A few years back, decided to join my love for travelling and geography and puzzles, and for months, enjoyed putting together a 4000 pieces world map. The idea was always to frame it without any glass, so I could mark the countries I had been. And after the last week, that moment when I can mark a new country, came again!

Italy it was, and it far exceeded my expectations! I'm way more of a nature person than a city person, so being able to combine both things (a little bit of city and a ton of nature, that is) on this trip made it just perfect. From roaming the galleries and the streets of Milan...

...up to the canals on the Navigli district;

And then to lake Como, to simply beautiful landscapes:

And then catching the train to the coastal region on Liguria, where the beautiful villages that are known as Cinqueterre stood, facing the sea and providing a couple more days of beautiful landscapes and cool photos.

Although they are conected by very short train rides, you can walk through a nature train connecting the 5 villages!

All of this and a few more details made this trip the best possible way to start the year, and while travelling, I got myself thinking how easy it is to travel these days!

I remember in my colleage years, when I done an inter-rail: we had to call al the hostels to book in advance, make a lot of planning about which trains to catch, walking around with the travel guides and maps to find our way. Today? All you need is a smartphone! You book accomodation in seconds, comparing different options easily; you arrive in a new place, write the direction on the phone and an app will tell you what transports to take to reach it in the fastest and cheapest way possible. It's all so easy!

And to put things in perspective: I think I'm blessed to have travelled quite a bit, and then I look at the world map in my living room, where I have pinned all the countries I've visited, and what do I see?

It seems I hardly visited anything! So many places to explore, so many world yet to be seen. So, the question in my mind is... where to next? 🙂

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