or as saint the singing up into them. I notice the light and shade on buildings grouped on a hilltop, the rich skin colours and the shapes of the people around me. I love to watch people, to sit in a trattoria or listening in to their talk, imagining the rest." -Muriel Spark, "Side roads of Tuscany." Taken from 365 Travel: A Daily Book of Journeys, Meditations and Adventures (Body & Soul)