Italy Recap

The Spain Recap page won't load on this internet because of the pictures now, so the first couple are from Spain..

Saturday, June 27- Bye Bye Spain

I didn’t go to sleep until 4am because I was using the free internet, so I slept until 10:15 today! It worked out nicely though, because we ate lunch before heading out. We experienced the Spanish post office (which took us over 20 min to figure out) The automatic stamp machine needed EXACT change and the teller couldn’t figure out what was wrong so he directs us back to the machine. Ugh. The twins and I saw the Cadiz Cathedral and climbed the tower before wandering the city for another hour before heading back to the ship, which left 3 hours late because the Barcelona trip didn’t get back on time and it was an SAS-sponsored one so dock-time is not an option.

Spain Recap:

CADIZ

Beach at low tide

Castles

Gardens

Sangria

Flamenco

SEVILLE

Gypsy and rosemary

Authentic lunch and wine

CORDOBA

Jewish concert in botanical gardens

Cathedral/mosque

Wandering city

Having the coke/frozen candy man yell at us

Overall Impression:

The people keep very much to themselves for the most part and pretend like we don’t stick out like sore thumbs. They are much more similar to us than I thought… the only difference being to restructured schedule to incorporate siesta! There was farrrr less English spoken than I thought though.

Sunday, June 28- Are we ever going to get to Italy!?

I woke up this morning and we were already “bunkered” in the Straits of Gibraltar. (Bunkering is the term for refueling) Apparently we were only supposed to be there for 3 hours, but we didn’t leave until about 3 in the afternoon! I was sunning on the front deck and when we turned into the wind and started to move it was no lie 40 mph winds and my pillow and shirt would have both been in the ocean had there not been a guard rail! I leaned with all my weight on the rail and it was still pushing me back, I’ve never been in something that windy before!

Other than that, nothing too exciting- I did my first art project, went to a Sea Olympics meeting (I got dragged into being one of our “seas” reps. ) had dinner with my adopted family and had THE BEST ice cream cake celebrating birthdays!

Monday, June 29- EW

This was the first bad day I’ve had! I just had class, had to study for 2 exams for tomorrow morning, and I had to write a paper that I hadn’t started yet. Needless to say nothing happened today that wouldn’t happen on a typical college day.

Tuesday, June 30- Easy Exams- YAY!

Global Studies was supppper easy after only studying for about an hour. It was 100 matching (groups of 5) and we had all the terms to study and people actually thought it was terrible and I just thought- dude, take my engineering classes! I didn’t finish my paper until 1 and got up at 5am today to study (I had music exam too which was fine) so a bit tired, but I took a 2 hour nap in the sun so that helped! So I counted today, only 6 days of the next 34 days are going to be on the ship and one of them is the Sea Olympics- this is where the trip becomes awesome.

Wednesday, July 1- ROMA!

Today was Rome on Your Own. I wasn’t expecting to have too much fun today (big city, people all over, long lines) but it turns out that I’m going back tomorrow because I had so much fun and didn’t get to see everything! I thought that one of my friends was doing this trip so I planning on hanging out with her all day, but it turns out she wasn’t and I got on the bus and only recognized one other girl so I sat next to her and asked if I could tag along.. she had the same plan and thought her friends were on the other bus, well it turned out they weren’t so I made a new travel buddy today! We had a great time seeing:

The Pope! He was sitting outside in St. Peter’s Sq. talking to a large group of people (apparently it is a weekly Wednesday thing)

San Angelo Castle

Piazza Navona with the Fountains of the Four Rivers and many street artists

The Pantheon- sweet (free) building that used to be a temple and has a open ceiling at the top of the dome

Piazza Di Trevi/ Trevi Fountain complete with the coin toss (one to come back to Rome, two for love, three for divorce- I just stuck with one!) and gelato- choco-orange and tiramisu (new favorite food, this is beyond good both and all flavors)

Spanish steps

Coloseum- walked around it.. only here did I start to realize I was actually seeing all these places that are always talked about.

Well at this time I had walked about 10 miles, ridden the metro 3 times and had to catch my bus! I didn’t even get to the Basilica or Sistene Chapel so I had to come back…

Back in Civitavecchia we got some bruschetta and wine, yum!

Thursday, July 2- Roma II: Buckets of Sweat

I traveled alone via train to meet a friend who was on the Rome on Your Own trip today. We had planned 10am at the starting point. If I knew what I was doing I would have caught the 8:01 train, but it pulled out just as I found the ticket machine.. I left at 8:40 getting to Rome at 9:50. Crap- the station is on the opposite side of Rome! It is here that I realized how reliant we are on and how handy cell phones are. My track was the last one in the station so I had to book it about ½ mile to the metro station and stood in line for 5 min. only to find that ticket lady had to change for a 10, so I stood in another line, waited 6 stops and got off at 10:20 with still ½ mile to go. If I didn’t find her before she gave up I would have been alone all day so I was nearly running there! By the time I got there (10:30) I was covered in sweat. Great. But luckily she had gotten there late so it was perfect timing.

We cruised around St. Peter’s Basilica and then climbed it…all 533ish steps with hardly any windows, tons of people, and JEANS. I was dripping all over the place it was sooo disgusting but climbing a dome and the view were pretty sweet and everyone was in the same boat. We were meeting my roommate at the Trevi Fountain in two hours at this point but we still had to see the Sistene Chapel which is all the way at the end of the Vatican Museum exhibit. We raced through that (beautiful) and booked it over for some more gelato. I also bought a ridiculously overpriced juice because I was dying. We just walked around the city some more, got another gelato (all 12 flavors I’ve tried have been my favorites!) and now I’m sitting on this 100+ degree train dripping again. Perfect. CANNOT wait to shower.

Also tonight- had more pizza and limoncello- pizza is by far the best here and the drink is super strong more like a shot of the most potent lemonade ever mixed with vodka. It’s strangely good though…

Friday, July 3- Orvieto, Phalanx Battles

Orvieto was a medieval town built on a bluff for protection. It also has an underground cave system/city and mosaic cathedral, which we checked out. To get to the town was a 2+ hr bus ride and we drove past sweet sunflower fields (the size of our cornfields and bigger).. it is my goal to walk though one before we leave, but it might be hard since they are mostly in the countryside.

The caves were pretty ballin’.. At one point, the twins and I took this ramp from the twon thinking it would go to the caves- we find a door and it overlooks the valley! We pop out for a pic, but some dude closes the door! This means we had to walk over ½ mile up the steep road- it was an adventure I tell ya…

The cathedral was possibly my favorite so far- it was one row of black bricks then one row of white so striped and just looked really cool. We ate the classic Margherita pizza and white wine which I have really started to like.

Back in Civitavecchia, I attempted to find a grocery store- partly for some supplies for a birthday bash/dance party we planned in our room tonight, partly for personal snackies. Well we walked over an hour and never found something and were competing with “On-Ship Time” so settled with a little mom-and-pop shop that only had wine, noodles, cookies, and fanta. So we got the second two and called it good enough!

The party was soo much fun! We packed about 12 people in our room and put colored paper over the lights and danced a bit, did the limbo (which I totally ‘won’ and rock at), played some stupid little games, and finished it off with an epic pillow fight and PHALANX BATTLES! Haha Phalanx was a global studies term on our last exam which is a battle formation where the warriors line up side by side with shields covering them and their neighbor and really long spears and charge. We used pillows and our arms so it was more like sumo wrestling in the room, but down the hallway was epic with a full-out run and people were running into their rooms and it was just a chaotic mess and hilarious! It only lasted so long though since it was 11pm and some people were trying to sleep and got pissed. Haha

Sorry about the lack of pics- I’ve been so busy I haven’t even looked at any since the last time I posted so I can’t even say if I have any good ones! Also we don’t have free internet here so I have to wait to post that kind of stuff until we do and I have time, which by the looks of it may never happen! I am staying up extra late typing this all out because I know I’ve been slacking and tomorrow is a busy day- I’m doing Mt. Vesuvius tomorrow and trying to see Pompeii as well, which might be too much for one day but we’ll find out- it’ll be an adventure. But I gotta get to bed, love you all and miss you dearly!

Saturday, July 4th- “Anti-America Day”

Holy crap, what a day! My plans were to climb go alone to Vesuvius AND see Pompeii, but now I’ll be lucky to do either! I just needed a day to do my own thing and get some alone time since there is ALWAYS someone around! We weren’t provided a map of Naples and our green sheet just said that the train station is 20 min. from the port. Well I walked in the only direction that had sidewalk, didn’t find the train station, started looking for the metro, got even more lost but finally found one after an hour… only this specific station didn’t have a teller and only accepted coins (I had only 5 Euro bills or greater). At this point I had no idea where I was so I wandered for awhile before actually finding a store that sold a map for 5 Euros. I successfully found where I was and navigated to the nearest M on the map, which in Rome was the symbol for Metro. However, the M’s turn out to be train stations on this map, and the one I found was going the opposite direction as Vesuvius! Well at this point I said screw it and walked across most of Naples to my train station. I had left at 9am and made it around noon, an easy 20 min. walk! I experienced quite a bit of Naples first hand and it is the worst city I’ve ever been in- dirty, smelly, crowded, mean, and prettttty sketchy overall, a complete 180 from our other ports!

To continue the crappy start to the day, I head up to the automatic ticket machine, but it says I need to go to the counter. Waiting in line, I see one of the tellers in a fight with a customer, yelling, and then she RIPS A 20 EURO BILL up in front of his face!! I’m scared shitless at this point! Hahaha Well I don’t even know where to start climbing Vesuvius, but I know Pompeii is the right direction, so I buy my ticket for Pompeii (and get ripped off 5 Euros which I find out later). On the train (after I found out it was in a separate terminal and wasted 30 min. trying to find it) I see this map that has a picture of Vesuvius next to the Ercolano stop. I get off there only to find out I can’t even see the volcano through all the high rise “slums”. Definitely not a good idea to venture off without a map, so I just waited for the next train, a nice, quick 40 minutes. Now I’ve conceded the volcano conquered me since I can’t even get to the base of it, and just went to Pompeii.

I pictured Pompeii to be this little rinky-dink village of ruins, so I didn’t buy a map or anything, paid my 11 Euros to get in and after 3 hours of exploring/wandering, I don’t think I crossed my path once! That place was HUGE!! I don’t think I covered some of it, but had definitely had enough- it all started to look the same.. extremely cool that it was from over 2000 years ago, but one rock starts to look like the next rock after awhile and right as I was about to leave I ran into SAS kids that tried to make me tag along- that lasted 5 minutes before I was like okay, I’ve seen this already and headed back to Naples.

It turns out that the Vesuvius hike wasn’t going to be climbing the whole thing like I was wanting to do anyways and that you had to drive most of the way up (45 min) before only a 30 min. hike so now I’m not too disappointed.

As for Naples… not only is it disgustingly dirty, extravagantly covered in graffiti, and a ridiculous number of people and cars, but the people are sooooo unfriendly. At the grocery store, the cashier didn’t even look at me or speak to me besides saying the total! She sticks out her hand and plops my change down, slides the stuff to the end and throws a bag down there for good measure. Everyone had similar experiences and we don’t know if it’s that we are just Americans or if that’s just the way they are, but we felt very unwelcome and to prove just how bad it is- most of the time in port getting dinner on ship isn’t a problem because most people are out. Well this time the line for food was out the door and it seemed everyone was on ship tonight because they were too nervous to walk around. (except for the drunks that are looking for a death wish- and we also find out later that one group of 4 girls and 2 guys got surrounded within the port and the Italians tried to take the girl’s purses, but there are port police all over and they refused and made a ruckus so they ran away… um…. Croatia please!)

BUT

I did see about 8 fireworks ~10 miles off in the distance so it was all good!

Sunday, July 5- Relax, Party!

I was seriously debating laying by the pool all day because 1. my legs hurt from being on my feet for over 8 hours yesterday and walking nearly that entire time 2. I had no desire to see anymore of Naples! But I decided that I didn’t want to waste any of my port experience, so we went to the National Archaeological Museum, which was actually really cool. Not 10 Euro sweet but oh well. I tell ya, if you wanted to see everything that you wanted to you would go broke because everything is that much to get in to! There was a scale model of the Pompeii ruins and no wonder why I wandered for so long, it was ginormous!

We ate lunch with the interport student, Alexandro (from Italy) and he said he saw people trying to physically beat the cops last night while the cops attempted to arrest them- this was also within the port… no wonder why we had 2-3 cops always standing by the entrance to our ship. Also, Hillary’s guidebook to Italy claims, “Although Naple’s crime rate has dropped significantly, it is still noticeably the highest in Italy.” WHY WOULD WE PORT HERE!?

I’m just spending the last 6 hours of Italy in the sun, sorting through pictures, and resting up for the one class day before Croatia now! It will be such a nice change of pace for scenery and relaxation versus historical sites and running around like crazy people.

We also had a 4th of July celebration on ship right before we pulled out… complete with the largest cake I’ve ever seen, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, ice cream, etc. It sure was nice to eat American food for a change even though I am growing to like the food here (even though it is a bit repetitive) and it was DELICIOUS!

THOUGHTS ON ITALY:

Split lifestyles between northern and southern, or at least Naples and Rome/Civitavecchia/Orvieto- North friendly and invited to Americans, Naples not so much

Much more English than I expected (except Naples had far less)

Gelato= best food in the world, I had it 5 or 6 times and loved every flavor :)

Expensive if you want to see everything

Don’t leave anywhere without a map and knowing exactly where you’re going!

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