Took a train out of Milan to Venice. Train arrives, we grab our luggage, shuffle out of the train and through the station, walk out the doors, exhausted from travel, and look up... and there's Venice, looking like nothing else on Earth. I literally almost started crying just looking at the city.
Had a similar experience on my honeymoon in Paris. Took the train from De Gaulle Airport. It goes underground just as you’re about to hit the sites.
We get to the St. Michel station, a large station with myriad tunnels to negotiate before you reach the surface.
My wife and I emerge on Boulevard Saint-Germain and Cluny, a big corner of commerce in the Latin Quarter. We emerge smack dab in the heart of Europe. It was awe-inspiring. A culmination of a dream.
Another experience I had was driving the Pacific Coast Highway in Oregon in 2012. It was my first time on the Pacific Coast. I was there for NCAA baseball. My team went two-and-que, but a flight change couldn’t be arranged (I didn’t try very hard
) so I had two days to kill.
Driving north towards Astoria from the central coast, I get near Manzanita, Ore. and begin a long trek upward around a mountain. I come around a curve at a significant height … and there was the Pacific Ocean, as if I was floating on top of it. On a clear day, it was a remarkable site. Neahkanie is its name.
Stopped at one of the viewing areas and just took it all in. Also noted the massive drop down a cliff into the ocean.
What I didn’t know was that I was on a bridge that the WPA wrapped around the mountain. You’d never know it. Seemed to be a part of the natural terrain.
https://www.bridgehunter.com/bridge/43197
Just an unbelievably gorgeous place. I yearn to return.
My first viewing of the aurora borealis was also pretty mind-blowing. All of them have been.
