You see the buildings begin to gray out and the history lessons can blur together (when did the Savoys take over the something or other and the Medicis were not a pasta, right?). The language gets more and more difficult to understand and the movement from day to day can tire me. Having only done five day vacations prior - you can understand that by the time we are on the road from Genoa to Turin, I am beginning to want to be home.

At the same time, that is the small voice at the back of my head. The big voice continues oohing and aaahing. It screams gleefully when we pass Piedmont vineyards and still wants to stop off the side of the road for this picture or that one.

When we hit Turin, the oldness has taken the form of a fog. Much of this section of Italy rests on the same parallel as Boston - so the cold has begun to set in and the weather has turned from late fall to the onset of Winter. Trees are barren, Christmas lights hang from the storefronts, and the city seems quiet. Consider that my viewing of the shroud of Turin.

I have come to find my biggest glee in these empty spaces. While it occurs to me that I should see a therapist about my preference for vacant public spaces, it also makes the most sense that such a moment offers the best opportunity to explore the architecture and its nuances. I have fantasies that echo the Twilight Zone episode where the world stopped before a nuclear missile lands and the silence is maddening. They always said I was crazy.

So, Andre and I set out to wander the streets and we take picture after picture of Turin’s fairly provincial space - it not being a very big city, but also revamping its look to host the 2006 Olympic Winter Games. On this particular day, the world has stopped. Stores are closed because it is Sunday. This is only amplified by the mist that hangs on the street and the aura of sun fighting its way through.

We are walking along from monument to monument. Plaza to plaza. All the city’s have them - and they link sections of town so that you can move from one to the next. Large statue here. Large statue there. Large church here. Large government building there. You almost forget that governments really started here. It is here that I find the first statue dedicated to soldiers from a war in the 20^{th Century.}

In the same vein, I come to admire it all. The city functions as a real city, its monolithic points of interest neither dominant nor disappear of its face. They add character. The tourists have rolled out and without the hoopla, it is more natural to admire the artwork, the narrow streets. Even the simple churches breathe a new life through the gray - which yields the strongest insight from the entire journey through Italy - that the stories we tell sometimes eclipse the most significant of achievements. I am not gonna get all macrocosmic and say everything little is big, bug I am saying that sometimes the greatest impact comes in the act of discovering something yourself.

If we have the answer, we want to share it. If we can solve the problem for someone else, we are the first to do it. If we have a great experience in something, we want others to do the same. If the soup is bad, we want you to try it to validate our grand distaste. The cycle begins to build up the expectation of grandness - and standing at the site of the DaVinci’s “Last Supper” in Milan - I come face-to-face with the failure of reality to reproduce the kind of awe-inspiring chill I have been told to have. It is very faded and shows none of the detail every reproduction can manage and it looks so foreign. It isn’t skilled or artistic. It just simply is a wonderful work of art that required me to go through three aeration chambers, book an appointment in advance, and stand in a room with 19 other people (they only allow 20 in at a time) that is vacant except for the “Supper” on one wall and another painting across from it. And then, you leave.

I was standing outside a small church in Turin, and unlike standing before the “Supper”, I was not disappointed. I had discovered something very simple and after all the whiz-bang, it was what I needed the most. I am a man who will do things I believe in and spend his life creating things I believe in. I don’t think they will require aeration. I hope people don’t have to make appointments. I hope they enable, change, and are genuine in empowering people to create for themselves. That comes to me, in spite of the shroud, very clearly.