Never Retire Flashback: Down On Madrid And Loving Rome?
36 days until we move to Spain
As I noted at the end of our most recent post, these flashbacks make “me cringe a little” because “it’s interesting to see how my perceptions and knowledge of Spain and my Spanish has improved during the last two years.”
The feeling I get as I look back is two-fold:
You shouldn’t be too hard on yourself when you first start doing something. You’re bound to be a bit clueless at the outset, simply because everything is new. You lack exposure, experience and knowledge.
Be weary of first impressions of cities. We were initially down on Madrid. And, while we still agree we wouldn’t live there, we can’t wait to go back. We just started our journey with online-formed perceptions of one neighborhood that didn’t live up to the hype. When I first arrived in Paris, I was underwhelmed. Turns out we were just staying in the most touristy part of the Marais. Now, I can’t wait to go back to Paris.
Then there’s Rome. The city we instantly fell in love with, that we can’t wait to go back to (we’re thinking March), that we agree we don’t want to live in long-term.
While I like to say that Melisse and I have a good sense of whether or not we could live in a place super fast, it doesn’t happen in a day. It takes a bit of exploration to come to a conclusion. Like this exploration we did in Rome in early 2023.