My impromptu 2 1/2 month trip to Milan, Italy....and everywhere in between....with my boyfriend Shane :)

Monday, January 4, 2010

I LOVE SORRENTO!!

We awoke this morning (yes, I am finally up-to-date) after a good night's sleep and prepared to go see the coastal world. The hostel provided a tasty continental breakfast of cream-filled croissants, miniature toast, and freshly made coffee or cappuccino. Yet another reason why it will get a good review. We ate our fill.

After a short 10 minute walk to the train station and another 5 minute ride to the Sorrento stop, I entered the perfect, most quaint, beautiful little town I have ever been in. It is, to me, what Italy is all about. Narrow cobblestone streets, flowers in window pots, outdoor cafes, and best of all, an elevated view of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It has the best of all worlds: the sea, mountains, and palm trees!

I am sooo happy we decided to stay an extra night and see this place. I never knew anything about Sorrento and really didn't care, until I saw it. I now have a dream to buy a timeshare on top of the highest hill, and visit often. Not sure that will ever happen, but I can hope right?!

Sorrento only took half a day to see really, and it was starting to rain by the time we decided to head back to our hostel. On the way to the station I stopped in a shop to look at the clothes, and ended up buying a really cute red sweater that comes to a little above my knees. That's their style here; long coats, skinny jeans and always, always a pair of boots, be it high-heeled or flat.

We stopped in another grocery store to buy lunch foods on our way back. While there we happened to notice a box package containing the cake and wine that the hostel in Rome had gifted us, and the package deal, which included an entire cake and an entire bottle of wine, cost a whopping.....3 Euro?? Say what? Here we thought they'd gone all out on their guests but it costs them maybe .50 Euro per guest? Wow. Ok. I suppose we have to take into consideration the fact that it was a one star hotel....

Our bellies freshly full from another grocery store meal, we spent the rest of the day lazing around the hostel enjoying the luxuries of WiFi. It was raining outside anyways, and there wasn't much more to see in Sorrento. We booked the same hostel we stayed at in Milan for tomorrow night, deciding to just go back so we can get our apartment situation figured out and make sure our luggage hasn't been carried off.

Dinner tonight was much to be desired. Shane ordered steak and fries, and after much pondering I hesitatingly ordered the Mediterranean salad, which the guy said contained "lettuce, mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, corn............" The only reasons I ordered it were: A. the fries I wanted came with the steak, and I don't eat steak, B. his accent was so strong I couldn't understand the verbal menu and didn't feel like asking him to repeat it, and C. I only eat chicken, otherwise I'm vegetarian, and mostly everything on that menu was NOT chicken.

Well....Shane's steak came out looking like a cut-out slab of beef that had been pounded to a pulp, put on the grill for a couple minutes, and thrown onto the plate without seasonings. Shane said it was the worst, tasteless steak he'd ever had, with lots of fat on it. My Mediterranean salad looked like.....weeds and cheese?? What the.... What happened to the tomatoes and corn?? And since when do I eat "lettuce" that looks like weeds?? One bite told me there was a very good reason I have always refused to eat that kind of salad greens. It came with french bread, which was my only hope, but I just couldn't make myself be happy feeding my starving belly with those bitter weeds and cheese. So I went out of my comfort zone and went up to the waiter at the bar and questioned my salad that was supposed to have tomatoes and corn. (I don't even like corn in my salad, but the guy said it was supposed to have corn!!) In the middle of my pitch about my lacking salad, I decided I wanted something different altogether, so I went even farther out of my comfort zone and made myself request it....pasta with eggplant. Now, I don't like eggplant either, but I tasted some of Shane's last night and it was actually pretty good--tons better than that bitter stuff I had on my plate right then. So although I felt kinda bad about it, I got my pasta and eggplant. It had twice as much eggplant in it as Shane's had had, and I ended up pushing it all to the side. I returned my uneaten salad...but we ate the bread that came with it. Haha. All in all, it came to only 12 Euros, 6 each, so we didn't do too terribly bad. We'll be sure to make up for it tomorrow at breakfast. ;) Oh, and that good review might go down a notch or two...

Our roommates left today. The couple left a pair of headphones and the other two left an unopened bottle of wine. I guess now I'll have two to sell on Ebay! Merry Christmas to us!

Addendum: My sister just mentioned the fact that maybe you can't sell alcohol on Ebay. Good point.

Pompeii

Our train left Rome at 9am for Napoli (Naples), an easy 1 hour 10 minute ride. We had recently read in our indispensable Rick Steves' Italy guide book that Naples is known for its thievery and poorness, and why live there when Sorrento was only an hour away? Since we had booked a hostel in Sorrento for the night and would still have all our bags with us if we toured Naples, we opted to cut our losses on that one too by skipping it. Instead, we would catch the commuter train, Circumvesuviana, to Pompeii instead, where we read that free luggage storage awaited us.

Sure enough, we were able to ditch our bags easily at the gates of Pompeii, an amazingly large city of ruins whose vastness I'd had no idea of. For 11 Euros each we spent hours in fascination gazing at the history of this tragic Roman city. I remember watching a documentary on Pompeii when I was a lot younger, and have always felt intrigued by it. I'd had no idea it was in Italy though, and it didn't hit me until I was inside the gates that I was actually visiting a place I had only dreamed of visiting when I was younger. It filled me with awe and gratitude that I've been able to have so many amazing opportunities to see the world. I wish my parents could have this opportunity too--I think they would love seeing Pompeii especially. In this next picture you can see Mt. Vesuvius in the background, and you can connect the two remaining peaks to picture the mountain as it was before it erupted.Regardless of our fascination, there is so much to see that after a while one crumbling building looks like the next, and our feet were aching from walking. We called it a day at Pompeii and boarded the train for the 30 minute ride to Sorrento. Unfortunately, our hostel was located one stop before actual Sorrento, and we missed it, so we had to return to a different train and wait for a few minutes before it took us the other direction. We did find our hostel with no problems, and wow, is it an improvement from our last one! It looks like a hotel that I wouldn't be able to afford, yet it's cheaper than most. Not only is it clean, modern and comfortable, it offers a free breakfast and dinners of your choice for only 5 Euro. Since it was Sunday and no stores were open, we took advantage of this option and dined on pasta. We also decided that we like this place so much would stay a second night and see the sights of Sorrento the next day.

This is the first hostel we've stayed at where we shared a dorm room. Our roomates are two girls and another couple, who all seem nice. I will post pictures of the hostel hopefully in my next blog or two.

Sightseeing in Roma

Unfortunately for us, our day of sleep was a bit too much....I awoke at 5:30am wide awake! I looked across the room at Shane in his bed to find that he was looking back at me! Creeepy... haha jk. Apparently he had been awake and tossing since 2am. We decided that we might as well make the best of this situation by getting an early start on seeing the sights of Rome. I wrote a long blog before getting ready, but we were still showered and on the streets by 8am. Now for those of you who really know me, I try my best to sleep as late as I possibly can, and to have accomplished a blog, a nice leisurely shower, preparation for a sightseeing day, and even out of the building by 8am on a non-school or work day is pretty impressive.

This particular day was Saturday, or in other words our Sabbath. Typically we would have gone to church, but let me tell you that trying to find a Seventh-day Adventist church in the capital of Catholicism is NOT an easy task! Because of this we decided that being outside and viewing the awesome creations of......uh, man.....would be the best alternative. I don't think God expected us to sit in our hostel all day anyways.

We began by trying to find my favorite fountain of all, the Trevi fountain.
(Look, my first picture insert!) It took us quite a while to find it, much to my chagrin. I had previously bragged to Shane how well I knew the streets of Rome without a map....well, apparently that was only the case when starting out from the hostel I stayed at last time. It took several tries, a map, and many wrong turns before we found it. But it was as glorious as I had remembered, and I took, as Shane says, a gazillion pictures.

After the Trevi came the Piazza del Popolo, where an annoying con artist tried to work his magic by offering to take a picture of us in front of a statue. He also held red roses, which he thrust into my hands, saying "Present! Present!" We declined his offer to take pictures of us, and when I tried to give back the roses he insisted that I keep them. Well, fine! As we started to walk away, he followed us like a shadow, rubbing his fingers together in the universal sign for money. We kept saying no, and I tried to hand back the roses. He wouldn't take them. (Well then leave us alone!!) Finally I put the roses on his half-limp hand and walked away. I'm assuming he caught them. I should have given him the look and tone of voice I used to give the annoying boys in grade school who were picking on me and had just gone a little too far. They always backed down, and quite suddenly I might add.

A few fun pictures with the fountains later, we climbed the steps to the lovely garden I had discovered last time I was in Rome...probably my favorite place in all of Rome. It were under construction which made it lose about 6 points on the charm scale, but we were still able to get several good pictures.
The statues lining the walkway provided several minutes of camera entertainment. Following the garden we headed to the most important of sights in Rome--the Vatican. Upon FINALLY getting there, I was slightly surprised to see that it was packed with people. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised considering it was halfway between New Year's and Epiphany. Regardless, we were able to squeeze our way into the line and see St. Peter's Bascilica, a sight that should never be skipped. We also toured the pope's tombs.

By this time we were starving, and we had no food with us or in our hostel, so we stopped in a touristy ristorante to have their Napoli special: Bruschetta, a margarita pizza, and soda. Sodas here are very expensive and you usually don't get very much, so we substituted a much-needed bottle of mineral water instead.

Fatigue and my hot and heavy boots were getting to me, so we headed back to the hostel for a few minutes to change before taking advantage of the remaining 2 hours of sunlight to see the coloseum and ruins. It seems that in the winter is when much of the construction is done, which was the case for the coloseum. We didn't do much more than take a couple pictures of it before attempting to find the entrance to the ruins. I couldn't for the life of me remember where it was (another blow to my pride) and by the time SHANE found it, it was already closed to the public. Seeing as we were leaving first thing in the morning, we considered it our loss.

On our way back to the hostel that night we visited the grocery store for the first time and bought some apples (Pink Ladies, my new favorites), oranges, bread, jelly packets, a drink, and yogurt for our supper. I had forgotten how amazingly good European yogurt was! This satisfied our stomachs for the night, which is good because it was much cheaper than our typical restaurant fare so far. As much as we tried to hold out, the early morning took it's toll, and we were in bed by 7pm. After all, we had to store up some energy for the next day's cities: Naples, Pompei, and Sorrento!