is how much time i have left in italy, today. sort of weird that i decided to figure that out today, while it's such a square, round number.
So! where to start?! I just got back from sicily, the island at the bottom of Italy. It was pretty mind blowing for too many reasons and some really awesome things happened. I suppose I'll give a quick rundown of what I did, and then comment.
First, I went to Napoli with my study abroad program and I showed up really late. The next morning I went to pompeii where I felt super SUPER weird all day because I couldn't stop thinking about the last time I was there in september/october, and how different and yet the same it all seemed. This time, i felt like I noticed the tile work and art in pompeii a lot more, but since we had a guide we also learned a lot more about the daily life. Below is a citizen of pompeii who was probably trying to cover his or herself from the ash and monstrous rocks that were falling from the sky when vesuvius erupted by the look of the arms crossed over the face area.
That same day, we did an underground visit of the bunker/old well system in all of Napoli, it was SOO awesome and the tour guide led us through these tiny little pathways from one cavern to the next, and everytime we entered a pathway he would scream indiana jones and sing the theme song. Hilarious. He spoke really really thick napolitano italian, and we basically couldnt understand him but it was awesome anyway.
Next day we scaled mount vesuvius. I don't really know what to say about it except that I was having a breakdown from the excitement the whole time we were hiking up, and I basically ran to the top powered by sheer joy and adrenaline. I was handed a weathered walking stick from a VERY old man who had a fire in a wheel barrow at the beginning of the hike. haha. It was so cold up there I couldn't deal with it. The tour guide told all the girls not to ask him for his number because his wife was an alligator and she would eat us if we asked, but that we could ask all other questions we wanted. I bought a cool postcard of napoli thats hanging in my kitchen.
That afternoon, went to an archeological museum where we saw tons of sculpture and art from pompeii, and lots of lots of history. The pompeii stuff was especially cool. There was a ton of kitchen ware, silver and gold plates cups bowls silverware. stuff like that was cool.
In napoli I drank coffee with sweet almond whip stuff, which is a typical thing, awesome cheap pizza, total duh, and ECCO, my abroad program, took us to lunch 2 days in a row at this restaurant where they gave us AWESOME pasta (and nasty second dishes ie meat).
Then, from napoli we went to palermo. It took us half a day to get there, but once we were finally there, we were all pumped and did a big outing in the city. We went and looked at everything we could see by night (big monuments like the theater, which is the 2nd biggest in europe, some fountains, churches of which the main cathedral is pictured below, the port)
and THEN we went to this CRAZY awesome fish restaurant that was recommended to us by the hostel owner (who also gave us a discount card) and i ate SO many fish I'd never seen before. I'd never had octupus or squid, and i'd never had to dismember a full shrimp. I ate swordfish, frutti di mare, and this super bomb pasta with pieces of different fish all over the place. There was a bottomless decanter of white wine on the table and it took us like 3 hours to eat all the food.
This is also one of the 3 open air produce fish meat spices markets in Palermo. i totally enjoyed the colors, here, again, as i was saying in my other post.
The next day we saw more of palermo, took a tour of the theater, tried to rent a car but we didnt cuz it would have cost an arm and a leg (we were trying to use hertz so they have crazy insurance, and normal age regulations like in the states) and then we took a bus to monreale. Basically all thats there, beside the best pasticceria (bakery) in the world is a church with crazy mosaics.
After an afternoon in the church, we ate pastery (i had incredible cannoli which are typical sicilian desert among other things) and then we continued on to cefalù.
In cefalù we didn't do much but take pictures because it was so astonishingly beautiful. It wasn't even really a beautiful day, in the sense that there wasn't a lot of sun, but to me the sheer RAW FORCE of the ocean was frightfully awesome. Basically i felt like i was at some sort of surprising entertainment show, because the waves would smack the rocks and shoot vertically 15 feet in the air, yet 5 feet away I was completely unreachable by the waves and I just sort of watched with wonder and took way too many pictures for hours and hours.
Then we spent quite a bit on a train to get to Taormina. We knew we were going to be later than our initially expected arrival time, so I'd been trying to call all day. The number of our hostel/hotel place never worked, but i kept trying anyway. So when we get to the station we're just hoping the place is open and someone is there. We get to the place, which was not in the town of taormina but 5 km in the opposite direction from the train station, so we already had a bad feeling. So we are at a huge gate infront of the drive of this villa bed and breakfast type thing, and I ring the intercom like 5 million times, call the 2 numbers listed out front, and finally i decide to climb the fence, because it was like 9 at night, we'd just paid to take a cab out to this middle of nowhere lodging, and the staff was super not available, so i was just frustrated. As soon as I'm sitting on top of the fence, i see motion inside the house. A guy peeks his head out the window and i say 'uh hey sorry...' and then he comes out of the house on crutches with a fat cast on his foot and he's like 'hey who are you?' and i was like 'yea we're guests, we've been calling all day and we made a reservation here so...' and he was like' cool come in.' in the end, the reservation we'd made on hostel bookers, this one site, hadn't ever arrived to them so they weren't expecting anyone, but they ended up letting us stay at the house because its also a bed and breakfast, even though we'd reserved an appartment in
the city center. So the the guy with the broken foot felt really bad and offered us dinner, and his CRAZY parents came home and cooked us a BOMB-ass soup since we couldnt really go get food cuz it was already like 9:30pm. hahaha it was so funny.
anyway, Taormina was incredible. We walked through the city, ate HUGE amounts of deserts around lunch time, went to the greek theater, and took pictures all day. The weather was nice that day which was nice.
Next day was catania. In catania, i ate the BEST KEBAB AND COUS COUS ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. omg i don't have pictures because i didn't bring my camera out to eat since its sort of bulky and really conspicuous, but we ate like queens. the hostel was nasty but really central, so we were out and about a lot and i actually really really enjoyed catania. It was so cheap. People drove in the most INSANE ways, with crazy park jobs, complete lack of respect for lane lines, tons of horns, and its not liek there was a ton of traffic always, it just seemed like people weren't afraid to enter into conflict with each other over. At night in catania we also took a really lovely stroll around 8 at night, which is really normal in Italy, to go out with friends or family and just take a walk. While we were out that night, the whole city was teeming with people, even though it was drizzling. So many fashionable tweens, older men walking with lag talking with thick accents, strollers, umbrellas. It was just a sight to see. We also went to a happy hour and got pleasantly buzzed together. here's the inside of the duomo/main church in catania.
Next was siracusa, which seemed so sleepy and out of season when we were there. We stayed in perhaps the coolest hostel in italy, called LOLhostel, and we cooked dinner in that night to save money. In siracusa there's entirely too much too see, like amazing archeological sights, two ancient theaters, catacombs, that statue of the mary that started crying and the pope recognized it as a miracle, an ancient greek temple, a gorgeous main piazza, and awesome beaches but unfortunately a lot was closed. While we were there, practically no one was out, it was slightly drizzling, and all the sights were closed. We thought that we might go to the aquarium as an indoor activity, but that was closed too! It was beautiful at any rate, and I particularly enjoyed the almost spooky calmness of the water after having seen cefalù's beaches so hectic only a few days before. Below are pictures of the water and the main piazza.
Last but not least, we headed to Trapani to catch our flight back to bologna. We were only there for long enough to eat pizza, watch the sunset, get gelato, and take the nightly walk with all the fashionable italians, but it was an impressively clean and lively city.
So, Sicily as an experience was really particular for me. I had a lot of down time during train rides and bus rides, and I also found myself roaming by myself more often than sticking with the group, so I guess I thought a lot about italy and being here and the south and how different it is. Everyone talks about it, it's one of the first thing anyone learns when they start italian studies, that the south is so different, as if the north is normal and the south is not, I don't know how to explain it to non italian scholars, but it really is a huge difference, and it felt weird to be there as a tourist for such a whirlwind of a trip. I love the south, i think. The food, the sea, the landscape. People just seem more connected to the earth and connected to each other. Men walk arm in arm and its super normal. It doesn't seem strange at all. The population is just close, they fight as if they are all family members with complete strangers (as i mentioned about the pandemonium that is southern driving-they seem indifferent to offending or inconveniencing other drivers), and there's this incredibly strong sense of community. Maybe i'm exaggerating or it seemed so strong to me because i was outside of it, but at least from what i've seen of northern social day to day dynamics between strangers, the south is much more friendly. (again, which everyone says).
It made me want to stay. The trip was expensive because we ran around so much and wanted to eat everything we saw and try stuff we'd never tried and enter museums we knew nothing about and then take buses and trains to another city every day, but there's something mystical about that island. there's such an incredible mix of cultures that you can see in the architecture, taste in the food, and hear in the language and it's almost overwhelming to have such a stark change of culture and scenery all within the borders of one country.
Another interesting thing, which I've experienced a lot in italy with the most famous places, was being there not during tourist season. venice, florence, rome, and napoli I've seen all during tourist offseasons, and even though I'm still easily recognizable as a non-local (thanks irish/german/other northern european heritage and accent) its sort of a nice cultural window to see a place in its more natural undisturbed state instead of infected with tourists. For example, it rained probably 6 of 10 days I was gone, but I'm still totally satisfied with having gone in march instead of May or June, because I saw a different side of it. Of course I imagined endlessly how magical Sicily must be shrouded in sunlight, especially when I got glimpses of it, but in the end, I'm happy I went when I did.In any case, I easily fall in love with things, and I suppose sicily for the moment, will be one of those things i utterly adore. I really felt like it stole my heart, and I hope when I'm back next time I'll still have this burning desire to go back.
I'm going to berlin next and really soon-in only 10 days! It should be really strange to travel by myself again, but I think i sort of selfishly enjoy it for the most part before getting helplessly lonely. It will be a short one, only 3 days, but thats just about right for one city and being alone. In the meantime, I'm trying to get plugged in here in bologna. This week I'm busy doing things with people, especially since I wasn't here for a week and a half, and then a friend from london, Amelia, is coming to stay with me!!!!!!!! which will be my first real guest here in bologna. The only other guest I've had is joey, who unfortunately saw bologna less than every other italian city (since its so damn expensive, friggin hotels). So i'm psyched! after that, the semester will fly, i'm sure, seeing as how I only have 100 days left, which is more than the kids from this semester, but still seems like nothing after i've already been here for 7 months. FML!!!
write me and what not. I've been really homesick lately in a sort of abstract way. :-/ bleh. oh and thanks for putting up with the absurd length of this post. if u even made it to the end.
