Why last impressions count when travelling
Ilove visiting somewhere new. Indeed, on some – albeit, rare – occasions, the anticipation can be better than the reality. One of the things, though, I always have difficulty with when visiting a city for the first time is the scale of the place. I can’t always get my head around how big or small it will be. When I first went to Berlin, despite having read the books and done the research, I was gobsmacked by its size. I simply had no idea it was so vast, that a few minutes’ walk wouldn’t just take you from one tourist spot to the other.
When it came to Nice, the opposite was the case. That you could actually walk to the airport from the Promenade des Anglais if you felt so inclined was a revelation. And the fact that you could just stroll your way from, say, the Negresco Hotel to the Cours Saleya flower market in the Old Town, and from there to the Russian cathedral or to the city’s (fantastic) Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art was such a bonus.
Whatever about scale of the place and the sights that are on offer there, the one thing you can never ever gauge before you actually arrive into somewhere new is the atmosphere.
As you read this I will be in Zurich, having arrived on Friday, and heading home tonight. It’s my first visit to that Swiss city and my first time back in the country – bar crossing it by train – since a summer sojourn in the Bernese Oberland back in 1981. As I write this I am looking forward to it immensely.
I’ve read loads about Zurich in advance of my trip, I’ve been in touch with the James Joyce Foundation (he lived there for some years and is buried in the city’s Fluntern cemetery), I’m booked for the opera, and I’m scheduled for afternoon tea in the majestic Baur au Lac hotel. So it’s all systems go.
I feel as if I know Zurich already and yet, if truth be told, I haven’t a clue because I have no idea what the atmosphere, the overall vibe of the place will be like. I can guess, up to a point, but I won’t know until I actually arrive.
Nor am I a great believer in first impressions, for such early notions can be very misleading, often giving you a one-dimensional snapshot of a place that is, in fact, multilayered. If you judged Naples, for example, by the experience of exiting from the train station on a busy Saturday morning, straight into the mayhem of Piazza Garibaldi, you’d be doing the place a huge disservice.
Yes, the chaos that you encounter there is real, an assault on the senses, and certainly part of the overall fabric of that city, but it’s only part of it.
As you dice with traffic while crossing the square and then run the gauntlet of the street hawkers in the streets leading off it, you’d have no idea that just a short stroll away is the silence and serenity of the lovely cathedral, that the port opens up another whole vista altogether, and that this is a city that is endlessly intriguing and to which you will want to return. Here’s another example. When I first visited Capri I absolutely hated it. For about an hour. Just off the boat one May morning and sitting having a coffee in the midst of what some people might consider ‘designer heaven’, I really thought that I’d been sold a pig in a poke.
Why on earth would I want to spend my time in a place flogging designer clobber and looking at shops that could be anywhere in the world? What did that tell me about the famous island I was on? Zilch. Apart from the fact that it wasn’t for me.
I actually thought about catching the next boat straight back to the mainland. ‘Let’s give it a couple of hours,’ said my husband. ‘Let’s get out of this part and see what’s beyond the bling.’
And what a good idea that turned out to be as, half an hour later, we were wandering through the gorgeous grounds of the Certosa di San Giacomo monastery before catching the bus up the perpendicular hill to Anacapri for lunch.
Once there, and after visiting the extraordinary Villa San Michele, once the home of Swedish author Axel Munthe, we finished off our day with a cable-chair ride up to the top of Monte Solaro, right to the island’s summit.
After that we managed to make it all the way back down to the harbour to catch the evening boat without another Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, or Chanel shopfront offending our eyes. Was I wrong to judge Capri on first impressions? Yes. Would I go back? Absolutely. When it comes to people, I believe that, largely, first impressions do count. But places are different.
Sometimes you have to get past the first layer and unpeel the onion a bit more before you get to the heart of the matter. And Zurich’s heart? I’ll tell you all about it once I’ve found it for myself.