Valentine's Day: Celebrate your love of place

February 14 2013 , Written by thediversetraveller Published on #Italy, #Love, #Muriel Sparks, #Ponte Vecchio, #Snap Away (travel photography), #travel, #Travel Beyond the UK, #Travel Write Now (stories and news), #travel writing, #Tuscany, #Valentine's Day

Ponte Vecchio, the oldest of Florence's six bridges

Today, Valentine's Day, a day when the tills of retailers are ringing as unimaginative and paniced men rush to buy the same gifts they bought last year, red roses. teddy bears and for some unfortunate women ill-sized tacky lingerie.

Fortunately being single, and I am not bitter, I am spared all, instead I am left to really celebrate love, the love of place. Coincidently, today was the day I chose to to sort out my many travel photos. As I looked at each one, I paused to remember and reflect on the places around the world, that I have fallen in love with. Places that make my heart skip a beat, fill me with a warm glow and leave me wanting more; one such country is Italy. All it took was the sound of the Italian language softly spoken by the man who bumped into me as I got of the train,

"mi scusi signorina," he said as he hurried by. How could I not fall in love.

And I am not alone. Author Muriel Sparks, in an article for the New York Times, 'Side Roads of Tuscany', captured the feeling of love of place so well that I had to share this, one of my favourite, passage ...

"It isn't necessarily the great and famous beauty spots we fall in love with. As with the people, so with the places: love is unforeseen, and we can all find ourselves affectionally attached to the minor and the less 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, or an Etruscan wall, but my first thoughts are for the warmth of the stone or for the clouds, when they look like a fifteenth-century painting with a chariot or a saint zooming 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 listening in to their talk, imagining the rest."

So if you are alone this Valentine's Day, rather than mope about not having a special someone, instead, get out all your travel photos and remind yourself of the many times you've fallen in love with a place.

Which country, city or place have you fallen in love with and why?

All that's left for me to say is Happy Valentine's Day!

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