notes from abroad

The “early to rise” part of our plan didn’t really happen and we ended up waking up around…11AM? After lazing around for a bit (our hostel was really nice – it was hard not to just sit around and enjoy the luxury of a big room, air conditioning, and free wifi) we headed to the train station. We were told we could take the bus, but we’d missed the one for that hour and decided to go for the train instead.

The train took a lot longer than we’d expected so we didn’t actually get into Siena until around 5:30PM. We knew that the last bus out was at 7:10PM, so we would have to do the speed tour. We bought our bus tickets to save the last minute hassle and set into the city center.

On the bus from the train station we ran into a group of students from the UC system who were studying Italian in Siena. They were nice enough to let us follow them into the main Piazza because we would have gotten so lost.

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We arrived in Florence pretty early, which was good because that meant that we could go on a bit of an “orientation tour” with the BusAbout guide to get our bearings. We went by the major sites – the Duomo, the various museums, etc. on our way to dinner for the evening.

BusAbout arranges some group dinners in each city where you can go and get a proper meal for a pretty decent price. This wasn’t offered in Rome, so when I heard about the Florence dinner I was intrigued, but after hearing the menu I decided to opt out. Alice mentioned that since it was a regular restaurant it might be possible to just order what we want off of the menu. She was right. Good call.

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On our way to Florence the bus made a 2-hour stop at Orvieto, a small hill-top town between Rome and Florence. The stop was a surprise to me, but it looked quaint and I was excited to be off of the bus for a little while.

We took a funicular up to the town where Ben, our BusAbout guide, walked us to the Duomo. We didn’t go inside, but it was a really incredible building from the outside. So ornate! It looked like a giant vanilla and chocolate layered wedding cake.

From there we had the option to go to some sort of cave, but Alice, a girl from Australia that I’d met in Rome, and I decided to wander through the town instead. We found all sorts of cute little streets where people were just stopped in the middle catching up and chatting about this and that. It was the Italian town you always imagine – high on a hill, winding cobblestone streets with few cars (if any at all), green shutters and big wooden doors, window boxes with bright pink flowers and a slow and steady pace. There weren’t many tourists around which was perfect.

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Alllllllllllllrighty. So now we’re on our 3rd full day in Rome. Laura’s last day before her flight to London and then back to Canada. Three things on our to-do list. Well, 3 sights at least. I also wanted a granite (a slushie) and Laura needed to get her Rome shot glass.

We got a late start to the day (thank god) and went straight to the Colosseum. We decided to do a tour because, to be honest, we didn’t have the brain power to do much of the thinking for ourselves. The tour covered the Colluseum itself and Palantine Hill. It would take an hour and 45 minutes, which was good because I think that’s about all of the attention span I could muster.

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Tuesday: I’d originally planned to do a day trip from Rome to Naples, Capri and Pompeii. After hearing from one of the BusAbout guides that a day like that would be pretty much impossible, we decided to just go for Pompeii. Capri would have been cool, and I still would like to go there at some point, but I really didn’t want to leave Italy without seeing Pompeii.

So Tuesday morning we got up at the crack of dawn once again. Showered, dressed, and out the door before 7:30. We knew we had to get to Termini station in order to get a train to Naples and then we’d have to take a local train to get to Pompeii (the Circumvesuviana). We were hoping to get there by around noon, 1PM at the latest.

We did well. Bought our tickets – yay for Eurail passes, once again – and made our train with no major problems. Sweet. So far so good. After getting a bit lost (and grossed out) by the Napoli Centrale (the Naples train station) we made it to the Circumvesuviana and off to Pompeii.

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It’s only been around 3-4 days since I last blogged, but it feels like a lifetime ago. I don’t even know where to begin!

Let’s see…Sunday: Rolled out of bed early to check out and get on the BusAbout to Rome. It’s a really nice long-distance coach with AC and power outlets. If it had wi-fi I think I would have cried with delight, but no luck there. Pretty much everyone had 2 seats to themselves which was nice to napping (or rather continuing the previous night’s sleep). We stopped every 2 hours at rest areas for food and bathroom and such. Everyone who’d been on the bus before said that it was one of the worst rides they’d had so far. I thought it was great – sleep for 2 hours, wake up, eat, go to the bathroom, get back on the bus, sleep, and do it again until you’re in Rome!

We got into Rome around 6:30 I believe. Laura and I managed to get into the same cabin which was good considering the many early mornings we had planned. And it’s air conditioned. Major win. Even better news (or so we thought at the time) was that there is a supermarket across the road. We literally threw our stuff down on our beds and went straight to the produce aisle. So. Disappointing. Really I don’t know what these people eat because there weren’t many vegetables around and the selection they DID have looked like it’s had a tough life so far. We ended up getting bagged salad (nothing like the ones in the States. This was a sad, sad salad) some pre-cubed ham (glorified SPAM) to throw on top, and the only dressing we could find: lemon juice. Not the greatest tasting salad on the planet, but I just wanted vegetables. I would have eaten a carrot Bugs Bunny style if I had to.

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19 hours in Italian time is actually somewhere closer to 21. That’s how long my train took to get from Palermo to Venice. I have to say, though, it wasn’t all that bad.

I left Palermo around 4PM on Thursday and arrived in Venice around 1PM on Friday. I somehow managed to snag an entire cabin to myself with bunk beds for the overnight journey. It was a little weird being completely on my own on a train I’d never ridden before because I wasn’t able to pick up clues from the people around me about when to get off, how to get the door to lock but be openable from the outside (something that annoyed the conductor a bit) and things like that. Ah well, I just made it up as I went along.

The one part that through me for a loop, though, was when they loaded the train onto a ferry to get from Sicily to the mainland. I’d read about this type of transport in a travel guide somewhere but I wasn’t entirely sure if I was supposed to stay in my car, go out and into the boat or what. That part of the trip was pretty long as I hoped that I was in the right place at the right time and wouldn’t be shipped off somewhere else because I didn’t change trains on the ferry or something.

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I don’t remember one ounce of my flight to Sicily. I slept like a log until just about the time where we dipped below the clouds. Sleep is a wonderful thing.

My first impressions of Sicily were great. It seemed beautiful from above and as we went in for our landing I was impressed by the landscape. Much better than Copenhagen.

I hopped on the train to Palermo. It was just over 45 minutes from the airport. The towns we passed through were cute – kids playing soccer, Vespas abound, just what you’d expect.

Then we pulled into Palermo. Upon reaching the station’s exit I believe the first words that came to mind were “uh oh” (probably closely followed by “holy hell it’s hot.”)

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