Ali and I departed Copenhagen for Italy. We chose to fly into Naples instead of Rome because the flights were tremendously cheaper and we would easily be able to take a train into Rome from there anyways...or so we thought. We arrived at the Naples train station around 11 AM and went to the information desk to figure how how to get to the Naples train station, from which we were to take a train to Rome at 12:30. The woman at the desk, who spoke very little English, informed us that no trains were running due to a workers strike. This news was immensely inconvenient, as this meant that no buses were running to take us into central Naples either. Since the route was not walkable - from what I gathered from the woman’s broken English (once she finally took a break from her long phone conversation with what sounded like a relative, whilst filling her nails) we had to resort to taking a taxi. We found a taxi outside the station, and the driver said there was a fixed price. So we got in. The driver drove like an absolute madman. At one point along our thankfully short journey, he cut in front of another car (who had every right of way) to make a left turn and the car ended up a mere foot from my door. When I finally calmed down and opened my eyes, I looked out the windows again to observe the Italian life around me. The streets of Naples were carpeted with orange peels and rotten tomatoes, and trashbags seemed to be in every place except the clearly present bins. Several pizzerias could be found on a single block, as expected. When we arrived at the station, the taxi driver charged us a fixed price, even though the fare on the counter was considerably cheaper. But we were not about to argue with a potential mob member or relative of, so we paid him, took our bags, and made our way into the train station. We went to the ticket desk inside, where a woman told us that no trains were running until after 6 and that we would have to change our ticket. So, we went to the customer service desk in the station to ask about changing the time of the train, where another the woman told us that we could take a train at 3:30. She simply wrote “3:30” on our ticket, and as unofficial as this seemed, she told us we were all set. However, because of the language barrier, we were unconvinced that we were indeed “all set.” We decided to go outside the train station, get some lunch, and maybe explore Naples a bit to kill time. We walked maybe a block down the road when we noticed a trend. As we strolled, lugging our suitcases behind us, it became obvious to us that just about everybody on the street was turning their heads to stare at us. We continued walking around the block to find a pizza place, becoming more and more insecure as the staring failed to seize and catcalls commenced from men varying in age over about 5 decades. One man standing outside of a hotel asked us rather slyly, in an effort to get business, “hello girls, do you need a bed to sleep in tonight?” and grinned with a gold-plated smile. We started walking faster. After circling a single block, we felt that we got a good sense of Naples and concluded that it would be best to return to the train station as soon as possible. But first, we made our venture outside the station worthwhile by grabbing pizza at the nearest pizzeria. I selected a pizza on display that was covered with chunks of eggplant, cheese, and fresh tomatoes. We took the pizza to go, so that we could safely enjoy it in the train station. It was one of the best pizzas I had ever tasted - and it would be the highlight of my short stay in Naples.
After finishing our lunch, we glanced at the clock. We still had 4 hours left, and since “exploring Naples” was no longer an option, we had to think up an alternative to entertain ourselves. We went in a few stores within the station to find a book or crossword puzzles, or some form of entertainment that would distract us for several hours - but everything was in Italian. So, we decided to buy a deck of cards. When I took out the cards from the box, we were disappointed to find that they were not standard playing cards - instead, strange colorful jokers, instruments, and swords were featured on the numberless cards.
Not about to give up on the prospect of having an alternative to desperately staring at the clock for 4 hours, I had an idea of making “homemade” cards by simply assigning these cards normal card numbers. Sadly, there were 40 cards instead of 52. I did not want to put the 5 euros spent on the cards to waste, so we made the best of the situation and played with the cards anyways. There were not enough cards to play “crazy 8’s”, one of the very few card games we both knew, so we played “crazy 7’s” instead. Unfortunately, this got old after about 20 minutes. As we sat and occasionally got up to walk around, we noticed that staring from various people was occurring in the station as well, and was simply unavoidable. We could not pinpoint why we stuck out so much (we weren't wearing shirts that said "AMERICAN" or any other item of clothing that would draw attention) or why these people didn't get the memo that it was rude to stare. We decided to go back to the customer service desk to make sure that we would be out of Naples at 3:30, as we could not fathom staying even a minute longer. The first worker we approached at a ticket booth succinctly stated “no train.” Ali and I were dismayed by this abrupt response, because for the past few hours, we had witnessed trains coming and leaving from the platforms. In fact, as this man relayed this message to us, there was a train leaving the platform directly in his field of view. Our frustration augmented, and we returned to the customer service desk in hope of finding a more capable English speaker. A new person was working at the desk, and like everyone else we had talked to at that point, he knew about 10 words of English and communicated almost entirely through hand gestures. He indicated to us that no trains were running at present (nothing new) and spouted the numbers “20, 30.” Assuming he was telling us that we could not leave until 8:30 PM (or 20:30 PM), our frustration evolved into anger. We were getting nowhere.
We chose to believe in our "3:30" ticket and forget about the rest. We went out to the platform and walked as far as we could alongside the tracks to get away from the staring. Mount Vesuvius was in view, and we were glad that we could still sight-see in Naples while still remaining within the perimeter of the station.
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| Sadness. |
As we started taking pictures, faking smiles, a gray-haired Italian man on the opposite side of the tracks attempted to communicate with us. We were rather isolated from the mass of people in the train station, and at first we assumed he would be a creep like everyone else. He struggled to speak English, but managed to ask where we were from. When Ali responded “New York” the man’s eyes lit up as he drew a large circle in the air and then bit into an imaginary apple. I had no idea what the man was doing, but Ali gathered “big apple” from his gestures and gave him a thumbs up. We could tell he wanted to continue talking, but after a lengthy pause, during which he was trying to think of how to make a sentence, he gave up and gave us a friendly wave.
We went back inside the train station and were delighted to find our train time on the screen. This gave us hope, and we eagerly awaited the platform number to show up. Finally at 3:30, our train arrived. The sight of the train approaching fostered an indescribable feeling that gave us every reason to rejoice.
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| The approaching train! Best thing I've ever seen. |
The train was packed with people, and rather dingy looking, but we were just happy that it existed. We waited for about an hour for the train to depart, while we heard Italian spoken over the intercom and watch several confused looking Italians move around us and get off. By that point we did not bother confirming where the train was destined, as long as it was going somewhere. The views on the train ride were beautiful - I saw hills harboring small and densely packed villages at their summits, olive groves, and cattle out one side and the ocean, very calm and blue, outside the opposite windows of the train. Four hours later, we were in Rome. We met up with our friend Eric in the station, and went to our hostel to drop off our bags. The hostel had an incredible location - almost directly across from the Vatican.
That night in Rome we got dinner at a restaurant close to our hostel - with a 10 pound deal that included pasta, potatoes, gelato, and nearly a bottle of wine.
The potatoes were marinated in olive oil and topped with rosemary, and my mouth waters thinking about them even now. After dinner, we stopped by the Vatican, which was beautifully lit up.
We chatted for a while with a couple of British girls and a guy from Costa Rica named Ezekiel who were all staying in our hostel room that night.
April 2, 2011: A walking tour of Rome
The next morning, we bought some croissants for breakfast at a nearby café. The croissants were filled with a delicious custard that Ali and I could not identify - but it was really good regardless and from then on we would be buying these croissants for breakfasts throughout the trip like addicts.
As we walked towards the Vatican, we were hounded by people with pamphlets offering deals for cheap tours, cutting lines, etc.. Interestingly, before we got our breakfast, most of these people immediately assumed we spoke English; but once we had a croissant in hand, we were introduced to various deals in French - an understandable assumption since only French people eat croissants. That morning, I also learned that cars in Italy will not stop for you as you cross the road - they will either remain at the same speed or accelerate to terrify you. I even almost got hit by a moped. The Italians have no fear. We walked around the Vatican Museum, which was massive, fascinating, and overwhelming. At the very end of the museum's sequence, we saw the Sistine Chapel. The guards in the chapel made loud “SHHH” sounds and exclaimed “no picture!” every half minute. I decided to break the rules like several other person in the room and snap a picture of the ceiling anyways. I was feeling a little overconfident and instead of settling with my first picture, I continued taking more - until a guard came by and smacked my arm down. He sternly said something in Italian and pointed to my camera, probably instructing me to delete it, but I gave him a stupefied look, pretended to push buttons on the camera, and walked away. Here is proof of my rebellious act:
Afterwards, we got lunch at a cafe and I got a foccacia topped with the freshest tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. Mmmmm.
Then, we began walking around Rome, fitting in as much as we could within that day. Here is the sequence of sights that we passed:
1. St. Peter’s Square (in the daylight this time)
2. Castel Sant’Angelo - we didn't go inside because we already had so much on our agenda.
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| Walking along the Tiber River. St. Peter's Basilica in the distance. |
3. Piazza Navona.
4. The Pantheon - but first, it is worth mentioning that we got gelato in the plaza outside of the Pantheon.
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| Pistachio and chocolate hazelnut - a recommended combination. |
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| Inside the Pantheon. |
5. Trevi fountain - one of my favorite places.
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| It was packed with people. It was a popular hang out spot for kids who had just gotten out of school. |
6. Triton fountain.
7. Spanish steps - we ascended the steps and sat for a while to recuperate from our long walk.
8. Piazza del Popolo.
For dinner, I had linguine al funghi porcini. Because I love both pasta and mushrooms.
We went back to our hostel, where we chatted with other hostel-stayers we met, including Ezekiel and a girl from Canada named Iris, drank wine, and ate weird Italian cookie/biscuit things. April 3, 2011: Ancient Rome
We saw the Colloseum, obviously a must-see in Rome.
Next we went to Palatine Hill nearby. Palatine Hill was my favorite part of Rome. It was beautiful. I would have stayed the whole day there but our hunger forced us to cut our time short. Within the "hill" we saw the house of augustus, Circus Maximus, and the Roman Forum.
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| Circus Maximus |
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| The remains of the walls in Augustus's house. |
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| Ceiling in Augustus's house. |
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| The Roman Forum. |
We had a good dinner with our new friend Ezekiel. As usual, I got some pasta dish and then for dessert, I ate a delicious tiramisu.
April 4, 2011: Day of the dead
In the morning, we went inside the Vatican. It was very cool being inside a place I had only seen on TV during papal coronations and which had such tremendous historic significance. I looked out for the pope while I was there, but didn't spot him.
Then we went to the Catacoumbs of San Castillo with Ezekiel, which was located in the outskirts of Rome and involved a very long trek down a highway. We got a tour of the tombs - the underground pathway actually extended over 11 miles, so we saw very little of it. The path was dimly lit and a little eerie, and I expected to see some human bones. Apparently, the removed all of the exposed bones due to several incidences in the past when people would steal them. One guy even mailed a bone back to them with an apology notice before he died. On our tour, we were with a group of Texans who were loud and obnoxious - and generally didn't do any good for the American image. Their comments were simply embarrassing. One of my personal favorites included “So can I still be buried here?” asked by one of the Texans at the end of the tour, to which the guide responded, “No, the last person was buried in 400 BC.”
We went to see the crypt of the capuchin monks afterwards, which consisted of several chapels intricately decorated with human bones. It was pretty freaky, and I had to seriously question the ethics of this form of artwork.
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| Here's an image I got online, since I was not allowed to take pictures. Look it up though, it's a very unique and unusual place. |
We went to Trevi fountain again and got the “best gelato in Rome.” We then bought some strawberry wine at a grocery, since Iris had told us about it and we all wanted to try it. It was very good and the only wine I've ever really enjoyed - probably because it tasted like grape and strawberry juice with no alcohol content. For dinner, we went to a place called Dino and Tony’s, an authentic, family-owned restaurant (Dino and Tony are brothers that actually run the place). I got alfredo pasta with mushrooms - soooo good.
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| The biggest individual pizza I've ever seen. |
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