Has any place you have visited ever made you cry?
 

And I mean a first sighting breakdown that had you almost blubbering like a 14 year old girl who just had Justin Bieber re-tweet them, rather than just a little misting that only required a dab from your shirt sleeve.

A couple from my list of five I anticipated I might have me soaking my shirt but the others just hit me like a hammer. A soft velvety cozy kind of hammer.

It doesn't have to be Europe but since it owns 80% of my breakdowns, I thought I would post it here.

Anyone want to go first so I don't feel so much like a baby?

The fact that it is possible to feel overwhelmed by this level of emotion from just a "vista" is why I passionately defend an individuals personal choices with respect to where, and how, they want to travel and how long they want to spend doing it.

Just another melancholy evening wondering about the next trip and lamenting the end of the last one...........

Oh dear yes.. my first trip to Ireland. I won't go into detail, but I sobbed. Yes, a bawling, blubbering, heartfelt, snotty, tearful sob. I'll never forget it. To those who have experienced it, you know the feeling well.

A bit differently was when I was 17. I had been traveling for a bit and had been to Italy and Greece already, but when I saw the Eiffel Tower in Paris.. wow! I just stood there with my jaw open, a few happy, excited tears rolling down my face.
I was a 17 year old girl - <i>in Paris</i>!! I felt like the world was mine, and that anything was possible. What a rush. Every teen girl deserves to know what <i>that's</i> like! I'm taking my 15 and 18 year old girls in April.. !

St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. The artwork. Oh, my. The emotion surprised me.

Ireland was it for me..I could see my grandfather's face in the famine sites and thatched roof farmhouses tumbling down. OMG a grandmother sobbing like a heartbroken baby!!!

Touching the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Appropriate, I guess. So many centuries of my people's history there.

Another place that caused an emotive outburst was Aushwitz. Where man's inhumanity to man is on stark display..There have been many other places that have been cause for pause and damp blinks but Ireland and Aushwitz were the most tearful.

Walking into St. Mark's Square in Venice one evening for the very first time. I couldn't believe I was there.

And my sister burst into tears upon entering St. Peter's in Rome for the first time. Seeing her cry, I started to cry too, though I had been in the Basilica several times before.

The American Cemetery, near Normandy. My husband helped fold the flag of the day, at 5:00. I couldn't hold it together.

Gallipoli. I'd been to see one of the Turkish museums first and see history written from the other side (i.e. how they whipped our butts) and then I lost it a little later in the day when reading all the epitaphs on the grave sites in Anzac Cove, Lone Pine and Chunuck Bair. The epitaphs were written by families of those who died forty years after WW1 had ended and you could still feel the pain in what they had written. "We miss him still." and the like.

You all will think I'm a goof. The first time I went to Munich alone was the 175th year of Octoberfest. Standing in the crowd on the street for the Sunday parade just bowled me over. I love a parade and the costumes and the music just got me.

26th May 1999, Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium.

Touring the Celestial Seasonings factory in Boulder Co: the mint room. They keep it sealed off from the rest of factory because the fumes are so intense. The instant you walk in there you are overcome.

Then there was that vindaloo in Manchester.

The 1st. time I walked into St. Peter's Square in Vatican City - I couldn't believe a small town girl from Milford Michigan could be there.

Okay, I'm not alone :-)

One of these posts made me recall a 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th..... I hadn't initially put them on my list because they were somewhat more about a deep expected emotion associated with the place than the place itself. What I love is that some of mine are perhaps obvious to others, and some are going to have people shake their heads - maybe they didn`t even like one of these places. Whatever moves you, folks. Just seek out the experiences

In order of occurrence (as near as I can remember the order of about 2 dozen trips);

Venice, The Grand Canal - walking off the train and out to view the Grand Canal for the first time early on a glorious summer morning. Wooden pilings? In a lagoon? To build a city? That looks like this instead of a bunch of shacks on stilts? Are you kidding me?

The Grand Canyon, South Rim - I heeded advice I was given (and advice I give to everyone who has yet to go) to absolutely not look until I was at the edge. You need a willing accomplice for this one or the ability to navigate while looking down at your feet and using peripheral clues. My young kids thought this approach was quite funny and they happily played along while my wife lead us all. Once we got there and I looked up and broke down, they weren't giggling anymore. No tears from them but the looks of absolute awe and stunned silence was cool.

Brugge, Rozenhoedkaai (Quay of the Rosary)- I don't know what it is about standing on the southeast edge of the quay looking across the water to the Belfry. It is the classic Brugge photographic "shot" if you haven't been there before. It gives me a peaceful feeling unlike any of my other favourites. I would be happy to have this be the last thing I ever see.

Cordoba, The Mezquita - I expected a spectacular piece of Moorish architecture, but I had already seen the Alhambra and the Nasrid Palace without losing it so I was only expecting to admire the scale and the form and to be amazed and a little angered at the inclusion of a Christian cathedral right in the middle of it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, somebody get me about 6 hankies cause it's going to take a while to mop this up before I can even focus again so that I think about taking a picture. How could man create this?

Krakow, The Rynek Glowny - I love market squares and I had seen many pictures of Europe's largest before heading off to Krakow. By now, I realized that "scale" was something that moved me so I thought it would be fun to try the Grand Canyon technique here. I asked my wife to play along and we held hands as we looked down at our feet and moved into the position I wanted to be in from my memory of the layout (from viewing all those maps and pictures). Aw geez, not again - this isn't the Grand Canyon. Why am I doing this? Because it was magnificent in scale, form, and the variety of architectural styles.

The newly "remembered" ones are the collection of Word War I sites we visited in Belgium. The Menin Gate destroyed me for close to an hour. In Tyne Cot cemetery I was fighting off the misty eyes as we walked along the high outside wall to reach the entrance gate. I lost that fight, big time, once we rounded the wall and I was left looking across the massive green field to the perfect rows of white headstones. A couple of the most humbling moments of my life.

Christ Church Cathedral on my first jet lagged day in Dublin. Stumbled alone in on a sparsely attended evensong service where the choir outnumbered the worshippers. When the choir walked down the aisle I burst into tears because they all looked like me, I felt like I had found my people. I felt this way the whole trip. My grandma was a Clancy, I had no idea I was going to have such a visceral reaction to Ireland.

Strolling past a little elementary school in Paris and seeing a plaque on the wall outside with names of the Jewish children who had been taken away from that school during the war, never to return. Just past the plaque a glimpse into the sunny playground where children were happily playing really brought it home.

The Camp at Dachau. Very moving.

The beaches at Normandy.

Anne Frank House in Amsterdaam.

Oraduer-sur-Glane

http://www.frenchentree.com/france-l...le.asp?ID=1994

And my sister burst into tears upon entering St. Peter's in Rome for the first time. Seeing her cry, I started to cry too, though I had been in the Basilica several times before.>>

I'd been to St. Peters' before, but burst into tears when we reached the point of the Scavi tour where you are under the grand altar, and they starting singing mass right above my head.

strange, because I'm not in the least bit religious, or so I thought.

and I cried as we sailed up the grand canal as we left Venice after spending a week there with our grown-up children; we had had such a wonderful time together and i doubted that they would want to travel with us again. Actually that has turned out not to be the case, but I didn't know that at the time.