GRAND TOUR 2.0: The journey in Italy

Two men, a sailboat, the sea

Era: XXI century
Start Date: July 2015
Surface: sea / land
Route: circumnavigation of Italy
Vehicles: sailboat ” Mas IV ” (1985), car, makeshift
Components: Olmo Roi, 37 ; Matteo Bagnara, 37

Introduction

Grand Tour 2.0 is dream, instinct, and also necessity. A journey inside of us and outside the box that somehow dictates every day life, the secret to “learn to live”.
Two men, a boat sailing the sea. And above all Italy, with its magical places, its people, customs, ancient traditions.

The idea comes from a great love for Italy and takes its inspiration from the fascinating Grand Tour, a practice developed in Europe in the late sixteenth century, by reinventing the historic Journey today, in a modern storytelling 2.0 view: “Knowing and to raise awareness, dig in the nature of a generation with no apparent and concrete future and creating opportunities through new connections”, this is the nature of the project told by the two protagonists.

Features of the expedition 2015
The departure is scheduled between July the 10th and the 15th, 2015 from Milan, to the port of Ancona. The itinerary includes a circumnavigation of Italy, from east to west, with stops in less known and so more fascinating locations: the islands, historical cities and other places of attraction, deliberately without a defined plan. The routes by land will be covered with resources acquired on the spot, “lifts” and makeshift solutions. The arrival will be in Liguria around the middle of August.

It’s a journey of awareness and freedom, but also of socialization. The crew will be continuously integrated into the network through the use of social platforms (Periscope, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube). You will know people from different walks of life, you will taste typical products of the local Fine Dining, the traditional culinary world, you will exchange ideas and contacts, and all together we will visit places of enchanting beauty.
All with the purpose of enriching ourselves, focusing on the original and essential needs of individuals, and to develop new synergies, “a set with an infinite number of elements has amazing properties”.

The nature of the trip

Why Grand Tour 2.0?
Travel to find new perspectives, become part of the energy of the sea, finally find ourselves.

Our century is dominated by an urban lifestyle. The rhythms of the city are getting faster and we are forced to accelerate. Appointments and schedules regulating our days. Words, images, video and messages that last in time for as long as the blink of an eye, or a refresh of the display. But within ourselves there is always a primal instinct that guides us invisibly and continues to influence our dreams.

Evolution has made humans curious, ready for the challenges and made them able to measure their limits, open to experiences that can awaken dormant emotions. This is why from the beginning of time, the sea exerts an irresistible charm, becoming the place of choice where to test and track our own ways and get closer to our inner self.
A place where we feel small compared to the grandeur of the horizon, and let our senses to becoming more acute, regenerated by the energy of the sea.

An experience that is nourished by the richness and variety of nature. The lapping of the boat that sails the waters, the whisper of the wind in the sails, the tingling rays of sun on your face, the steps of a trip to the coast, the excitement of a dizzying ride on the waves, the essentiality of a lonely harbour.

It’s a bit like when we don’t have to think about anything except the next step that will take us forward.

The protagonists

Olmo Roi
Milan, 37, with a degree in Business Administration and a Master in Web Marketing. Currently he is a consultant to companies, teaching and managing projects of development of the business through digital channels.

Matteo Bagnara
Piedmont, 37, with a degree in Business Administration and a specialization in Marketing and Quality in Small and Medium Enterprises. After several years in the world of communications, today deals with export of Italian excellence in the world.

In depth…

The trip of Italy before the Grand Tour
The trip around Italy has deep roots. From the Middle Ages, a time when the walkabout was very congenial, the streets of Italy were beaten by many pilgrims, then by merchants, artists, preachers, scholars, as well as by bandits and adventurers, of which always the space is theater.
The journey to Rome, in particular, even when they were not the dominant character of penance, remained a milestone in the lives of many, new travelers, becoming social aristocrat and, during the fifteenth century, secular and erudite journey. From Rome many other cities followed soon the same steps: Milan, Venice, Florence, Bologna. Other components were highlighted on the cultural side, the intellectual and psychological curiosity and thirst for knowledge. But, absorbed in devotional books, travelers often looked barely at their surroundings and, if they did, their testimony was pragmatic (a book of accounts, for example, informed us about goods and prices in force) or partial (a collection of wonders, for example, from which medieval man was inclined to see themselves surrounded): the numerical data of travelers does not correspond to a similar piece of information (even without wanting to look after the literary merits of the reports).

The distant roots of the trip of Italy, therefore, have not always produced the considerable literature that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would have produced, and this is the first striking element that makes you think of a phenomenon that had, at that chronological height, the proportions of a real fashion.

A new idea of ​​travel
It was indeed a time when, in the history of collective mentality, the journey purchased value for its intrinsic properties. Not focused on the satisfaction of this or that need, he proposed itself as the sole and only purpose in the name of a curiosity, surely more daring in the name of knowledge and understanding on the one hand and the pleasure of evasion and of pure enjoyment on the another. This innovative idea began to spread in Europe in the late sixteenth century and became incarnate in the name of ‘Trip of Italy’. Which then, while practicing for some time, was configured as an institution at the end of the following century, when it became the privileged stage of a ‘revolution’ that young scions of the European aristocracy, artists, men of culture, began to take regularly.

The ‘revolution’ became then a trend and it was also given a statement internationally: The Grand Tour.

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