There are a handful of women in my life who hear the words “Amir is traveling” and immediately hold their breath.

My mother. My grandmother. My great-grandmother, once upon a time. My daughter Gaia, who these days gives Poppy a particularly stern look when I announce that I’m heading off on another adventure.

And, to be fair, they have reasons.

I’ve had adventures that ended with helicopters coming to pull me out of the backcountry.

This was not one of those adventures.

No helicopters this time.

Just Italy.

And it started with a shitty flight plan.

Prefer to watch? Come along for the ride—from Rome and the Via Appia to Lake Albano and the road home to Israel.

15 Hours in Rome

Getting between Israel and America this summer was not exactly simple.

Flights were being canceled. Crews were nervous about flying into Israel. And unless I wanted to hand El Al something like $2,000 for the privilege of getting on an airplane, my brilliant alternative involved 15-hour layovers in Rome.

Both ways.

For some people, that’s miserable.

For Amir?

Come on. Are you kidding me?

You just gave a tour guide 15 hours in Rome.

So on the way to America, I dumped my stuff in a crappy little hotel and went walking.

Rome is a world-class city. It is also mass tourism at its finest and humanity at its tackiest.

Couples posing. Young people taking selfies. Everybody eating pasta and photographing themselves standing in front of things built by people whose names they probably don’t know.

Maybe that’s the snobby tour guide in me talking.

Fine.

I’m a snobby tour guide.

Because when I stand in front of a Roman monument, I don’t just see a beautiful old building.

I see empire.

I see conquest.

I see slaves.

I see soldiers.

I see stories.

And as a Jew, I see something else.

I see people who once destroyed my home.

Standing Before the Arch of Titus

Eventually, I made my way to the Arch of Titus.

And this is where Rome gets personal.

The Romans didn’t build that arch because they thought it would make a nice backdrop for Instagram two thousand years later.

They built it to celebrate victory.

Their victory over my people.

Look at the relief carved inside and you can still see the menorah and sacred objects taken from the Temple in Jerusalem being carried away by Roman soldiers.

That isn’t abstract history to me.

The Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem and brought down our Temple. They were brutal warriors. Crucifiers. Killers. They smashed Judea and celebrated doing it.

And there I was.

A Jew.

An Israeli.

Standing underneath the monument they built to celebrate defeating us.

Two thousand years later.

Their empire is gone.

I’m still here.

There was something wonderfully satisfying about that.

A little ga’ava.

Pride.

Not arrogant pride. The kind that comes from understanding how many generations had to struggle, run, fight, pray and survive for me to be standing there as a Jew in 2026.

So yes, I stood before Titus.

Hello, old enemy.

We’re still here.

A Bicycle, an Ancient Road and 95 Degrees

A month later, after visiting family in America, I had to deal with Rome again on my way home to Israel.

Another 15-hour layover.

This time I landed around seven in the morning.

I could have gone back into Rome.

I could have found a café.

I could have behaved like a normal person.

Instead, I rented a bicycle.

Because I am a man of the road.

In Hebrew, I’m a Moreh Derech — literally a teacher of the way, the road, the path.

And that really is part of my identity.

So I pointed the bicycle toward the Via Appia Antica, the ancient Appian Way, and started pedaling.

Now we’re talking.

Ancient stones beneath the wheels. Roman ruins. Villas. Cypress trees. Countryside.

And the farther I rode away from Rome, the more something felt familiar.

Italy isn’t Israel.

But we’re Mediterranean cousins.

The dry landscape, the heat, the trees, the hills — there are moments when the Italian countryside feels surprisingly close to home.

It was also about 95 degrees outside.

So this romantic relationship with Italy involved a lot of sweating.

Thank God for the fountains.

I stopped constantly to refill my bottles, pour water over myself and keep moving.

Pedal.

Drink.

Pedal.

Drink.

Ancient ruins on one side. Villas on the other.

And eventually I reached Lake Albano.

The Tourist Lake Wasn’t Enough

Lake Albano is gorgeous.

Mountains wrapping around blue water. Beach clubs. Kayaks. Volleyball. Restaurants.

Lovely.

Wonderful.

Not for me.

Because when everybody goes one way, something inside me usually wants to see what happens if I go the other way.

So I kept pedaling.

The paved road became rougher.

Then gravel.

Then dirt.

The houses disappeared.

The tourists disappeared.

Now I’m surrounded by trees, mountains and water.

Much better.

And then—

Fence.

End of the road.

Apparently civilization had decided: Amir, that’s enough.

I reluctantly stopped.

There were some people nearby, and through a combination of bad language skills, gestures and the international vocabulary of a man with a bicycle who clearly wants to go where he’s not supposed to go, I communicated my problem.

A young guy looked at me.

Basically:

Dude. La vuelta.

Go around.

He pointed toward the edge of the fence.

There was a little path.

And that was all the encouragement I needed.

What’s on the Other Side?

I had absolutely no idea where I was going.

Perfect.

I had a bicycle.

There was a trail.

So I kept going.

And going.

And pedaling.

And suddenly this little accidental layover turned into one of those moments that reminds me why I travel in the first place.

The lake opened beside me.

Mountains surrounded the water.

The trail hugged the shoreline.

The tourist noise was gone.

It was stunning.

Eventually, after making my way around almost the entire lake, I decided it was time to swim.

I dumped the bicycle off the trail, walked down toward the shore, stripped to my bathing suit and jumped in.

Crystal clear.

Perfectly still.

Not a breeze.

Black volcanic soil beneath me.

Mountains above me.

For a few minutes, everything stopped.

A Traveler’s Mikveh

I jokingly thought of that swim as my little Italian mikveh.

A ritual bath.

Not because I had planned some grand spiritual experience. I was hot, filthy and had been riding a bicycle around a volcanic lake.

But sometimes meaning finds you when you’re not looking for it.

I had spent a month in America with my family.

People I love were telling me:

Stay.

Don’t go back.

Israel is complicated. Israel is at war. Why go back into all of that?

And they’re not wrong to worry.

That’s the wanderer’s dilemma.

I love America.

I love Italy.

Give me a bicycle, a mountain, a vineyard, a dirt road and something interesting at the other end and I’m generally a pretty happy man.

But loving somewhere doesn’t make it home.

Floating in that perfectly still Italian water, somewhere between America and Israel, I had one of those rare moments where I didn’t need to answer anything.

I could simply be grateful.

For the road.

For the water.

For Italy.

For my family.

For being alive.

Italy Is Beautiful. But It Isn’t Home.

After the swim, I kept riding.

Up toward the hills. Past palaces and churches. Through landscapes that somehow felt both foreign and familiar.

Italy is spectacular.

I love the countryside.

I love the cuisine.

I love the wine.

I love the history.

They may not all particularly love my people at the moment.

That’s their business.

I still love Italy.

Our histories have been tangled together for thousands of years. Romans walked through my country. Jews have walked through theirs.

And now this Jew gets to ride his bicycle freely down their ancient roads, swim in their volcanic lakes and stand beneath the monuments of an empire that once thought it had defeated us.

There is something wonderfully strange about history.

But Italy isn’t home.

Israel is.

So I eventually pointed myself back toward the airport.

Back toward the Mediterranean.

Back toward the complicated little country where next week I’ll once again be guiding, teaching, arguing, exploring and trying to help young people understand this ridiculous, beautiful, conflicted place.

For one day, though, I got to step outside all of that.

I got a bicycle.

An ancient Roman road.

A fence I probably wasn’t supposed to go around.

A beautiful lake.

And 15 hours in Italy.

Not a bad layover.

L’chaim.

To life.

And to good travels to you.