Italy

Italy was the trip I kept putting off, thinking I had to do it properly or not at all. Rome first — the heat, the white marble everywhere, the way ancient things just sit in the middle of modern streets like they belong there, because they do. The Colosseum is bigger than you expect and more battered than the photos let on, and standing outside it on a clear blue morning I felt weirdly small in a way that Kathmandu's old temples, for all their age, never quite made me feel.

From Rome I moved north, and Florence was a different mood entirely — cooler, more compact, everything built in that same warm ochre stone. Climbing the Duomo's bell tower I got right up next to one of the massive bronze bells and could see Brunelleschi's dome right across from me, close enough that it stopped being a postcard. The Galleria dell'Accademia was a short walk away, and nothing really prepares you for seeing Michelangelo's David in person — the scale of it, the way the marble catches the light from the skylight above, the silence people keep around it even in a crowded room.

Milan was my last stop and I went to the Duomo early, before the tour groups arrived. The white Gothic facade in the flat morning light, the empty piazza, the pigeons — it was one of those moments where a city hands you exactly the version of itself you hoped for. I also went to see the Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie, which you have to book weeks ahead. Standing in front of it — that long, crumbling wall painting in a small refectory — was quieter and stranger and more affecting than I expected. Italy does that a lot.