Looking Up

I’ve got a whole new angle on my travel and it’s very enlightening. Here’s what I learned looking up during my recent trip to southern Italy.

• Even the most dignified statue looks really silly wearing a pigeon hat.

• Church steeples embellished with skulls and crossbones do not have a very subtle marketing message.

• I was separated at birth from the guy in Ostuni who proudly displays his patron saint, Bacchus, over the front door of his home.

• It is probably not a coincidence that if two statues go walking on a baroque facade, and one of them does not have a head, it is never the woman.

• Southern Italy’s largest social network is the gossip shared among the women hanging laundry out to dry on the terraces of Gallipoli.

• Many of the gargoyles in Lecce have more personality than some of the people I’ve met.

• You are never really lost in Italy—all roads lead to a cathedral on the highest point of land.

Other than an occasional face plant, I can see no downside to looking up.

Susan Henry has now directed her attention to her next adventure, which you’ll see soon on her blog, globalgallop.com