Let me begin by saying that not a single thing on this trip was planned more than about 24 hours in advance, except for my hotel reservation for the first two or three nights before Christina got there, my hostel reservation for my last few days after Christina left, and a general idea of taking some trains to some random cities. :D
I arrived in Rome around 7:30am after a 3am flight from Cairo, with no plans other than a hotel reservation for the first couple of days. The first task was to figure out how to get from the airport to my hotel without paying a ton of money… I ended up finding some random small shuttle company with a driver who gave me a small tour of downtown Rome on the way to my hotel. When I got to the hotel, I drank a delicious espresso, five cookies, then passed out until around 3pm. I decided to take the first day or two as relaxing days since I knew Christina and I were going to be doing a lot once she got to Italy and I needed some rest from Cairo life. So, I spent a lot of time in the hot tub at my hotel, then headed to the nice restaurant in the hotel. I had pasta with some delicious cream sauce, a juicy steak with olive oil and some sort of delicious seasoning, and the sweetest fresh tomatoes. It was all amazing and wonderful until the stinking hotel waiter decided he liked me and kept asking me out. I told him that my friend was coming into town and so I was busy, then very awkwardly and quickly left for my room. I'm fairly certain that he called my room and maybe knocked on my door later that night, but I didn't answer either. The next day, I ordered room service breakfast, spent more time relaxing in the hot tub, then wandered the streets for a while, getting oriented in my Roman neighborhood. I found a delicious little restaurant where I ordered the first delicious salad I have had since I left Colorado, a very nice thin crispy Italian pizza, white wine, and creme brulee. My first few days of attempting to speak Italian generally ended up with me muttering some strange mix of Egyptian Arabic, Italian, French, and English.
Christina arrived on my third evening in Italy, and we went out for a spectacular first meal in Rome. After eating delicious pasta, salad, chicken, fried zucchinis, and the most amazing tiramisu I have ever tasted, and drinking an liter of rosse wine between the two of us, we wandered the streets by our hotel making stupid jokes and having serious discussions. We finally got to bed, then the next day headed out on our first day of adventure. Step one: drag suitcases through all sorts of random streets trying to find the nearby train station to get to downtown Rome where we had reservations at a hostel for the night. After a lot of navigating and some failed attempts to ask for directions in Italian, we finally got to the hostel. From there, we wandered all over downtown, picking random places on our map and trying to find them, while stumbling pretty much accidentally on all of the great monuments. We had delicious cheesy gnocchi and pasta for lunch. Yummmmm! Later in the evening, we found ourselves in a beautiful piazza, full of fountains, artists, and musicians, where we sat down for an amazing pizza dinner. Then it was back to the hostel to catch a few hours of sleep before the next morning when we would be taking a train to Naples to stay at our next hostel and get pizza in the place pizza was invented!!
Goofing off in front of the Colosseum:
In the morning, after a slightly weird free breakfast at the hostel, we headed to the train station, bought tickets to Napoli from a kiosk in the train station, figured out through trial and error how to catch the train, and hopped on. After we got on, a railway employee came through collecting tickets, and told us we had to change trains at some stop that we promptly forgot the name of, except that it was short and started with an "f" (a description that fit several of the upcoming stops it turns out...) - and it dawned on us that we had probably gotten on the wrong train. Oh well - it all worked out in the end - we somewhat randomly got off at the correct "f" stop and transferred trains to the correct train and got to Naples just fine. Napoli is a big, dirty, rough city, full of stereotypical Jersey-shore-like dark skinned loud italians in leather jackets, and also a lot of rough looking sea-faring men. I absolutely love it. We checked our bags at the train station, and set off on a mission to find pizza!! Some random guy on the train had told us that the best pizza is along the harbor, so we cut through some random rough neighborhoods and jay-walked Cairo-style a lot, until we eventually found a pizzaria. Best. Pizza. Ever1!!!!! I had a seafood pizza and Christina had a stuffed crust cheese basil and tomato pizza. As was becoming a tradition, we topped off the delicious meal with some nice italian cafe espresso. Yum yum yum yum!!!
After the pizza, we headed back to the train station to get to our hostel in the neighborhood of Portici (still in Napoli). The hostel was called Fabric, as it was an old fabric factory. What a cool place! The rooms were nice, the breakfast was edible, there was free wireless internet (hard to find in Italy it seems...), and best of all, there was an attached nightclub/bar with live music and some yummy appetizers. We had a fun night eating and drinking more Italian vino, then went on another random walk around the random neighborhood.
The next day, we took the train back to Napoli, then a ferry to the island of Ischia (aka heaven on earth), where we took a bus to a hotsprings spa (check it out: http://www.negombo.it/ ) and spent the afternoon soaking in pools and getting massages from beautiful curly haired Italian massage guys at the massage center of the spa. Amazing. Afterwards we ate yummy dinner at the harbor while waiting for our ferry back to Napoli. We were *planning* on trying to get down to the Amalfi coast that same night, but that soooo didn't happen - we didn't even get back to the Fabric Hostel to retrieve our luggage until almost 11pm. Thank God, Fabric (which earlier in the day had told us that they were completely booked) had a room for us that we ended up staying in and having a really fun night. After putting our bags upstairs, we headed down to the club because there was a live band playing some good Led Zeppelin songs (actually playing them really well too). We had a couple of drinks and sat up close to the stage. The band members kept looking at us, so after the show, Christina wanted to try a little experiment and see if the band guys would come talk to us. We were randomly arm wrestling when the lead singer came up to us and started talking in Italian. My couple of glasses of wine had loosened up my tongue/memory, so we managed to use my Italian skills and start talking to him. The rest of the band came over, and we ended up hanging out with them until around 2am, when we decided to go to sleep so that we could actually get to the Amalfi coast the next day at a reasonable hour. It was a very random and fun night.
The next day, we hopped on the Circumvesuviana train towards Sorrento, and got off in a town called Castellamare. From there, we were supposed to catch a bus to the small town of Agerola where we had booked a room at a bed and breakfast. Castellamare was an odd place - very confusing to navigate without a map, and full of these streetside fish markets - one of which had a wide variety of dead fish on display including sting rays, and some live octopi in a bucket! We nicknamed this town "stupid town" as we were confused and lost for at least an hour or two trying to find the stupid bus stop to get on the stupid SITA bus to Agerola which we didn't even know how to get tickets for (and never actually did get tickets for). Luckily, this strange skinny blond Brittish lady who lives in Morocco helped us out and told us which bus to get on and then which stop to get off at. The bus took us up the side of a mountain, through all sorts of crazy zig-zaggy sketchy very skinny roads with cars going really fast and vespas zipping by. We could see Mount Vesuvias from the mountainside - an active volcano with explosive potential that overlooks hundreds of thousands of homes - scary! We continued on the bus through many small villages until finally arriving at the Piazza San Lazzaro at the center of the small cliff side village of Agerola. What a view! Looking out over the sea, it was impossible to discern where ocean turned into sky. We were so exhausted by this time, we went up and down a steep hillside trying to find the bed and breakfast until finally we gave up in our lostness and asked for help. A nice local man took pity on us and drove us there - it really was a beautiful place! Our room was the "Poseidon room, and had a beautiful mural of the sea god painted on the wall. The Italian lady who worked the desk was really sweet - her name was Maria - and she told us that later that night, since it was Good Friday, there was going to be a big parade and a re-enactment of the Passion of the Christ. Christina wanted to go, so we decided that later in the evening we would try to meet up with them. In the meantime though, we ate some gelato, hopped on a random bus, and ended up in the coast town of Amalfi. I wish that we had more time to stay in Amalfi or Positano or Sorrento - these are extremely beautiful little seaside towns - with the stereotypical Italian villas stacked on the cliffside. We had a delicious lunch in Amalfi that afternoon, then walked up and down some winding market streets, found a really pretty church, bought some limoncello and souvenirs...
The view from our bed and breakfast in Agerola:
Later, after a bit of confusion about which bus to take, we got back to town to find that the church services that Christina wanted to go to were already in session. (I apologize for the somewhat terse uninformed description of these people's religious rituals... but I really had no clue what was going on. :D) There were a bunch of random people dressed in white outfits with leaves on their heads (maybe they were supposed to be druids or something, I have no clue). After singing some churchy songs in Italian, everyone went up to the front of the church to greet a statue of Mary holding Jesus, then waited out front of the church. The tree people in the white outfits then went inside and got the statue - bearing it on their shoulders, and we began to follow them and a band (that was playing music that sounded like it was from one of those old religious story movies - ominous/powerful/epic, but it was almost making me laugh because it reminded me of Dad making fun of the movies) down the street. When the band took a break, they started these chants, that went something like Santa Maria madre di mia... Santa Maria full of grace, etc etc. The whole crowd was echoing them in unison. We walked, and we walked and we walked some more. Then we walked some more. And my leg started cramping. And my foot was killing me. And the whole thing was truly a mental exercise in patience. I could tell Christina was fading too. Finally, we got to a second church. The whole time we had been walking, we thought we would be ending up in a park somewhere and seeing the re-enactment thing. Buuttttt instead, they all went inside the church, repeated all the steps I described above that happened in the last church, then began walking more. We really had no idea where we were or what was going on at this point, but decided to keep following when they left the church in hopes that we would reach this park and then follow them back to San Lazzaro (we were by now on the complete opposite side of the valley and had no clue how to get back). But, instead, after more walking and walking and walking, we found ourselves at the strangest possible place to be in a foreign country with people you don't know at night - a graveyard. Aaaaaaaaaand at this point, we decided it was time to get the frick out of there. Christina asked around and found someone who spoke English, and he told us where to catch the bus back to San Lazzaro. We walked all the way back to the second church we had visited, and saw no sign of the bus... We were standing by a bus stop, contemplating hitchhiking when these two young Italian men offered us a ride. They didn't speak much more than a few words of English, but between that and my few words of Italian, we managed some basal level of communication. The kindly took us all the way back to San Lazzaro, and dropped us off at a local restaurant because I had told them that we were hungry (partly because we were hungry, but also because it was a good way to avoid their invitation to go to a disco in Salerno with them). Christina and I had some delicious wood oven pizza and some local wine. When we left the restaurant, the two lads were of course waiting for us again. :-/ So, since they were nice enough earlier to save our butts from wandering around lost, we hung out with them for a little while before making them drive us home because we were tired.
The next day, we slept in a while, then took the first bus out of town, aswe were already feeling a bad case of small-town fever! We (pretty much as usual) had no idea where the bus was going, and of course we ended up back in Stupid Town/Castellamare. From there, because we hate the place and wanted to get out of there ASAP, we took the train to Sorrento. Sorrento was an absolutely beautiful town - we got some really delicious fish and pasta for dinner at a random restaurant, after wandering around a bit. We then caught the bus back to Amalfi, which turned out to be a really nice scenic drive along the coast through Sorrento, Positano, and Amalfi. We got some good photos. While waiting for the bus back to Agerola from Amalfi, I chatted with this random guy about the political situation in the middle east (mostly Egypt). It was a nice chat, and reminded me how much I was missing Cairo.
That night, we got back to our hotel to try to figure out how to get to Florence the next day (which was conveniently Easter Sunday). In the morning, we discovered that there were no busses running due to the holiday, but Maria was kind enough to drive us all the way to Stupid Town and to the train station. We ended up getting stuck back in Rome that night, because there were no trains between Napoli and Florence that day, and by the time we got to Rome, it was too late to catch a train to Florence from there too. Luckily, we were able to get a room in the hostel that we had stayed at previously in Rome, and had a nice dinner in front of the Pantheon (no big deal, right?) :D.
From the hostel that night, we decided that we still wanted to go to Florence, and booked a room there for the next night (Christina's last night in Italy). We caught the 10am train to Florence the next morning, where we stayed at a very nice hostel that was refreshingly easy to find. We were starving, so got a map, and walked around downtown (having our usual accidental encounters with all the exciting monuments) and eventually sitting down for a lovely meal of pizza, pesto, and tomato/fresh mozzarella salad. As usual, the waiters were in love with us, and asked out for a drink later, to which we said yes (but weren't sure yet whether we would actually show up). We wandered around randomly some more after that, and realized that Florence is a pretty cool place! Lots of art, and neat buildings. We did some shopping, bought some cheap things (Italy-cheap is of course still expensive by my Egypt-cheap standards). Then we went back to our room, freshened up a bit, and headed to the restaurant from earlier because as Christina put it: "I'm not opposed to using these guys for free drinks!" And use them we did.... We got free french fries, 6 drinks between the two of us, and a free cab ride home (plus 5 extra euros, because the boys gave us too much money for the cab ride). Plus, the two guys were Albanian, and actually pretty decently interesting to talk to. Unfortunately for them though, I have such a thing for Egyptians that I just don't feel attracted to European men anymore. Uh ohs...... The only hotties that Christina and I saw in Italy (besides of course the exceptions of the massage guys on Ischia) were very Arab looking. Haaaaahaaaa.....
In the morning, we unsuccessfully tried to go to an art museum, and ended up just having espresso and dessert instead, then headed back to Roma. We had a disappointing last Christina/Kerry meal in Rome, and I dropped Christina at the train station to go to the airport. I stayed at our familiar Rome hostel again that night, in a dorm room with three guys (random right?) - one young guy from South Africa/London, and two elderly men who sounded British. I like hanging out with men. They are simple and funny. They teased me for taking too long in the bathroom, and I teased them back about being gross stinky men. In the morning, I hopped on a train to Naples, on my way to spend my last few days of vacation back on Ischia (my favorite spot we had been to).
Ischia. is. so. freaking. gorgeous. and relaxing. I love it. It was the perfect choice for my last days in Italy, as I super badly needed a rest from all the crazy non-stop traveling that Christina and I had done. I stayed at a cute hostel in Ischia, where I met some super nice people (study abroad students studying in Rome). I spent the following day with them back at the Negombo spa - very relaxing, and I soaked up some nice sunshine! That same night, after another delicious Italian meal, the nice lady who ran the hostel drove us to the island's natural hotsprings, each of us with a bottle of local wine. Basically, this entailed climbing down several flights of stairs in the cliffs to the shore, where people have piled volcanic rocks up to create pools in the shallow part of a sheltered bay, boiling hot water from the hot springs meets the cool seawater, mixing together in the pools, and creating a pretty freaking amazing experience!! The stars were out in full force, and it was really beautiful to sit there with nice friends on the edge of the ocean in relaxing warm water drinking good Italian wine.
I woke up in the morning and tried to get out of my room (the handle on the inside of the door was missing) and realized that I was stuck inside. I plugged my phone in and called the phone number on the hostel's website, and the guy I talked to literally told me: "Sorry, but I'm not there right now. Can you climb out the window?" HAHAHA. So I climbed out the window and unlocked my door from the outside. For the remainder of my time in Ischia, I ate more fresh mozzarella and tomatoes, did more shopping, sat on the rooftop terrace and read for a while, ate more good food, drank more good wine, etc etc etc.
Saturday, I packed my bags, took the ferry to Naples, the train to Rome, the train to the airport, and my plane back to Egypt!! When I got to the airport in Rome, I heard people in front of me in line speaking Egyptian Arabic and got really excited!! I could wipe the stupid grin on my face for the entire rest of the day. Egypt Egypt Egypt Egypt Egypt I love it so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D :D :D :D
So yeah. That's Italy. I'll put more pics up later, my internet in sucking again.
Love,
~Kerry
