ITALIA como and bellagio
having a base in milano with my relatives has been really convenient, as it has allowed me to make so many day and weekend trips! i have been wanting to visit lake como since i got into europe, so this was the perfect opportunity with it being less than an hour away. the day we left was such a hot day and perfect for a boat ride on the lake!
i loved it because the lake and its surroundings are so pretty and green. . .just like lake washington. i find myself missing trees and water when i am inland for too long. itsuki (my cousins’s friend) and i got to como and then boarded a boat to the town of bellagio. the town was alright. haha kind of anticlimactic since i was expecting some grand town donald trump-style. two months into my europe trip i find myself less impressed with similar architecture and cobble-stoned streets. the setting of bellagio is picturesque and especially pretty when you arrive by water, but the town was much smaller than expected. it actually turned out to work in our favor since we did not want to be walking around so much in the heat, and were able to walk through it in less than an hour. my highlight of the day? lounging in the grass overlooking the lake was drinking some refreshing ice tea!
ITALIA verona (oh romeo. . .)
it is always really cool to check something out and be impressed when i had no intention of seeing it in the first place. i ended up hitting verona up because some people from the venice hostel were going, and am so glad i did! we originally went to check out the colosseum and only then did i find out that verona is where shakespeare´s ‘romeo and juliet’ was based. way to read my italy guide, right? we did not end up getting into the colosseum because ‘muse’ was setting up for their show, but we did try scalping some tickets. . .at 80 euro a pop! no thanks.
at least we did not come for nothing since we walked through town to giulietta’s house! the tunnel to her balcony is neat in that it is covered with gum and love notes (your wish is supposed to come true) but her balcony was actually quite pretty. there is a statue of her underneath it, and it is funny since the metal on her breasts are worn due to everyone grabbing it for their photo. i have no idea where the tradition started. . .but i guess if it is there, people will grab it.
ITALIA venezia (why do all the streets look the same?)
dios mio it is getting hot over here! it is one thing to be sitting inside but sightseeing while it is 40 degrees is another story. i have no idea how people wear pants while i am dying sweating in shorts and a tank. . .and sticking to every single thing i sit on. ugh. because of this, walking around venice was treacherous. the vaporetto was confusing but atleast there was some wind as we got going. . .although i ended up at a completely different stop every time. there was one point when i seriously thought i was getting delirious as i got lost for over an hour and saw the same fountain four times. but then i ate a colombia magnum (it is like a haagen dazs bar) and all was well. freaks of nature group you feel me? haha. venice the city was so much greater than i imagined than i expected and i am so glad i took the weekend trip here!
the first night was the `festa del redentore,´ so all kinds of boats were decorated on the water culminating with a fireworks display at night. it was awesome since it reminded me of lake washington on forth of july and made me miss home a bit. and the hostel itself was like a mini resort. camp jolly. what a great deal! it is a bit outside of town, but at ten euro a night it is definitely the place to stay. i had a four person dorm with a toilet and shower where others paid the same for a shit tent, so i guess the moral of the story is to thoroughly check out the room description. anyways this place had a disco bar, big pool, and a work out section!
MONACO monte carlo (gambling my savings away. . .)
monte carlo! i really had no idea what to expect, besides the fact that the casino there is world-famous. the hour long bus ride only cost 1.30 euro, so it was worth a day trip from nice. and again, i fell asleep and woke up past my stop. . .i gotta stop doing this but it is just so hard for me to stay awake during car rides. but then it becomes an adventure in itself so i don’t mind.
on a sunny hillside, the town itself was really pretty in a very touristy kind of way. this is one place where you can really tell there are wealthy visitors year-round. for example, the area around the casino was ridiculous. the artificially green and impeccably maintained walkways gave it a surreal look, which matched the cars displayed out front. maseratis, jaguars, bentleys. . .and any top of the line car. the casino itself was real pretty, and the 5 euro i gambled away was worth it.
this would be the first place on my trip where i visited just to say i have been. the day was hot and the ocean was sounding amazing, so after some time walking along the water i peaced right back to nice.
FRANCE nice (back at summer camp)
i made it back to nice! since alex and i had gotten stuck there but were only able to spend the night there, i was determined to make it back. the water is really awesome with the perfect waves, but the beach is unlike any other that i have been to in that the shore is all pebbles and rocks. . .i actually felt like i was grilling.
the hostel was hilarious. with lock out times, curfews, and kitchen times, it remind me of summer camp. the kitchen closed at nine thirty, but these girls from madrid had just gotten in and completely dismissed the sign. so of course at half past nine the french hostel keeper comes in yelling but the girls do not stop cooking. the angrier he got, the less english and more french he spoke. none of us speak french, but we could guess what he was saying. this went on for about forty minutes before they were done cooking. the guy was livid!!!
after dinner, about half the hostel was drinking outside when the same guy comes out and tells us that we should be going to bed. ok a reasonable request if it were 5 am, and we were keeping neighbors up. but it was not even midnight, and we were up on the hillside with NO neighbor to keep up. turns out the hostel keeper does not sleep there, but he just has to make sure people are inside so he can lock the place up and leave. we were like, “what if there is an emergency or a fire?” his reply was classic. he says, “all windows are open so crawl out with your bag if you need to.” so then we pretend to go to bed. . .and instead ended up hanging out in our room for about fifteen minutes before walking out to the balcony to start our night.
ITALIA pisa (it ain’t no thang)
we took the overnight ferry back to florence, and man was it a shitty night. we figured we would last seven hours sleeping on the floor of the ship, but soon realized how unprepard we were. there were already people set up with floaties (like the inflatable ones for the pool) all over the halls, so we had to set up camp on the upper deck. it was not too bad for me since i layed pretty comfortably on three staggered chairs. for jonah and alex who are a foot taller than me. . .not so much. but what made the night almost unbearable was the deck doors opening all night. i can not believe how much the italians smoke. people were going in and out ALL night so the doors kept bringing in huge gusts of cold air. i do not know how none of us did not catch a cold.
anyways, we survived and got back to florence/firenze in time for jonah to start his internship! pisa is really close so alex and i decided to make a day trip and invited jonah’s roommate matt. they only live together because the program stuck them together, and i really do not think they would ever talk otherwise. matt just talks forever about nothing and is really sensitive, and jonah is a hater. you can see why there might be the occasional tension. so it is really funny since they acknowledge these traits in themselves, but they can not stop. for example, on the train ride to pisa, matt started talking about mosquito bites. . .and then went off about some story about the simpsons episode where flanders gets locked up in an asylum. . .and then ended the story by saying how he likes to itch his bites. alex and i were like, “huh?” but it was still funny. we all agreed it would have pissed jonah off. haha.
pisa was fun. i mean, the town was much bigger than expected, and the tower was pretty cool. definitely worth checking out for the day. EVERYONE and their mom was doing the ‘holding up the tower’ shots, and of course we did one too. except ours was much cooler, since we we calmly drinking from a water bottle in ours. . .it is titled the ‘ it ain’t no thang’ photo. it should be up soon!
ITALIA sardinia part cinque (horse sandwich on the beach)
man was it good to get on the bus and be off to alghero! it took jonah and i over an hour to shop around for accommodation, which was especially annoying due to the hot weather. the cheapest one we found was 110 euro, but the b & b owner seemed nice and at this point we did not care. atleast it was up the street from the beach! silvana’s place turned out pretty chill with our own balcony and an even bigger terrace off the living area. . .where we ate our metre-long pizza! that’s right, a metre long. hot damn.
we also had our first horse sandwich that night, and i still do not know what i think about it. some guy was eating it in line, so alex and jonah just kinda pointed and ordered the same thing. we were like, ”what is cavallo?” horse, of course. i guess it is one of sardinia’s specialties. the consistency was kinda weird, but other than that it was alright. . .but i am glad i only had a bite of theirs.
ITALIA sardinia part quattro (dying at the silent hill hotel)
jonah had read about this chill hippie commune in santa teresa, so we headed that way to check it out. because it is unmarked and there are no buses that run there, we had to walk for about an hour from town and then ask the locals once we were in the area. we finally found the path, and after walking about 20 minutes through a narrow trail and then through some boulders to the water, we were there. this valle de la luna is incredible! people live in caves that are on the water or in between the rocks and just chill. some people are there indefinitely, and some lead normal lives and just show up for weeks at a time. we spent the day there since it was so peaceful. . .it is like the commune from ‘the beach,’ minus the crazies. i spent time writing as jonah and alex hung with some hippies in their cave, and i swear that one of them had sars all over his body.
having no itinerary is absolutely wonderful as we don’t have to stress about being anywhere. . .but not always. since we spent the day at valle de la luna, we left santa teresa late and missed the last bus at the transfer point in sassari. big mistake. another was when we followed the bus driver’s recommendation for cheap lodging. as jonah and i went into the recommended place, the first thing we noticed was the old ass man in his eighties passed out on the lobby couch. there were three other people in the lobby, and all were fixated on some val kilmer film. so the place was kinda weird, but at 50 euro a room, it was gonna be the cheapest place. we go out to let alex know when he tells us that some nigerian guy told him not to stay there. well shit, what were we to do? one night could not be that bad. WRONG. we are walking up the stairs when we notice that it reeks of bleach, and when we get to our hall it just reeks like rotting bodies. and when we turn the corner to our room, there is an old lady in her night gown who shrieks something at us in italian. AY DIOS MIO. it was uncomfortably funny until we set our bags down and then smelled the sewer-smelling bathroom. . .and then heard the loud groaning sound. it seriously sounded like someone was being slowly tortured to death.
our solution was to get drunk and pass out, so we left the horror hotel looking for a bar. NOTHING was open. eventually, we found a food trailer that had hair in the food case and about 7 homeless dogs and drunk locals hanging around it. ugh. we drank on the picnic benches with the dogs and walked back, only to hear the moaning as we entered our hotel. of course alex goes to sleep right away as always, while jonah and i could not sleep at all. this loud moaning, along with other creepy noises went all night at about five second intervals. and then there is the next morning. the scene that greeted us outside our room on ourway to check out was unreal. bags of depends were in the hall, along with old people just mean mugging us and the staff rushing about starting to clean. i have no idea where they were during the night of random sounds. weren’t they supposed to be caring for the people in the home?
ITALIA sardinia part TRE (spaghetti cruise)
we are the WORST morning group. we had booked a day cruise around the smaller islands off sardinia, and it left the port at ten thirty. good thing no one woke up to alex’s alarm (which was set at nine or something) until ten! we had not packed, checked out, prepared our beach bag, AND we had to get our asses to the port. . .in a half hour. the walk to the port is about twenty minutes, but we must have ran it in about two. seriously. i have never seen anyone run so fast in flip flops as alex did that day. we somehow got to the port with a couple of minutes to spare, only to realize our cruise was not leaving today, but TOMORROW! we were pissed. the girl at the reception who we had paid a deposit with did not say anything about different companies operating specific days of the week!!! but as usual, things worked out. the cruise leaving today was the same price, and we were able to get on board with no hassle. whew!
our moods picked up as soon as we saw the port of la maddalena to bring more people on board. . .and saw how clear the surrouding waters were. the countless shades of green and blue are absolutely beautiful. it definately compares to the waters of fiji! the cruise ended up taking us to to two uninhabited islands, where we got to lounge and really enjoy the white sand and ocean. afterwards, we got back on the boat for some seafood pasta and magnums. (hence the nickname ’spaghetti cruise.’) it was thirty euro for this, but i am so glad we decided to do it. what a day well spent!
ITALIA sardinia part DUE (the odessey!)
today we climed around rock formations that HOMER writes about in THE ODESSEY! at the top of the wind-shaped granite rocks, a formation was created that resembles a bear. hence the name capo d’orso! it is so astounding that it is still used as a navigation point and is recognizable today.
there was a road-block type barrier over the railing that looked like it had been down for a while, so we climbed over it and ended up in the windiest place any of us had ever been to. there was a little cove that was protected from the wind, and we got amazing photos there. . .can not wait to be able to share some of these!
we realized on our walk back that we were the only ones on the island without a car, since most were italians on vacation. because we had walked over an hour to get to the cape, we decided to hitch back and got a ride pretty quickly. the guy did not speak english, but all we had to say was “palau?” see what i mean about everyone on the island being really nice?