Luxor vacation :)

On the evening of June 21st, Carrie and I decided that we needed to get out of Cairo. We had been planning on going on a Nile cruise in Luxor and Aswan, which didn't happen, so we decided to just go to Luxor and spend a few days in a nice hotel there. That evening, we booked plane tickets and a hotel. The next morning, June 22nd, we took the one hour plane flight down to Luxor (much preferable to the 10+ hour train ride alternative).

Ooooh the relief of getting out of Cairo! The two weeks before this I had been feeling an intense readiness to get home to Boulder… I had completely lost my appetite for every food item available in Cairo, which I'm pretty sure was making me sick from not eating. I'm so excited to get home and eat REAL SALAD and NOOSA YOGURT and delicious, familiar, healthy hippy food!!!!

Luxor was just the break I needed though to get me back on my feet. It is so beautiful and green and fertile there - and QUIET!! There are flowers everywhere, and of course the absolutely stunning Nile! Our hotel (the Sofitel Karnak hotel) sits just outside of town, is right on the nile, and has beautiful grounds with trees and places to relax, along with a fabulous swimming pool, where we could wear bikinis!!!! The beds were beyond comfortable compared to my apartment's beds in Cairo, and the pillows were practically luxurious! The air conditioning worked efficiently, and the male hotel staff were only *slightly* creepy! :D

Our first night at the hotel, Carrie and I spent the afternoon at the swimming pool relaxing and tanning, then waited starving until 7pm to go to the gorgeous outdoor restaurant (right on the Nile) for dinner. They had a huge dinner buffet, complete with delicious lentil soup, salads of all sorts (at least by Egyptian standards, which still doesn't live up to my Boulder, Colorado salad cravings), main courses of chicken and lamb and beef, and a large table of beautifully displayed pastries and desserts (which Carrie ate, but I was too full, and still feeling slightly sick to my stomach from not eating much for the past few days)! Around the time we were eating our main courses, a bellydancer came out. Except … she hardly deserved to be called a bellydancer. She was HORRRRIBLE - she could basically only do a few movies, mostly just shimmies, even when it really didn't go well with the music, and worst of all, she was going up to all of the men (most of whom were older married British dudes, sitting next to their wives) and doing shoulder shimmies with her boobs right in their face, then kissing them on the foreheads! SOOOO not classy or skillful - this is an example of why bellydancers get a bad reputation… she was also getting people up to dance (and when I say "people" i mean mostly men) and chest and hip bumping them very sexually. Not OK!! What a horrible representation of bellydancing…
Her second or third song came on… and it was "Shik Shak Shok" - a very famous song that Carrie and I both know well and have both performed to. The dancer noticed that Carrie and I were dancing in our chairs a bit, and asked us to get up to dance with her….. Good move on her part, because we stood up there in our jeans and t-shirts and completely showed her up!! We had people from the hotel coming up and telling us that we were way better than her and should get hired, and from that night on, we were somewhat of celebrities at the hotel.
Anyways, after the bad dancer, there was a whirling dervish, who I felt bad for, because he was talented, but the audience wasn't very receptive after the bad dancer's completely un-captivating show.

When we were finished with dinner, we went back to our room and stayed up laughing in bed for a few hours before we could fall asleep. The next morning, we woke up around 8am, went to a yummy (and free!) buffet breakfast, then noticed that the hotel had a company that takes people up in hot air balloon rides above the Ancient Egyptian temples and stuff! It sounded so awesome that we almost immediately decided that we had to do it and signed up for a ride leaving at 4am the next morning! Once we had signed up for that, we took the 9:30am complimentary boat shuttle (totally sweet!) down the nile into the town of Luxor. Once in town, we went to the Luxor museum, which was pretty cool - lots of badass Ancient Egypt stuff, statues, and a couple of random mummies. Then, we wandered along the Nile Cornish for a while and chanced upon the Mummification Museum. It was very interesting and had a completely uncovered mummified alligator (my favorite mummy to date)!! We wandered more after that and eventually turned a corner and found the Luxor Temple, which we wandered around inside for a while and took pictures with the larger-than-life statues and little rooms full of hieroglyphs. We were so overheated at this point that we gave up on town and took the 1:45 boat back to the hotel. We ate some lunch there, and headed out for more pool time to catch some rays and relax in the cool water.

Finally, we came back to the room for showers before dinner, and I actually got to blow-dry my hair for the first time in over 6 months!!! It has gotten so so long, which becomes very apparent when it is strait! :D yay!! After another delicious buffet dinner, we were off to bed because we had to wake up at 3:30am the next morning to go on our hot air balloon ride!!!!! I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO GO IN A HOT AIR BALLOONNNNN!!!!!! Talk about childhood dream about to come true!!!!
3:30am came very very early, but it was sooooo beyond worth it!! The balloon ride was so fantastic - I stood there in the basket as we slowly drifted over the lush Nile vegetation and deserty temples… singing the song from one of my favorite childhood movies, Five Weeks in a Balloon…. grinning about all the dumb jokes that mom and I make based on this movie and my other favorite childhood movie that involves a hot air balloon. Wish you could have been there Mama! This was really really a dream come to life, and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to make it reality!

We got back to the hotel around 7am, where we shared a yummy buffet breakfast with the most stereotypical possible Asian tour group… haha. ha. ha. haaa. K. anyways. We then met up with a really nice cab driver who this nice Dutch couple had recommended to us, named Hamdy, who took us out for a morning at the Valley of the Kings! As per usual in Egypt, we had to walk through this touristy bazaar area full of shops trying to rip you off on the way to the ticket booth and entrance to the valley. Conveniently, my stupid shoe decided to break in half right as we were walking in front of one of these shops that was selling King Tut sandals….. I could practically see the young guy working at the shop shimmer with excitement, as if to say "BWAHAHA!! An easy victim!" Sooooo I really had no choice but to haggle for the stupid King Tut sandals. The guy started by telling me that they cost 500 Egyptian pounds (around $85) to which Carrie and I promptly laughed in his face and offered him 20 pounds. To which he told us that we were trying to kill him, and that he would give me a special "Egyptian price" of 450 pounds… and so on and so forth until I got him down to 60, which was still a total rip off (about $10) but I didn't really have a choice because I needed shoes…. I tried the "i'm not interested, i'm walking away" bargaining trick, but I guess when you are walking away from a pair of shoes barefoot it isn't entirely convincing. haha. After that we headed to the ticket booth and got our tickets. Walking around the valley of the kings was really fun actually, as I ended up speaking a lot of Arabic, joking around with a bunch of the Egyptians who were trying to sell us stupid statues and such, did some fun haggling (a sport that I really have come to enjoy) and saw some really awesome tombs!! We went to see King Tut's mummy… which wasn't worth the money we paid to get into that particular tomb, but whatever. The rest of the tombs made up for it. Overall it was a fantastic experience, and on the way back Hamdy had gotten us cold Fanta and water to beat the heat - he was a really cool guy and we enjoyed talking to him extensively about American/Middle Eastern politics (another interest that Egypt has really inspired in me).

It amazes me how much we accomplished before 1pm that day because we woke up early! I had a brief moment of wondering if I should wake up early more often… but that passed rather quickly :D

We spent the rest of the afternoon tanning by the pool and napping to make up for the approximately 3 hours of sleep that we had gotten the night before and finished the evening with our final delicious buffet dinner (along with some creative avoidance of one of our stalker waiters).

We were due to fly back to Cairo the next day at noon, but we decided to go to the Karnak temple before going to the airport, since it was close to our hotel and we had heard really great things about it. I'm very glad we decided to do this, because it was about 20 times more awesome than the Luxor temple - full of endless rooms and statues and halls with hieroglyphs and sphinxes. etc. Very very worth it and fun! A great culmination to a really wonderful few days and a much needed vacation! Oh the wonders of relaxation, independence, and best friend adventures!

As I say blissfully often lately… Life is so good!! :)

Oh Egypt...

I would like to recount a few of the conversations that Carrie and I have had with various Egyptians in the past 24 hours:

Numba 1 - this happened in a shoe store at the biggest mall in Africa, talking to one of the employees:

Him: Hello, are you looking for anything particular today?
Me: No.... just browsing.
Him: Where are you from? Germany?
Me: No..... Colorado. America.
Him: Ohh USA very nice very nice.... You tourists or you live here?
Me: We live here.
Him: Oh, how long you stay in Egypt?
Me: We have been here since January, and are leaving in July.
Him: You have lots of friends in Egypt?
Me: Yes........ ?
Him: Egyptian friends?
Me: Yes...... ???
Him: Can I be your friend too?
Me: Um..... maybe later?
Him: Here, I take your phone number... I take you to see Egypt, ya know, the pyramids!
Me: We've already been there..... :-/
(at this point, I fake a phone call to a friend "waiting at a restaurant for us")
Him: Phone number?
Me: We have to go..... we'll stop by later........... maybe.......................... K bye.


Numba 2 - We were leaving our apartment to go to a nearby cafe. When we got to the sidewalk, these two guys starting saying things like "wow, you are so cute, so beautiful, so sweet" etc. but we just ignored them, as usual, and kept walking (at a quick pace). When we got to the Cafe though, we obviously had to stop walking, because we were looking at a table. The freaking guys had followed us there... 5 blocks....... and now were standing right in front of us going "why won't you talk to us, please just talk to us?" So finally we looked at them like "are you serious?" And here is how the conversation went:
Them: Hi we are (insert names that we promptly forgot here). What are your names?
Us: Kerry. Carrie.
Them: You guys looked so serious...
Carrie: We're on a mission.
Kerry: A mission to find tea and shisha.
Them: You guys are really pretty, can we have your phone numbers?
Us: Um. No.
Them: Why nottt??? we just want to be friends?
Us: We have lots of friends already.
Them: Do you live here?
Us: Yes. We're sisters.
Them: But what about when your mother is trying to call one of you, and you have the same name?!?!
Us: We have different moms. same dad.
Them: oh..... (very confused). Can we have your numbers please?
Kerry: OK..... 1-800 ........ hahahahaha
Carrie: I don't .... have a phone .... ? hahahaha
Them: Are you guys stoned or something? You are laughing a lot.
Us: What the hell? No!! Maybe we are just happy people...... We are having fun.
Them: We can have fun toooo! we just want to hang out! Be friends!! So can we have your phone numbers?
Carrie: Are you f***ing kidding me? You just followed us for five blocks, asked if we are high, and you really think we are going to give you our phone numbers?!?!
Kerry: Seriously.... Gotta work on your strategy guys.....
Them: Uh.... Here, call this number!! 010...... (starts telling me his phone number, trying to get me to call it so they would have our phone number)
Us: You really think we are THAT stupid?! Wow.....
Them: OK, well..... I guess we will see you guys again because we all live here. And we can be friends!
Kerry: Whatever....... bye.
Carrie: Great, so if we see you again, I'll smile politely and say hi.



Numba 3 - this is between us and our friend Wafa'i while sitting at a cafe on the Nile around 1:30am:

Carrie: I love the brain!! (we were nerding out about psychology and biology)
Wafa'i: Have you guys ever eaten brain??
Kerry: Um no........ but that sounds awesome!!!
Carrie: Grosssss..............
Wafa'i: How about liver??
Kerry: I'd try it...
Carrie: Grosssss........
Wafa'i: Want to go eat liver and brains?? right now??
Kerry: HELLS YESSSS!!!!
Carrie: Count me out. I'll watch.
Wafa'i: Yalla bina! (let's go)

So..... we went first to a liver restaurant, AKA we pulled up to the curb next to one of the few restaurants still open, and Wafa'i brought back some liver sandwiches. They were soooooo yummmyyyy!!!! But Carrie still refused to try. Her loss. Bahaha.

Then, we went to a brains restaurant. Cow brains to be precise. I was shwaya worried about mad cow disease..... Carrie asked "are they gelatinous?" which did not make me want to eat them more. Wafa'i wouldn't let me look inside the pita full of brains before I ate them, because he said if I saw what was inside that I wouldn't eat it. The brains were ... moist. and squishy. Definitely violated the texture law. But they didn't taste too bad. I couldn't really do more than one bite though. Now I can say I've eaten brains. Whooooo!! Check that off my lifetime to do list!! :D


All in all.... In addition to the AWESOME dance party that took place in Carrie and I's living room earlier, I would say it has been a very productive day in Cairo. <3

The latest...

Hi everyone, the rare non-busy moment has arrived..... so I guess I'll update my blog. If my writing today doesn't make the most sense, it is probably because I'm sick, and my brain is not functioning at peak condition... I guess I haven't written in a long time, so this might be a lengthy entry:

Tuesday May 31st was a very interesting day. The *plan* was: wake up at 6am, take 7am bus to campus, take final exam at 8:30-10:30am, take make-up exam from 11-noon, work on TA stuff from noon-1, leave campus at around 1:15 to go pick up Carrie and my friend Megan from the airport, then hang out and meet our dance teacher Kaya (also coming into town that day) at her hotel and relax, etc.
Here's what actually happened: I stayed up until around 2am being quite unproductive, and set two different alarms to wake me up in the morning for my final, and was planning on studying on the bus on the way to school. I woke up feeling surprisingly rested.... which made me think to check the time... and it was 8:45am - my final had started 15 minutes ago and it takes an entire hour (on a good day) to get to campus!!! I jumped out of bed and got ready to go in a matter of about 5 minutes (kind of a record for me), jumped in a cab, told the cab driver in really bad arabic that I was extremely late and he needed to drive very quickly... turns out he was kind of an angel and got me to campus in 40 minutes, so that I still had about 30 minutes to take my exam. However, I was not able to do that crucial last minute studying that usually gets me A's on exams, so I basically completely made up the answer to every single question on both my final exam and the make up exam afterwards (both for my developmental biology class). To make things worse, in the middle of my rushed, completely fudged final exam, Carrie calls me from Amsterdam. I tell my TA "sorry, but I really need to answer this phone call..." and I step outside. The conversation goes like this: "Hi Carrie, I'm in the middle of a final exam." "Hi Kerry, I missed my plane.... they are re-routing me through Paris and I'll be getting into Cairo around 8." "Sh**. Well, I have to go finish my exam... call me in an hour if you can, and try to email me your flight info." "K, bye."
So, I finished my exams..... grabbed a nasty piece of pizza and set off to the airport to pick Megan up, with a friend of a friend who has a car here. After a lot of confusion, we managed to find her (she had somehow exited the airport at the place where you usually drop people off for departures, not pick them up for arrivals.... oh Egypt...). We got back to Zamalek and had a nice lunch, catching up and talking about our traveling adventures. Meanwhile, I was texting/calling just about every Egyptian man I know with a car to try to find someone to take me back to the airport and pick up Carrie at 8ish. I eventually got a couple of friends to take me to the airport, and a different friend to take us back to Zamalek. I feel so immensely grateful for all of the wonderful people who I have met here who are willing to help me out when I need it..... Anyways, my reunion with Carrie was so amazing!!! Needless to say, there was a lot of tearing up and squealing involved. :)

The next two days were jam packed with as many possible touristy activities as we could fit in, as Kaya only had a couple of days in Cairo and wanted to see all she could! We went camel riding at the pyramids (during which time I discovered that I have become actually OK at not letting us get ripped off by people trying to scam tourists), we went shopping at the Khan el Khalili, went to the tanoura (whirling dervishes/sufi dancing show) downtown, rode a faluka on the nile, smoked shisha at a couple of great cafes, and had a fabulous girly slumber party in the super ritzy hotel that Kaya was staying at (involving lots of chocolate cake, red wine, and giggles). It was a tiring couple of days, but so so worth the fun and memories!!

A few days later, Megan, Carrie, Said, Said's friend Aldo, and I all decided to go up to Alexandria for the day (my first time in Alexandria ever). On the way up, we stopped at this strange zoo thing, where you drive around to different animal exhibits and actually get to have really up close interactions with them. We held baby lions, fed hippos with our hands, had monkeys climb all over us, fed ostriches and llamas, etc etc. It was really fun, except that I really felt bad for all the animals... wild things should not be kept in such a small space or be so comfortable with people. After that, it was back on the road to Alex. It is truly a beautiful city. Different from Cairo, but still very Egyptian... The sea was so beautiful. We ate some really delicious fish (a must-do in Alexandria), saw the castle, walked past the library/planetarium, which made me miss my planetarium in Boulder, and settled down for shisha and tea at a cafe by the sea for a few hours. Again, a long day, but very worth it.

Photo credit to Megan for these shots:

Since Alexandria, Carrie and I have been going to a lot of dance costume fittings that we are pretty excited about :) Can't wait to post pics, and bring them home to dance in!!!

A couple of nights ago, Carrie and I got invited to go to an Egyptian wedding, something that I've been wanting to do for a while. I don't really know the guy who invited us all that well, but that's how it works here.... everybody just treats you like family. He picked us up in Zamalek around 5:30 (told us that the wedding was going to start at 6.... Egyptian time), and took us to his family's house for lunch. His family was so so sweet, and his mom brought us some really amazing food, and good tea too! Then, we got in his car and proceeded to wait around, drive around, and wait around for 3 whole hours - with the air conditioning on full blast.... Which is when I started to feel like I was getting sick. These Egyptians don't mess around with their air conditioning. It's serious business, not for the faint of heart or for people like me who get cold easily! Finally, around 10:30 or 11pm, we got to the wedding. The entrance of the bride and groom was really fun - a great group of Egyptian musicians were playing and everyone was clapping and cheering. My friend told us that we were "pretending to be Egyptian" so we weren't supposed to talk to anyone...... We are SOOOO obviously not Egyptian.... but oh well, nothing bad came of that... After the entrance, we stood and watched the bride and groom exchange some vows (I think), and then everyone started dancing. We were the only un-veiled women there (other than the young girls), so we were pretty unsure how much and what style of dancing was appropriate... so we didn't dance much at first. Then they opened up this huge buffet of food. Carrie and I were already super duper full from eating at my friend's parents' house, so we told him that we didn't really need any food, which we thought that he understood. But before we knew it, he came out with two GIANT plates full of meat, rice, dolma-like things, plus about five smaller plates full of desserts!!! It is very insulting if you don't eat food that people give you in Egypt, so I look at Carrie and tell her that we better just take one for the team and eat up.... She is looking so full that she might burst and tells me that she might have to pull the rude american card at some point soon, and just not eat. We picked at the rice for a while, and started eating desserts (which were easier to eat than the other food), and this is when I started texting my amazing friends who get me out of trouble that I get myself into in Egypt.... things like "will you please come rescue us from this wedding? Can you call me and pretend to be my boyfriend who is angry that I am at a wedding with a different man and wants me to leave??" Eventually, our friends Ahmed and Haisam came and saved us, but not before we felt so so so so awkward not knowing anyone, feeling rude for not being able to eat the food, and trying to hide in the bathroom, etc etc. Throughout the whole evening (especially after the freezing car ride) I was feeling sicker and sicker, so that when I finally got home, I could barely function, and now I feel like I have strep throat.
Yup, definitely a night we are going to look back on and laugh.... I feel like almost every American I know in Egypt has some sort of story like this... haha!

Anyways.... Carrie, Said, Megan, Aldo, and Megan's brother all went to Dahab for the weekend, but I stayed in Cairo, since I am sick and need to rest and get well. My internet is dead again, so I am currently back at the AUC dorms in Zamalek pretending to be a resident and using their internet. I'm really starting to miss home pretty bad, especially while I'm sick and craving my mom's chicken soup. But this last month with Carrie will be fun and full of dancing and adventure, and then I will be home, and back to my wonderful life in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, which I have really come to appreciate so much more than I used to throughout all these months of the unfamiliar.

What a crazy journey this has been so far.... Emotionally, spiritually, and in every other way.... moving to Egypt, staying stubbornly through a revolution while simultaneously going through a rough break-up from a very serious relationship, feeling constantly confused, but gloriously happy, dancing, singing, eating so much food in Italy, meeting so many truly amazing people, getting to know myself better....... Yup, I love my life.

Love you all, see you July 6th!!!!!
~Kerry

Lots and lots of pictures.

Enjoy!!

More pics from our camel riding at the pyramids trip:

Some pics with my buddies:

 

Coming soon.... hopefully more pictures from Italy, and others from Egypt that I find on my computer.

Waiting for my shawarma to warm up in the oven.....

I have been soooooooo lazzzyyyyy about updating this lately! Sorry guys..... Right now I'm waiting for my delicious leftover shawarma (chicken wrap kinda thing) to warm in the oven right now, before I head out to a dance costume fitting, so it seemed like a good moment to write a quick note :)

Life has been so good since I got back from Italy.... I think I'll call it my Cairo anti-routine, because my day to day life here is full of spontaneous unexpected events - so much so that this unplanned unorganizedness has become my routine.

One of these spontaneous adventures happened last Saturady, when Christina, Said, and I decided to go ride camels by the pyramids. It was such a blast.... We had this great "tourguide" who was riding this skinny little white horse next to us and chattering away about the weirdest topics the entire time. I guess he was part of the package deal that Said hooked us up with. He was literally saying things like "Christina, you have short legs like a Japanese woman!" Oh Egypt......... OOOh and camel feet are SOOOOOO COOOLLLL!! They squish as they walk along. It's hard to describe. But I love them. And camels also make the weirdest noises.... Next time you see me, ask me to imitate it for you, because I've been practicing. We took a lot of funny pictures, so here are some for you to enjoy!

So anyways.... Other than the camel adventure, I've been doing a lot of dance costume shopping - I got myself into some major trouble at Eman Zaki's factory (she is a famous dance costume designer her in Egypt).... Life is good. :D


OK, I'll try to write more later, but the smell of the food in my oven is tempting me and I can't stand it any longer!!  <3 <3

Random!!!!

Just to randomly point out - I managed to use the word "random" approximately 18 times in my last random blog entry. That was probably because it was a very random trip, and I was writing my blog entry for it over the course of many random train rides in many random parts it Italy. How fabulously random!!! :D Bwaahahahahaa!!!

LOVE!!!!
~Kerry

Italy: an account of a very random two weeks.

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