Italy - Salvi Garden

I have been thinking about how the people that you are with can change your experience in different ways.

For example, on our last trip we went out to dinner with various cousins, and over the course of the evening we walked around downtown, to the train station, and then back. I had been to many of the places before, but I had never realized how close they were together. This is because previously I had been with people driving, and there are areas where they could not drive. As they went around the areas they couldn't drive through and searched for parking, it seemed like we were traveling further than we were.

Writing things up now, which includes searches for local web sites, I am finding that a lot of the places we went had prominent attractions and options that I had no idea were there. Sometimes they may not have been interested, or not thought that entry was worth the price of admission, but I was relying on their knowledge.

I don't want that to sound ungrateful. They took me to a lot of cool places that I never would have made it to on my own. I was really lucky that they had the time to take me around. While I was willing (and wanting) to pay, they would not let me. I was really lucky to have them. It just also means that my experience is bound up in them in ways that I had not realized.

For example, Parco Querini was much bigger than I realized. They stopped at one location, and you couldn't really tell from there, but they didn't have an interest in going around more and I didn't want to press the issue. They had only even gone there because I had asked about it. It was pretty similar with Giardino Salvi. We entered at one spot, and I had no idea that there was more.

Looking back, it makes perfect sense that we entered where we did. There is a bridge designed by Palladio, and it is probably the most famous part of the garden, and they took me right to that. I didn't necessarily expect it to be huge. My prior knowledge of it was that my mother would walk through the gardens on her way to and from school, so I was thinking of it more as a place of family sentiment than anything else.

However, one thing Mom had mentioned is that boys would go through and point at the nude statues and make rude gestures while singing a corrupted version of "La Donna E Mobile", and I didn't see any statues. Once again, this is a much bigger area than I saw.

There are some pretty good pictures on Trip Advisor: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187872-d242672-Reviews-Giardino_Salvi-Vicenza_Province_of_Vicenza_Veneto.html

There is also one review in English, who wasn't that impressed. (The statues are placed haphazardly? Well maybe they were just trying to not be overly formal so you don't get so lost in the overall form that you can't appreciate the individual statues.) The Italian and Portuguese reviews seem more favorable. I have no idea on the Russian ones.

I'm not saying that my guides were wrong. My brother and his wife hired a tour guide before meeting up with us, and she took them to all the places you would expect, and she omitted Parco Querini and Giardino Salvi too. I would still like a chance to explore them at leisure.

Mainly I think it's a reminder that with any sightseeing there are judgment calls being made, and they are probably perfectly reasonable calls, but they are not inevitable. My sisters and I try and remember to appreciate home too, as much as the places we travel too, but there is always more that can be seen, and different ways of seeing it. That can possibly be frustrating sometimes, but is also pretty cool.