Italy

In Italy, they love women. Especially women with red hair (Claire has now dyed hers to match mine, yes!) and blue eyes. I was greeted with ‘Ciao Ginger!’ a cat-call I couldn’t help but laugh at. On another occasion a man called after us telling us what beautiful fox eyes we had. That one kind of confused us; do foxes really have blue eyes? An old lady on a train also told us that we had “Bella azure occhi” (beautiful blue eyes). We have never felt so watched and it is hard to know whether to call it ‘oggling’ or ‘appreciating’, it depends on how you feel about it I guess.

This time in Italy we landed in Bari on the south east coast and caught a train straight to the west coast to Sorrento. It is an hour north of Naples so we also got to glimpse the city we had been warned against going to. We didn’t get to see a lot of Sorrento other than the train station and our campsite as we got in late and left early each morning.

On our only full day there we went to Pompeii which is only a few train stops down the line and unfortunately we disappointed ourselves there. As Claire put it ‘This is the worst thing we have ever done!’ That isn’t an attack against the amazing ruins and history of Pompeii, it is an attack at ourselves after entering the site and realising that we knew practically nothing about what we were looking at. We should have booked a guide, rented an audio guide, bought a book or something! As it was we wandered guessing at what we were looking at but not really knowing, and there weren’t any maps and it is a very complicated area so we only stumbled across some exciting things by accident. Those exciting things were fossilised bodies stored amongst jugs and bricks curled into positions that told stories in themselves. Mosaics we found plenty of and murals. There were ‘posters’ on walls and right at the end we found a brothel.

After the ruin site we went up Mount Vesuvius. It was a lot further away than I had guessed it would be and it provided a view all the way to Naples (if there were no clouds). It was a steep walk up and the volcano was amazing. Huge and commanding, I can’t even describe the size of the crater, suffice it to say I think a fair chunk of Sydney city could fit inside it (after further research I have found out it has a diameter of 700m and a circumference of 12km). We spent a bit of time walking around and taking pictures, however we hadn’t realised just how much time until we came down and we had missed the last bus back. Oops. We weren’t stuck for much longer than an hour though when an old couple that we flagged down gave us a lift back to the station, and thank goodness because it was a long drive never mind walk!

We left Sorrento the next day for a very long train trip up to Cinque Terre. On the train ride we tested our Italian with the other people sitting in our compartments, one young guy and two old women who spoke no English. We ‘Chatted’ for over an hour, establishing where we had been and were going, what we were doing in Cinque Terre, how old we were, what we studied and anything else that I knew the words for! I possibly doubled my Italian in this train ride, then they said goodbye to us at Pisa and we continued on to Cinque Terre. We had been recommended this spot by a few people and so had taken heed and booked ourselves into a hostel for a few nights. Cinque Terre is a national park right up on the North West coast, almost touching France. It is only 9km long and is dotted with 5 little towns built into the rocks between the forest and the sea. It is an extremely fertile area from the forests on top of the mountains to the grape vines, orchards and vegetable patches which take over most of the mountain side even down into the sea which has beautiful reefs and fish life. Most people go to walk one of its many trails which wind from town to town and up and down the mountains.

On our walking day we got up early, put on our walking shoes (thongs) and set off. The first part tricked us into thinking it would be easy, it was coastal, paved and flat and named the lovers walk, covered in the locked padlocks that are so popular over here for symbolising everlasting love. After that we found a gate closed against us. We later found out that there had been a landslide 2 weeks ago and you were supposed to take a train to the next station, but not knowing that we just chose another path and kept walking.

It turns out that that this was one of the mountain paths and took us on what I think was one of the best experiences of my life. Imagine a gruelling climb, following paths you are only guessing exist because all the grasses and flowers along the way have grown over them. It is steep, climbing rocky sides of the mountain at times. I ended up with cuts on my foot from falling and both of us still have scratches up and down our legs from the blackberry bushes, cactuses and other un-named thorny plants that crept onto the path. It is HOT, we were sweating like we haven’t sweated before, even in the forest it was still hot. But the thing is, the landscape made us not even think about all these things other than to note them and accept them. We stopped at one point on top of a hill, a very high hill that swept down to the sea. The hillside in front of us had all sorts of tomatoes, cabbages, pumpkins, grape vines and herbs planted in small plots with tiny tracks between them for the villagers to get to each of them. We were picking and eating the cherries from the tree we were underneath, sitting amongst the wildflowers which were blue, purple, yellow and red around us. Butterflies were fluttering in them and behind us the mountain kept going up, changing to a thick forest of pine trees. In these settings we hardly noticed our scratches and sweat patches. It was amazing. We walked up and down the mountains for 4 hours without seeing anyone, enjoying our own intense conversations and singing until we came to the 4^th town (we had skipped the 3^rd one) where we stopped for lunch. After we decided we would stick to the main coastal path to the last town. It turns out this path is the one that everyone takes and it was very crowded, still beautiful but we missed our mountain solitude. In the final town there was a beach which we embraced eagerly, not having the energy to tread water we floated, holding hands so as not to lose each other. Very relaxing. We took the train back to our starting town and chilled down at the port as the sun went down. All in all we walked for 7 hours and covered (we estimate) 15km. Cinque Terre could not rate more highly in my books, it was really the best thing we have done.

The next day was slow thank goodness (we were SORE). We took the train to Pisa to stay one night. People had told us that there was nothing worth staying in Pisa for and Lonely Planet said the same but we had booked ourselves in and we needed the slow time anyway. We got to see the tower, get our hair cut and dyed and cook a fantastic dinner so it didn’t feel like a wasted day as others had described it.

The next stop was Florence, we stayed in a campsite on the hill just outside the city. Our first mistake was walking there from the train station. The 2 hours of walking through the town and up the hill in the heat of the middle of the day with our bags was more painful than Cinque Terre! We were sharing our three bed tent with Harry from England who we found out had a penchant for getting in at 4 in the morning and then sleeping though his alarm whilst it continued to go off for the next hour. But he seemed cool whenever we did get to see him.

On our first full day we went and lined up to see the David. We lined up for 3 hours but kept our chin up about it (unlike some other people around us) and when we got in we appreciated the artworks all the more for it. Claire’s opinion of David was that he looked like he would at any moment just turn his head and step off the platform. That day was San Giovanni’s day (say it out loud, it’s fun!) he is the patron saint of Florence and down at the river they were having rowing races under the Ponte Vechio which we watched for awhile. That night from our campsite we had a perfect view of the fireworks that went off on Piazza Michelangelo to celebrate the day; they went for an hour and were really spectacular.

The next day we went to the Duomo, the large church in the centre of the city. It turns out the outside is more spectacular than the inside but we did find the museum with the original foundations of the church as well as a Medici grave. We have become rather interested in the Medici’s, we felt like we were chasing them over Italy and it was with great pleasure that we found one of their graves (we think... there were no signs...). We did a lot of shopping that day, traversing all over the city in search of souvenirs and shoes, no luck on the shoe front, I still only own thongs. In the afternoon we found a soccer match to watch, quite similar to the one in Amsterdam, but with less good looking guys so our attention wasn’t held for quite as long.

On our last day we went to the Galileo museum in the morning where we got to see cool things like astrological clocks and Galileo’s fingers in a jar. We then went to the church of Santa Croce which we had been turned away from the day before for not having appropriate clothing but now we got to see the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo and Dante which was amazing.

On a side note I will mention the food of Italy. We did not have a very varied diet. For the most part we ate Margarita pizzas or spaghetti if we ate out. We ate ice-cream every day and often for lunch we bought a jar of pesto and some bread to spread it on and had a picnic, delicious though all this was we weren’t really getting many nutrients from it now I think about it.

We got to our Venice campsite early that night. It is on the mainland opposite the islands and is kind of in the middle of nowhere. Its main attraction is that from outside the front door you can get a ferry which will get you to Venice in 20mins. It was good experience to have and convenient but expensive. Once in Venice our first aim was to get to St Marco’s square. I had been to Venice once before but had got so lost in its winding walkways that I had never found the famous square so it was my first priority now. It wasn’t that hard from the ferry stop and we had some fun with the pigeons feeding them corn we bought from the nice man. The rest of the day was spent walking and getting lost. We don’t know where we went and when we needed to get back to the ferry we had a hard time trying to find it. Venice may be cute and romantic and evoke beautiful pictures of masked days gone by but by and large it is just overly touristy. Many places are crowded and it is very difficult to find your way around, maybe it was just me but I was slightly put out by Venice. The next day we wanted to go out to the smaller islands known for their lace and glass making. However after spending over an hour at the post office we realised that we really didn’t have time. Our trip to Milan that day was long. We left Venice at 2.30 and didn’t get into the airport until midnight. There we camped out on the floor and had a pretty good night’s sleep, it was even better than at Stansted!  Our flight then was to Prague and it was sad to say goodbye to Italy. I may have called out ‘Ciao Bella’ as we left.