It is said that one travels to learn , to broaden one’s culture, to be able, at the right time, to carry on a conversation honorably, to extend one’s spirit with foreign beauties of art and nature. All this is true, provided the journey is made calmly, with opportune rests, with the necessary preparation, with an eye alert to examining useful, essential elements. There is, indeed, a way to improve morally, to feel oneself smaller in a world so vast and beautiful, to be more grateful and closer to God, more united to our fellowmen.
There are certain travelers, however, who are carried away by trivia, like those who, on coming back from Rome, can talk only about a certain wine from the Castelli or certain dishes of the Trastevere cuisine …
There are those who seem completely without feeling for the history of places, like the guide who accompanied Fucini to see Sorrento. “And now,” the writer said, “while I have a bite to eat, go find out where Tasso’s house is!” The guide went, found out, and reported back: “Sir, that gentleman doesn’t live there anymore!” There is also the boasting tourist who exaggerates , invents, dazzles, as if he were a Marco Polo, a Pigafetta, or a Cabot . . .
Pope John Paul I
Illustrissimi, “Vacation Fever”, pp. 83-84
