As the day began in the village of Poppi I was somewhat skeptical of being in a new city. I already missed the familiarity of Florence and our cozy San Lorenzo apartments beneath the Duomo. A small group of us went into town to try and scavenge up a light second-breakfast on Sunday morning. I think I was with Gabi, Jordan, Joe, and Zayne. Some of the local Poppi families were walking out of church doors formally dressed in their best Sunday attire. Even the children wore formal outfits as the families gathered around in the sun-filled village streets. In that moment I had a quick flashback to years of my early childhood when I would sit in church pews with my maternal grandmother. At that age I didn’t really understand anything anyone was saying, but I could sense the emotive power of songs and see the sunlight shine through the colorful stained-glass windows.

Our little group turned around and headed back towards the convent after gazing out at a tennis court and backyard with a swimming pool in in. We ran into both of the Casey’s on our way back from finding some sort of food and I think they informed us that they ran into an Italian man who claimed to be a poet. Apparently he shared some of his poems briefly with them and gave one of them a souvenir with his words written on it. I was instantly jealous. Perhaps Poppi is a magical place where there are real, live breathing poets versus in America where poets seem scarce and rare. Sometimes in rural Pennsylvania finding another poet is sort of like seeing a creature on the endangered species list since there are so many other creative outlets for people to express themselves in this modern age.

When I arrived back at the convent our room was chilly, but at least there was hot water. I decided to relax a little bit and crawled underneath the covers to try and keep warm. I rested my eyes for an about a half hour so and before I knew it—it was time to open them back again time to meet everyone for our afternoon adventure in front of the castle.

We split up in two groups and we took a bus out beyond the village walls of Poppi. We started walking on this paved road that stretched out into nature that instantly seemed beyond beautiful. The scenery was like this place was out of someone else’s heaven where the temperature is absolutely perfect and the sky is so serene it looks like it’s out of a video game like The Legend of Zelda. I was entranced by the Tuscan countryside and I let my mind go and wander.

As we were walking I took a moment to pause take a quick video snap of everything around me. I kept trying to place this feeling that this place was stirring up in me. A part of me felt like I had encountered this setting in a dreamworld fantasies of some previous déjà vu that was bubbling up from another life or maybe just my past life of when my dad used to read me stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood before bedtime. Another part of me felt like perhaps I was home, in my pleasant valley of rolling hills in between the Allegheny Mountains of Central Pennsylvania.

I thought of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.
I felt like I was in another world or some science fiction series like Game of Thrones. In my head I heard the song, “This Must Be My Dream” by The 1975.