Sicily was amazing. We may have said this already, but one of the awesome things about Sicily is that it was exactly what we had hoped and imagined it might be.
We took a ferry from Reggio Calabria to the city of Messina. Here is a photo of the ferry
We arrived in Reggio di Calabria via train (my first!) really not expecting much. I had read online that there was a great promenade for running (which proved to be QUITE true), but other than that, we really were coming simply because it was a great jumping off point to Sicily, which was to be our final destination in Italy. It turns out, that little ol’ Reggio di Calabria turned out to be awesome. We arrived to our hostel (after booking through hostelworld) only to be greeted by quite possibly the world’s sweetest guy ever who walked us down the street to another place, as the place we had booked was having water problems. Glancing at each other sideways (we have heard that story before), we followed the guy, only to have him take us to a perfect room in a perfect location. Rooftop terrace, great breakfast, wonderful, warm conversation…we couldn’t have asked for anything more.
Anyway, after talking to the guy, it turned out a few hours after we arrived there was something that translated to “the great stroll” which literally meant the entire town comes and walks around the main street eating gelato, window-shopping, teenagers chasing their crushes through crowded streets, lovers loving, families pushing their kids on tricyles…it happens every week, and it was honestly magic. It truly made me wish that I lived in a city where we (not only) had a main street, but had the type of community feel that they had here. Kev and I followed suit and walked up and down the streets snacking for about 2 hours before we came back to our room and turned on HOUSE OF CARDS.
The next day we….
Checked out the Farmers Market right downstairs from our place…
Admired (and utilized!) the amazing Boardwalk Promenade for running/strolling (told you!)
Ate delicious (cheap!) food – Great bang for our buck.
Seafood Risotto
Fish Lasagna
Perused an awesome outdoor flea market!!!
Took in gorgeous ocean views (Sicily just across!)
One random memory: one night we went to this place that was recommended to us called “Lord Byron” for typical snack foods (pizza, calzoney type things, etc). It was PACKED because 1) it was SO cheap (everything was a buck) and 2) it was the perfect spot for young kids and their friends, or families to hang out. That night, we went and grabbed a quick bite to eat and a couple beers and walked outside to some of their outdoor seating. Right next to us, there was a table with about 10 10-12 year old kids chowing down on their snacks, and one kid drinking a beer trying to look SO cool in front of his friends (which, by the glimmer in their eyes, he was). Anyway, it was a great memory, one that made us both wish we were 11 again, and one I think we’ll always have.
Honestly, it was a great time. The weather was damn-near perfect, and I think we both were a bit sad to have to leave. It was such a slow moving city, but one that also had such a great vibe and energy to it. Attention those heading south! BE SURE TO STOP in REGGIO DI CALABRIA, stay at Casa Laguana and enjoy Southern Italian hospitality!
We hadn’t originally planned on visiting Naples. The reason we didn’t plan on visiting Naples is a bit difficult to put my finger on, because like much of our planning on this trip it was very haphazard and semi-random. I guess we had planned on spending more of our time in smaller cities on the coast, and less time in cities. But, after the Amalfi coast (which was amazing, but also wet with few indoor things-to-do that weren’t on the expensive side) we looked at the forecast and saw that it was going to be really raining cats and dogs (not literally cats and dogs) and so figured we’d head to a larger city, Napoli being close and easy to reach, and reasonably famous/well known/worthwhile.
This suited me just fine, because to be honest on our way down to the Amalfi my heart grew sad (not literally) knowing that we were so close to the (arguably not really) birthplace of pizza. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed that I had to say that I skipped over Naples, considering how much I love pizza.
And I love pizza. Along with Ramen, Sushi, and (without getting into specific dishes) Indian food, it’s #1. And this is perfect because in Naples there really is a lot of pizza, everywhere. Actually this is a small problem in the context of this blog post because pretty much the only photos we have from Naples are of Pizza. Here is an example:
This photo is from L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele – I ate there twice. The first time, I left Lindsay who was feeling sick as a dog (impossible to really know this) instead of comforting her or helping her recover, and it. was. awesome (love you Lindsay, with all my heart (not literally)). I was really really excited because if you google “best pizza naples italy” (you have to add italy or you’ll get Naples Florida results… thanks Obama) this is generally either the top, or one of the top 5.
The pizza here is sort of like a New York style. Thin crust. Crispy. Often you only have two options: margherita or marinara. It’s always cooked in a pizza oven. It’s always great. It’s sometimes more than great.
So, eating pizza is a pretty big part of what we did in Naples. When we weren’t doing that, we were generally sitting in a bar (aka “cafe”) drinking cappuccino or espresso or americano. I have to give Lindsay some real credit for giving espresso a real shot here. She had espresso 3 or 4 (maybe more?) days in a row.
We stayed in a hostel for 3 out of 4 days in Naples, and like many hostels (I hate this, by the way) they kick you out in the morning while they clean. Our hostel kicked us out at 10 am after breakfast. Breakfast, by the way, was some interesting here. I wish I had pictures, but basically it was toast, ultrapasterized milk in a box, cereal, small round dried biscuit things, terrible toast, and GIANT HUGE containers of Nutella. Oh, I sort of found a photo!
As I was saying, we got kicked out of our hostel every day at 10am. This doesn’t seem particularly early, and it’s not (I’m always up by 8:30, if not earlier. Lindsay is up… early also) but when you are traveling every day, and aren’t planning far ahead, and are trying to not spend a ton of money (which means you can’t just go to museums every day), it is sometimes better for us to hang out in our guest house (reading, writing blog posts, programming, etc) until 11 or 12, then heading out, so we have a really good chunk of time to explore and enjoy the day, but we also get some time at night. Of course, this sounds terrible or really sad perhaps, but it’s just reality – we can’t be tourists 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 10 months straight. Anyway, the point of all of this is to say that our normal travel schedule was slightly out of whack in Naples. We left earlier then normal, and we got home earlier then normal.
Here is Lindsay doing some random planning
Naples itself is a pretty awesome city I’d say. It’s dirty, there is more dog shit on the streets then any other city we’ve visited in the West, but it’s a really interesting and unique city compared to Rome/Florence/Venice. Of course, each city I just mentioned is unique, but Naples is unique in different ways. It feels a lot grittier and dirtier and generally more multi-cultural. For us Naples felt totally safe, but some people (who I suspect are perhaps not used to living in a city or being around a real mix of people) call it “dangerous.” I will admit there were a number of shady sorts of places, and I was a bit more cautious of where I put my money in some areas, but really it was pretty great.
Another thing that I really loved about Naples is that a few streets had a sort of “I bet this is what Italy felt like 60 years ago” feel to it. Once again, I wish I had more photos, but there were a few streets where people were selling vegetables in the back of oldish/beatupish trucks. Stuff like this. This photo doesn’t do it justice, but sort of gives the idea:
Actually, I scanned a bunch of slides (film) (I may have posted some of them on this blog before) that I found at an estate sale back in Berkeley a few years ago, and there were a bunch of photos from what I believe is Italy. These photos are very similar how these streets of Naples felt like to me. Again, the photo we took (above) isn’t from this street, but you can perhaps sort-a-kinda get the idea. I have no idea if these photos below are actually from Naples or not, but again, the feeling was similar to me.
We ended up spending 4 days in Naples because we found a good deal on a train to our next destination (Reggio Calabria) that required we stay there 4 days. Quite honestly, it was probably a day or two too many, considering we didn’t really DO anything in Naples. We didn’t go Pompeii (though we drove by Mount Vesuvius like 15 times going between Amalfi and Naples and ride sharing and etc), we didn’t go to a single museum (honestly we just didn’t feel like it), we mainly at pizza, walked around and people watched, ate at cafes, talked with people at our hostel, and hung out.
See, pizza!
One other highlight was cooking. One night Lindsay and I (more I then Lindsay, but she was working on planning the next phase of our trip!) made “traditional” bolognese sauce (like we learned in our class!). It was pretty good, and I’d say fun to do. There was an AMAZING grocery store (sort of like in Rome, but a bit fancier) and we went there twice to look around and buy food for cooking/eating. They had these cured legs of various animals that you could buy that were stored in what looked like a fancy soft guitar case. (Photos to come, I hope, if I can find them).
For the sake of documentation, the fourth night we ended up having to sleep in a different hotel. It was the hostel owners “cousin” (when I hear this I generally think, “yeah right” because in India and many other places with touts you hear this constantly, “oh please visit my brothers shop” “oh my cousin has a shop next door with great prices” “oh let me show you my mothers shop”, etc). It actually may have been the cousin, but regardless it was in a pretty shady area of town. And the hotel itself was a bit on the “prostitutes come here” side of things. But honestly, that’s not fair, because the place was actually totally fine. If you haven’t spend the last 8 months traveling or camping or doing something similar, then you might say it was a bit rundown or perhaps grimy, but the sheets felt clean enough to me, and the towels, while grey and dingy, smelled clean enough. Bonus: the rooms had themes, like the America Room with a mural of native americans. Etc. Our room, sadly, seemed theme-less. Though we did have a reasonably nice balcony, and there was an amazing pizza place nearby!
We ate pizza in Naples literally until the last minute. We ate pizza from Naples as we left Naples, on the train. Here Lindsay is standing with a pizza waiting for the train to Reggio Calabria.
Our trip to the Amalfi Coast was honestly kind of a pain. From our hostel in Rome, walked to the metro, which we took to the outskirts of the city where we did another ride-share. We met at this rinky-dink little gas station (Q8) on the side of the road. From there, we drove about 2.5 hours to an airport, where we hoped bus to a city called Salerno. We were the only ones on the bus (guess we were the only ones stupid enough to head to the coast when rain was in the forecast!). After about a 45 minute ride to Salerno, we were again dropped off at the bus terminal where we grabbed yet another bus (after waiting in the pouring and FREEZING rain for 1.5 hours) to Minori.
The bus ride the the Amalfi Coast was BEAUTIFUL, but never having great luck driving, I was crazy sick with the switchback turns. Another hour later, we arrived in beautiful Minori, where we were lucky enough to get to walk 950+ steps up the side of a mountain (no joke) with our packs. (Like I said, wasn’t the best day of travel we’d ever had, but certainly not the worst!). We arrived (somehow!) in great spirits (probably due to our insane view) and despite having un-perfect weather, were thrilled to be there.
So, our time in the Amalfi Coast looked a lot like this:
Ridiculous, right!?
Although the weather wasn’t great while we were there, the views were nothing short of spectacular.
The colors of the towns “popped” even more given the dark sky contrast
And the fog/mist rolling in over the hills was awesome.
We could almost imagine what it would have been like to visit in the summer, or some warm months when swimming might have been possible, but instead we collected rocks…
Read on the pier (and made new friends)…
Watched the sunset roll in…
Enjoyed the town (and the cute little lemon trees)…
Ate some delicious pasta a couple of nights, and had a really memorable night chatting with the owner one night (we were the only ones in the restaurant, so we were lucky that way). Talking with her was a highlight of our time in Minori, as was her delicious homemade limoncello that she gave us at the end of our 2.5 hour long meal. It is interactions like these that are definitely one of the perks of traveling in the off season. We saw her on various nights of our stay, and both times she took our hands and greeted us like friends. It was great.
Enjoying views like this from our guesthouse (again, 950+ stairs up the side of a mountain just like you can see mirrored here)
Walking from town to town on the windy sea-side roads….
Kevin posing in Minori.
Enjoying the SEAFOOD pasta (where it couldn’t have been fresher!)
AND, taking a 7-course cooking class in Sorrento!
Because of all the rain (and the fact that we had been meaning to take a class while we were here), we decided to “bite the bullet” and take the class. After an almost 2 hour bus ride (only about 20km away, again, the switchbacks are no joke) we finally made it to the beautiful Sorrento. It was just us in the class, which was yet another instance where traveling in February has worked to our benefit. About an hour into our class, the chef’s father (speaking no English), beautiful mother (who was one of the classiest women I have ever met in person, and reminded me so much of my great-grandma) and aunt (also, Italian speaker only) arrived to come see what was happening, chat with us and talk food. Honestly, it was exactly like you might imagine an interaction with a bonafide Italian family might be. They were warm, and gracious, hilarious and honestly made our time 1,000 times better than it already was. It was awesome.
Standard (ridiculous class photo + certificate).
All in all, our time in the Amalfi Coast was amazing. We were especially happy to have stayed in Minori, which was far less touristy than the other cities in the area. Despite our original plan to make our way south, south, south, we decided to head a bit north to Naples as rain was still in the forecast and we figured that if we were stranded in the rain, at least we would be able to indulge in copious amounts of pizza (which we did, but that’s for another post).
We took a total of three buses to get from Venice to our AirBnB apartment in Florence. The first two were pretty easy (other then having to sit and wait at the bus station in Venice for 4 hours as I mentioned in my previous post). The biggest pain was that the second bus dropped us off at what felt like the side of a major road, in the dark, where there were no street lights or sidewalks, etc.
I had expected this to some extent because like always I have checked out the full route we had to take before leaving Venice, and I knew that our last bus picked up on the side of a highway where there was no clear, obvious bus stop. I even saw the “stop” on google maps. But, it’s a bit different when you’re tired, and it’s pitch dark and you know that the bus is only coming once an hour (or so you hope!) and if you miss it you’re going to be sitting in the road for who knows how long in the cold, with a slight drizzle.
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We decided to get back to our backpacker roots (or something) in Rome and stay at a hostel. The hostel was OK, though the common area (the main reason to stay at a hostel in my opinion) was outside of the building and down the street half a block. This wasn’t a huge deal, except for the fact that when we asked the guy working at the front desk if there was a common area at all he told us no but that they were building one (there was construction going on). It was something of a confusing mis-communication. Oh well.
So, Rome. I feel like the past few blog posts are a bit boring in terms of listing things we did, and that’s mainly because we are following a pretty standard tourist path in some of these cities. Any photos you’ve seen of Rome pretty much sum up what we did in Rome.
For example…
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From Ancona, as I mentioned previously, we decided that we’d go North to Venice. Actually, Lindsay decided that, and when she told me she had decided this was a good idea I was thrilled because it seemed “smart.” I imagine traveling to a new countries in the way that we are traveling to new countries is sort of like what it must be like for a novice sculpture (let’s say the goal is to sculpt a life size dog) to start a new project with a giant, huge, block of clay. It’s tough to know where to start, and it’s tough to know once you’ve started if you’ve started in the right way. But, once you REALLY get started, then things start to fall into place and you realize that at least you’ve started. Or at least that’s how I imagine us…or something.
Anyway, we decided to go to Venice.
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Well, Ancona was our first stop in Italy. It is a port town, and it is not super touristy from what I can tell. Lindsay and I stayed in a super nice hotel (one of the most expensive places we’ve stayed on this trip), only because it was the only practical option for us as nothing else was available for a single night. The hotel, called the “Seeport Hotel” had a fancy worldpool shower, and we got a chocolate on our bed. And in general it was just really nice with a great view of the port. Also, the included breakfast was super fancy, with fancy cheeses and fancy other stuff. It was fancy. And fancy.
(more…)We took a night ferry from Split to Italy, in large part because Lindsay thought it would be fun to take a ferry somewhere, but also because it’s a pratical way of getting from Croatia to Italy. The original plan was to go to Arcona, then go to the South of Italy and then head back North, on the way down sticking to the East coast and on the way back up sticking to the West coast. That has since changed because we realized that it was probably a bit crazy to go in a circle around the country, so we’ve instead decided to go North to Venice, then work our way South to Sicily and then finally fly to France (Marseille) from there. Basically, only go South (except to go North to Venice from Ancona).
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