I can’t believe it, but today marks 7 weeks in Italy. It feels longer than that, but also shorter than that!
There’s something that has been building for a long time, but being here has finally brought it into focus.
When choosing destinations or lodging, we’ve been fooled by photos more times than I can count. Places that look beautiful online—carefully staged, thoughtfully cropped, filtered just right—often don’t match the experience of being there. Once you’re at a location, you can picture where the photographer stood and what was intentionally left out, and even why.
The reviews have been just as confusing. I’ve struggled to understand how so many places end up with five stars when my experience would be nowhere near that. It’s made travel harder than I expected. At least one in every three places has been a real disappointment, and it’s not just accommodations—it’s entire locations. People we know and trust say a place is beautiful, blogs rave about it, and then we arrive and it just doesn’t land the same way.
Daren and I have been traveling together as a couple for 16 years now, since crowd-sourced reviews first became popular. We were early adopters, but over time it’s become clear that something doesn’t quite translate.
Italy has brought this into even sharper focus for me. Before we started looking seriously for a place to live here, my experience of Italy was limited to places like Milan, Venice, Lake Como, and Siena. In my mind, everything was beautiful, everyone spoke English, and the food was always incredible.
Last fall, when we came back to explore more deeply, that image started to shift. Italy isn’t a postcard. It’s where people live. It’s normal in the way any place is normal. There are stores, trash, things that are broken. Some people take care of their surroundings beautifully, others don’t. There are pockets that are stunning, and long stretches that are just average. It felt surprisingly familiar.
We chose Tuscany for practical reasons, mainly access to Florence and Rome if we needed to get home quickly. And it has been wonderful. When we visit places like San Gimignano, Lucca, Portofino, Chianti, or Pienza, they are every bit as beautiful as the photos suggest.
But they are also just one version of reality.
Right now, we’re staying outside of Sorrento, and it’s been a very different experience. Sorrento itself is a step up, but only slightly. Pompeii felt chaotic and overwhelming. Even parts of the Amalfi Coast, which people rave about, felt more worn than I expected.
And yet, I can still take a beautiful photo almost anywhere. I might be able to find the right angle, the right light, the right frame. I can create something that looks magical, even when the broader surroundings aren’t.
Someone commented on Facebook recently that they never thought Italy was beautiful until they saw my pictures, and that really stayed with me.
It made me realize that beauty isn’t just about what’s there—it’s also about what we notice and how we frame it. That’s where crowd-sourcing starts to fall apart. We all have different baselines. Where we live, what we’re used to, and what we value shape how we experience a place.
Back home, we live in a shoreline town with both beautiful and less appealing areas. Our neighborhood happens to be one of the nicer ones, and we take pride in keeping our home clean and comfortable. So when I see a five-star rating, that’s what I’m expecting. But I can see now that not everyone is measuring against the same standard.
Lately, I’ve started taking different kinds of photos. Not just the beautiful ones, but the honest ones too—the train stations, the trash, the lemon groves covered in worn green mesh along the highway. Not to be negative, but to capture a fuller picture of what we’re actually seeing.
Where I’ve landed with all of this is pretty simple. The world is beautiful, but not always in the way we expect. It isn’t constant, and it isn’t evenly distributed, but it is there. Sometimes it’s obvious, and sometimes you have to look a little harder for it.
This experience hasn’t made me appreciate Italy any less. If anything, it’s made me appreciate it more. Seeing it as a real place—not just an ideal—has made it feel more honest and more human.
And maybe that’s the point. Not to chase perfect beauty, but to learn how to recognize it wherever you are.
There is beauty everywhere in Italy. But the truth is, there is beauty everywhere when you look for it—even in a flowering weed growing up through the rubble.
