“Walk straight down the hall, turn right at the third room, and her eyes will meet yours,” an employee at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. told me when I asked her where I would find “the Leonardo da Vinci painting.”
Read MoreHow Travel Can Foster a Personal Renaissance
I now know what people mean when they say that travel can improve your life considerably.
When I was a teen, my sister told me about an Italian artist and unique polymath who lived during the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci. Intrigued, I began reading about this staggeringly versatile man and visionary inventor, whose copious notebooks reveal that he studied everything from architecture to geology to aeronautics. I recognized his world-famous masterpieces, the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, from pop-art parodies, and I vowed to one day visit his homeland.
Read MoreItaly and Leonardo, Here I Come!
I was about 16 when I first heard his name. My sister, Mary, told me about an Italian artist she learned about from her friend’s mother who was a painter.