Italy Days 8-9 (Capri, Sorrento, Pompeii)

Day 8: Capri and Sorrento

We left early for Capri (woke up at 5.45am) and took 4h to drive there. It was another super hot and sunny day, but this island is an absolute beauty.

We took a hydrosomething boat to the island itself and had fish (okayish) and pizza (yum) for lunch, before going on the chairlift which gave us an amazing view of the island, with its turquoise clear waters.

This is what it looks like when the sky meets the sea. Is that amazing or what?

Then we went down and tasted limoncello. The roads are super narrow (a 2 way street would have been wide 1 way street in SG) and the bus driver was driving so fast. Italians.

We looked around the souvenir shops, in one of which a mother and son were arguing over souvenirs.

"We could buy a jar for olive oil!"

"We already have a jar for olive oil. It's called the container from the grocery store."

"We could buy salt & pepper shakers."

"We already have salt & pepper shakers and they distribute salt and pepper just fine thank you very much."

"We could buy a fridge magnet."

"The fridge already has far too manner magnets. Why do we need another one?"

Then we checked out the beach (stony) and caught another boat back mainland. We couldn't go to the Blue Grotto as the wind was too strong and waves too high.

We had dinner in Sorrento in a restaurant with many paintings of the eruption of Vesuvius. Near the harbour, we bought super expensive lemonade at 3 euros for a tiny cup. But the Italians are so proud of their lemons (and some lemons are the size of small melons).

After dinner, Mum bought Rachel & I beautiful olive wood music boxes.

We stayed in Crowne Plaza with a view of Vesuvius and absolutely loved this bathroom because it had scented soaps and bath salts.

Day 9: Pompeii

We went to visit the ruins of Pompeii which would have been cooler and more enjoyable if not for the intense heat which made me rather irritable.

Pompeii is a strange place. All their souvenir shops sell magnets/posters of people in various sexual positions (basically historic porn), or stone phalli or mini statues of men holding theirs. I have no idea why they're so proud of the sexual history of the place, but well, it's the sort of thing I'd rather miss next time.

Here are photos with the G rated parts of Pompeii:

It was an odd way to say goodbye to Italy, but on the whole, the trip was very enjoyable. Till next time, arriverdeci!

I shall end this post with lemons (almost) as big as your face:)

Italy Days 5-7 (Florence, Rome)

Day 5: Florence

We took a walking tour immediately after breakfast and saw the Santa Maria del Fiore (Saint Mary of the flower) Firenze Cathedral and basilica.

Florence refers to flower, in particular, the iris which represents the city.

It was a Sunday, so there was mass on. We went into the church to pray for a while and look around. I think Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Galileo Galilei were buried under the church - you could see the marking outlining their tombs on the floor. Along the tour, we also got 2 more handbags at a side market beside the statue of a hog. Mum got me an orange handbag (the one I subsequently brought to Austria and London so maybe I should call it my Europe bag) and a beige & brown one for herself. 

Every now and then, one would come across art students painting the streets. I guess these paintings would get washed away after a few days, and then they would just paint new ones.

We then drove to Assisi.

The bus stopped along the highway for lunch at Autogrill, which had really good pesto and lasagne and delicious strawberry tart. The carbonara was too dry though.

We rested at the hotel for a while, then headed out to see a church.

We had more gelato along the lane going up the hill where the church was, and Rachel's pistachio gelato was surprisingly good, despite my prior immense dislike towards pistachio ice cream. A lovely lady sewed Rachel's & my name on paper as free samples of her work (she personalises aprons, keychains, etc). Dinner was eaten back at the hotel but it was really quite bad and Rachel declared too loudly that she was "not going to eat this crap".

The hotel had TV but all dubbed in Italian with no english subtitles, so I caught an episode of Glee without understanding anything.

Day 6: Rome

We stopped by a pottery and goods factory on the way to Rome. Mum bought a magnet while I tried all their free truffle samples. Then they gave us free raffle tickets and I won a ceramic jug, which was rather nice since I (almost) never win lucky draws. Then we went to Rome and basically did a lot of walking and sight seeing.

The Pantheon is quite an amazing building, for however old it actually is, it looks brand new inside.

We walked through a square in which many vendors were selling art, and Mum picked up a couple more pieces from here.

We also walked along a bridge lined with many angel statues. Apparently this bridge was referenced in The Da Vinci Code (or featured in the movie) but I don't quite recall which because I hadn't read the book at the time so I couldn't make the link.

Day 7: Rome

It was absurdly hot. We went to Vatican City in the morning, where we got to enter the beautiful St Peter's Basilica touch the feet of St Peter. We also went to the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel, except that was all rushed and we only got 10min inside the Sistine Chapel which had an entry fee of 40 euros (64SGD). This is a fault with our own tour, not the Italian side, but I wished we'd gotten to stay inside longer.

We then went to the Colosseum. It was cool to see it in real life, but really the main things going through my mind at the time was "too hot, too crowded", and "Romans and all their gladiator shows are so sadistic".

Following that, we went to the Fountain of Trevi, in which we threw three coins a la Three Coins in a Fountain, before going for gelato once again. Then we walked to the Spanish steps. Mum made Rachel and I have our portraits drawn. (Rachel's was better because I looked fat in mine, and it's probably due to eating gelato everyday.)

Mum bought yet another painting (she'd gotten one everyday starting from Venice). We found more handbag shops and got more. Then we returned to our hotel and headed out to the nearby pizzaria, this small little place run by 2 Egyptian men, but it had such amazing cheap delicious pizzas and kebab wraps.

I scribbled this in my diary to take note of in the future:

Near Marriot Central Park Rome, yellow Pizzaria sign, run by 2 Egyptian brothers, food is cheapcheapgoodgood.

Italy Days 1-4 (Milan, Venice, Pisa, Cinqueterra, Florence)

29 May-7 June 2012

Italy is very picturesque. I especially liked Capri and Cinqueterra, which are basically postcards come to life.

Things to note

1. Summer in Italy is hot. 
Actually maybe it's just summer in Europe in general. Summer in Austria was equally hot (on one of the days it hit a crazy 39C), but because the choir was spending most of our time indoors, we didn't feel the effects as much. Italy however, consists very much of walking around outdoors so the heat was felt.

Hot means throw out all preconceived notions that Europe=cooler=bring jeans. You don't need your jeans. When your legs are baking in thick denim under the beating hot sun, you will be wishing (as I did) that you'd packed more shorts/skirts in your luggage. My clothes progressively got shorter through the trip haha.

You will probably be told to pack longer clothes for the day you go to Vatican City, if that is on your itinerary. The solution to this is to wear a maxi skirt/dress and bring a shawl to cover up over that because it's long enough to be decent, pretty enough for photos, and most importantly, will not make you overheat. Particularly at the Colosseum in Rome. I have no idea how the ancient Romans stood it because that place is HOT. (Also, we went there on the same day as Vatican City so we were also in jeans.)

2. For some reason, Italians don't eat their seafood pasta with cheese. And the chef takes it as a great insult if you ask for cheese. Cultural differences because I love to put cheese on everything. But uh, prepare to get scolded by the chef if you so desire cheese with your seafood pasta.

Day 1: Milan

I actually expected Milan to be full of models and people wearing street style-type fashion walking the streets, but everyone actually just dresses quite normally. It was 31C and I was rather disgruntled at the heat (little did I know that Rome and Pompeii would get even hotter on later days). I was in jeans and positively toasting. We went on a walking tour of Milan.

We also went to see the Last Supper in the evening. (This was not part of the original tour; Mum had bought tickets before the trip and we used our shopping time to head there.) It turns out that its a big wall mural. I'd always though it was a smaller painting, like the Mona Lisa. Photos of the actual painting weren't allowed so here's us in front of a tiny duplicate.

Rachel & I had a singularly unpleasant experience though.

When we got back from the Last Supper, in one of the shopping streets, Rachel & I were sitting outside a shop eating gelato and people-watching while Mum was in an Adidas shop looking for something for Dan (who hadn't come on the trip with us), and this man came up to us selling bracelets.

After we told him we didn't want to buy his bracelets, he sighed and said ok. Then he got all friendly and fistbumped us (I suppose I could have chosen not to fistbump him back but I thought that was rude, so I did)

Then he suddenly put bracelets on us while our hands were stretched out and said "this is my gift to you, welcome to Italy".

I said thanks and told him that we still wouldn't pay for the bracelets, and we had no money on us anyway.

But then he got mad and demanded money.

After repeatedly saying, "But we have no money! No money!", he got really pissed off and took out a nail clipper and forcefully grabbed our fists before we could get away (bloody strong guy) and I was really scared he was going to hurt us or something, but he just cut off the bracelets and muttered angry Italian words and walked off scolding us.

Anyway, it was really naive of me to have gotten us into that situation, but I seriously have got to be more wary of "friendly" people.

Day 2: Venice

Venice is far more beautiful than Milan. Also, it's cooler, which is more pleasant. The only issue is that there are so many small streets with stores selling the same things - Venetian masks and other touristy trinkets and handbags, so it's really difficult to find one's way around.

We took a water taxi from mainland to Venice. We first headed into the Doge's Palace (nothing much), then saw a glass blowing demonstration (the guy made a decanter and made it look really beautiful and easy-to-do).

Following that, we had time on our own to wander the streets.

There were so many beautiful Venetians masks which I really loved, but practical Sheri decided that buying one would just end up in it collecting dust at home, so ahhh-it's-so-beautiful Sheri didn't buy one in the end. (On hindsight it was probably for the best that I didn't get one anyway.) We found a bakery and bought some delicious cream filled pastries and fresh milk for only 0.60euros! After that, we went on a gondola ride.

Later, we went for dinner. As Venice has so many small, winding roads, our tour guide Godfrey kept getting lost and turning around so we were exhausted by the time we reached the place. Also, Italians are quite horrible at giving directions. Maybe it's some "all roads lead to Rome" type of mentality but when you ask where something is, one person will point you left and another will point you right.  The squid ink pasta was good but the seafood wasn't very nice. Then we water-taxied back to mainland to our hotel.

Day 3: Pisa & La Spezzia

We stopped at a Factory Outlet place on the way to Pisa and shopped for a bit. Then we went to Pisa to see the leaning tower of Pisa and take all the perspective shots (which I won't post because they're embarrassingly lame.) This is the only shot I shall post:

We also had tiramisu and nocciola gelato while there.

Then it was a long bus ride to La Spezzia. We checked into the hotel and went for a dinner consisting of very dry pork. Rachel gave me her tomatoes so I had enough to at at least 1 slice of tomato with every bite of pork and that made it more edible. We took a walk back to the hotel along the harbour with lots of boats and pretty flowers. La Spezzia is supposed to be a naval base, so there were quite a few military places around.

Day 4: Cinqueterra & Florence

We took a long, scenic bus ride along the mountains. There were lots of vineyards on terraces and houses that seem so inaccessible you wonder how those people ever get around. There were also thin, steep silver rails and a "train" consisting of 2 tiny seats for older people to get up the mountain. We were heading to Cinqueterra, which means 5 villages in Italian, and is a UNESCO protected site.

The villages cannot be accessed by bus as the roads are too small and complicated, so we were dropped off a distance away and walked the rest of the way to the villages. We took a local train, which was an interesting experience. The train was tilted and hardly seemed stable, but at least it tilted away from the sea so it didn't seem like we were going to fall off the cliff. I can't say it was a very settling ride though.

Prior to the train ride, we had a long walk along the Lover's path. Very scenic, beautiful view of the cliffs and clear turquoise sea. Lovers tie locks or scarfs (or even tissue paper) along the way to declare their everlasting love. There was also lots of lover graffiti like X loves Y. And random people had also scribbled random things like I like potatoes and I like turtles.

We went to the second village which had a beach with black gravelly sand, by which we enjoyed a delicious spinach ricotta quiche. Then we took a train to the next town which had a lot of paintings on doors. I had tiramisu and nocciola gelato again and Rachel had strawberry gelato. Mum bought amaretto and limoncello made from local lemons. Italians are very proud of their lemons.

We were supposed to take the 12.51pm train back but it came early so we missed it (have you heard of trains actually running early now?) and had to wait for the 1.35pm train. So this delayed us a bit.

We boarded the bus again to head to Florence. There's a rule that buses must stop every 2h, so at a stop along the way, we tried some chocolate coffee, which was strong and fragrant.

We also stopped along the way at someplace which had the statue of David. (Oh yes, Italy has quite a lot of naked statues.)

In Florence, we checked into our hotel, the prettiest yet due to its quaint, old-fashioned theme. Then we went to a leather shop where Mum got a handbag. We had Florentine steak for dinner, then strolled along a bridge back to the hotel. Our tour guide Godfrey drank so much wine at dinner that he turned totally red (as did a couple other adults in the tour group).