Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Florence, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Rome, Paris

June 27, 2007 -- Paris
The night train from Rome was less than comfortable. Three of the other people in my six-person cabin were fine, but there was a Pakistani guy and a Somalian guy who insisted on blabbering at each other in broken English. The Somalian guy was nice enough--he got on in Rome with his niece--but the Paki guy was irritating. He got on somewhere in Italy (it was about 11:30pm) and just as I was falling asleep he comes in chattering in French about his seat number, asking everyone where they're seat is, blah blah blah for about thirty minutes. There was an open bed and he refused to sleep in it because it didn't correspond to his ticket. Who cares! Finally, I was already grumpy from being woken up and his stupid Qwiki-Mart accent added to that grumpiness, so I said, "Monsieur! S'il vous plait! Shhhh! Je voudrais dormir!" (Sir! Please! I would like to sleep!) He gave me a perplexed look so I continued, "C'est mixte! (It's mixed!) Sleep anywhere, just go to sleep please!" The Somalian guy patted me on the arm, saying, "It's okay, it's okay." I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Needless to say, I didn't sleep too well because we stopped at so many places. I was happy to get off the train though, and very excited to see Paris again. My hotel is in the suburbs outside of Paris--a bit of a train ride to the city, but no big deal because I'm leaving tomorrow. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that (once again!) my bank had frozen my debit card, which was especially frustrating because I was down to about 6 Euros. There was no way I could get back into town, eat something, and go to the Louvre on 6 Euros. Luckily I remembered some British pounds tucked away that I changed at the train station. I got some food and set out walking. Even though I've been to Paris twice, there is still so much to see. I felt very happy walking on the quays next to the Seine. I looked out over the river, up the weathered warm stone walls and slate roofs of apartment buildings and into the cloudy sky threatening rain and thought, "This is my city, bitches! I'm back!"
I really could live in Paris. It's so open and spacious, with hustle and bustle but I still feel safe. I decided in my afternoon there, I could see a few things and feel satisfied. After just reading The Da Vinci Code, I was curious to visit one of the smaller churches mentioned in it, St.-Sulpice. It is a beautiful church and just as the book described, with a brass line in the floor running at a funny angle to the base of an obelisk in a corner that acts as some sort of sundial or gnomon as they call it. The church had signs up denying any sort of Pagan-related significance in this odd brass line, and literature about how the book is creating doubt in the minds of Christians.
Next I realized I'd never been inside the Pantheon, which has a very cool crypt, but I got there just after they stopped letting visitors in. Not cool! At that point it was nearly 6pm (discount entry time at the Louvre!) so I headed to the museum. I re-visited the Mona Lisa and still found it only slightly intriguing. I saw some perfectly crafted sculptures in the Michelangelo Hall, including one of Apollo standing on some sort of vanquished sea creature. I made sure to visit the Asian/African/Pacific wing which houses tons of cool tribal sculptures from the Pacific Rim and Africa. They ranged from one of the Easter Island heads to a tiny clay man with and even smaller clay man inside a compartment in his chest. Kind of a prehistoric robot (yess!)
After the Louvre I decided to see the Eiffel tower again. It's very cold here right now but I am overjoyed at being out of the heat. I wish I could spend more time here on this trip, but I booked a cheap flight to Dublin and didn't want to spend even more money. With today finished, I bid adieu to what I call Chapter 1 of this trip. Tomorrow I head to Ireland and start Chapter 2: The UK.



June 26, 2007 -- Rome
This morning Lauren left very early for a flight back to London, where she works. I slept in a bit, had some breakfast, and checked out. I should have stayed at the campground a bit longer as it's cooler than in the city. I went directly to the train station to secure a bed for the night train to Paris, because 14 hours would be a long trip in just a seat! I had in wait in line in the stuffy terminal for about 45 minutes (who knows why!) but I did chat with a nice Canadian guy and a couple from San Jose. I thought about doing more sightseeing, but I just couldn't handle the heat anymore so I hung out in the air-conditioned travel lounge and read.
Yesterday I bought yet another book. I'd heard about an English bookstore in Rome and when I got there I realized I had no idea what to read. I was staring blankly at the shelves when a thin gray binding suddenly caught my eye. It was Jack Kerouac's On the Road, something that I've always had a slight interest in reading but never got around to. Now seemed like the perfect time. I got through a huge chunk of it today; I'm about half-finished. There is something about it, something in the way Kerouac describes his character's hap-hazard journeys across America that I can feel in my soul. Having been to so many of the places he describes, and ones I hold dear, like SF, LA, and the Central Valley, I know exactly what he was seeing when he passed through. I've even found myself underlining quotes, which is something I never do because it makes me feel like I'm reading the book for school and I start to dread having to analyze it to death the next day.
Of an afternoon in a motel in Des Moines, he says,

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was--I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen...I looked at the cracked ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen seconds."

I've already felt that a few times on this trip. I know who I am, but there are times when I wake in the middle of the night in some strange, steamy country where no one is speaking English and I can't even vocalize my thoughts to anyone, then my confidence wavers and I feel utterly alone, and certainly "haunted and tired with travel."
On the Road is written beautifully; I always had this impression that it was some weird beatnik manifesto, the way people tie it to that movement, but it's really just a journal. Though it's supposedly "fiction," you can tell there is a large part of Kerouac's soul in that book and that's how I feel when I'm writing this journal. I absorb so much every day that the only way to process it is to write down everything I can remember, then go back and read it over and over until it sinks in.

June 25, 2007 -- Rome
Lauren and I saw quite a bit today. We went to the colosseum where she took a tour and I visited the outside. I made my way over to the Vatican. It was unbearably hot (about 100 degrees!) and after waiting just a few minutes in line I melted onto a bench in the museum's air-conditioned lobby. The rest of the museum was pretty stuffy though, and packed with people. After about 45 minutes of wandering through room after room, stuck behind the throngs of other tourists in the narrow corridors, I met up with Lauren just before the Sistine Chapel. The workmanship was very good, yes, but I wasn't all that impressed. It could also have been because the room was stuffed with people in a way very much resembling a porrly-ventilated punk show, and I had to jostle my way through the crowd in the same manner. Still, I'm glad I saw it. In one of the rooms, there were tapestries depicting all the male babies being in Jerusalem being killed (I forget who, but someone was trying to eliminate Jesus when he was that age.)
Outside in the courtyard there was a giant golden orb in the center, but parts of it were purposefully destroyed so that it was reminiscent of the Death Star. I have no idea what the sculpture represents, but I'll have to look it up later.
After the Vatican, Lauren and I got some lasagna and visited the Trevi Fountain, which is huge. It's really beautiful because it blends natural rock shapes with skillfully sculpted marble statues and bright blue water. I wish I could have jumped in! We were both pretty tired after visiting three sites, but some gelato perked us up enough for some more window shopping. I even found some hairdye (yay!)
When I had dyed my hair, we got spruced up and went for dinner at the restaurant in the campground. There was a band playing, and the night's special was paella (better than in Spain!). We chilled for a while and watched the band play.




June 24, 2007 -- Rome
Today I moved into a cabin with an Australian girl from my dorm room, Lauren. It's still only 21 Euros per night, so for not much more than the dorm room we get a patio and our own bathroom. We headed into Rome in the late morning and walked around for a bit, doing some window-shopping. After grabbing lunch, we got tickets for a hop-on/hop-off sightseeing bus tour around the city. It was actually pretty cool to hear some historical background, but it was so hot that Lauren and I started nodding off. That was our cue to head back to the campground. We both crashed out pretty early. I guess my body needed it after being in the sun all day.

June 23, 2007 -- Atrani to Rome
After a bus to Salerno, I took a train to Rome with two sisters from the hostel in Atrani. Jena and Sarah are from Pennsylvania and were entertaining to hang out with. It was of course sweltering in Salerno. I was almost expecting the train to be air-conditioned, and looking forward to it (what a novelty!) but sadly, the train was about 90 degrees inside. I though, okay, when we get going the AC will kick in, right? Nope. It did turn on, but barely breathed out of the tiny vent by the window. The three of us felt like we were in an oven. It was disgusting and I couldn't wait to get to Rome.
Once in Rome, I took the metro and a shuttle to my campground. The place was still pretty warm, but at leat there was a nice breez running through. While doing laundry I met a couple of nice British girls and ate dinner with them. In addition to their group of four, there were two girls from Florida at the table. At first they were entertaining, because the two of them had shared a pitcher of very strong sangria, but they quickly got on my nerves. At the beginning of dinner we all exchanged the usual information. When I told them I was traveling alone, one of the Florida girls (Anya) said, "Oh my gawd, I could never travel alone! That would be so scary!" By the end of dinner, her comment didn't seem so odd. The only things she and her friend Holly talked about were their boyfriends, their acres of land back home, their pets/horses, etc. Then Anya started talking about her rubber ducky collection. "Oh my gawd, I am like, obsessed with ducks! My mom will order like, two dozen for me from Oriental Trading Company because she knows how much I love them!" Then Holly started going on about how her boyfriend is "like, so good" at making up names for their pets. "Like my dog Drifter, we just found him and Nick named him Drifter!"
I finally lost it when they got grossed out by squid tentacles on another girl's seafood pizza. They were passing it around, taking pictures, then Anya said, "Ew, I have to go wash my hands after touching that thing!" to which I exclaimed, "It's just food! It's the same squid you eat when you have fried calamari, and it's not dirty or anything!"
And that shut her up. I found out later that both she and Holly are only 19, which explains a lot. They're both kind of trashy, and not ugly but not attractive. I imagine that their boyfriends are short, somewhat ugly, and big NASCAR fans. They'll probably each get married in a couple years, have below-average kids and raise them on Pepsi, Chee-tos, and a healthy dose of fear of anything different. Pretty amusing, really.

June 22, 2007 -- Atrani
I had a very hard day of sitting on the beach today. Between reading, sunbathing and napping, the turquoise water provided a cool respite from the blazing sun. Unfortunately, I got a bit burnt, but it will fade soon enough. The scenery her is so beautiful and pristine, and the towns so sleepy and not too touristy. I've decided to skip the Cinque Terre. It's funny, though I've wanted to see it for years, I don't feel like I'd appreciate it after seeing the Amalfi Coast. I definitely want to go there sometime in the future when I can enjoy it on its own.
When I got back to my hostel, the girls in my room were getting ready to take advantage of happy hour at one of the two bars in town. I met them down there, where we hung out for a few hours for drinks and pizza. There were also a couple of British guys from the hostel and one British/Italian guy, James, who grew up in both Sheffield, England and in Atrani (the product of a wishy-washy drawn-out divorce, so he said) who is a lifeguard at the beach. I wisely sat on the side of the table with the guys and was therefore introduced to all of them. As I was sitting next to James, we chatted quite a bit about this and that. He said he'd seen me on the beack earlier, but didn't want to approach me for fear of seeming skeezy. I probably would have ignored him and missed the opportunity to hear his fabulous North-English accent.
Well after sunset, the group of us (about 15 or so) went down to the beach. Randomly, someone decided to start a human pyramid, which stood for a few seconds before collapsing into a pile of drunken twenty-somethings. Two other girls and a guy were playing leap-frog, but Mel (Australia) was plastered and instead of leaping she kind of rugby-tackled the others. Quite hilarious to watch. We must have been there for hours; by the time I went to bed it nearly 3am and there were still people on the beach. I'm so glad I was able to go out tonight. Everyone was in a great mood and the warm beach was the perfect setting.

June 21, 2007 -- Atrani and Capri
Stephanie and I took a ferry to Capri, an island just off the tip of the Sorrento peninsula. It's very beautiful, but so crowded and touristy, which makes me happy I'm just doing a day trip. We took a boat tour around the island and got to see several caves and the dramatic rocky cliffs. The water here is so clean, even in the marina. Near the end of the tour we were supposed to go in the Blue Grotto, a natural sea cave, but it was so busy it would have been a two-hour wait. We were told we could come back at the end of the day. After eating sandwiches, Stephanie and I wanted to rent scooters but there were none available. Very sad. Instead, we took the crowded funicular up the hill to central Capri. There wasn't much to do there besides window-shopping and avoiding the crowds, which was somewhat disappointing. We did start on a path up the hill, but it was so hot we turned around and decided to sit for a bit. We got some gelato, then went down to the harbor just in time for our boat to the Blue Grotto. When we got there we were shuttled in rowboats through the tiny entrance, which was only about six feet wide by four feet tall. My first glimpse inside made the whole day trip worthwhile.


Light reflected from outside made the water glow neon blue. One of the rowboat captains started singing opera; the acoustics of the cave were perfectly suited to his tenor. I've really never seen anything like the Grotto in my life. It felt like being inside a shimmering gem. We stayed inside for about ten minutes, then squeezed through the narrow opening back to the blinding afternoon sun. I'm so glad I made the trip to Capri; even if the town was sub-par, the cave was absolutely amazing.

June 20, 2007 -- Naples to Atrani
I am so glad I decided to come to the Amalfi Coast! It's a bit south of Sorrento and is made up of five or six little towns. The rocky cliffs and terraced hillsides are dotted with tired but brightly painted hotels, cafes and villas. The structures are so perilously placed on the near vertical rock faces that they seem they could tumble into the sapphire sea at any moment--not that the Italians would mind. It's very laid-back and comfortable here, they would just have a glass of wine and rebuild in the morning.
Upon boarding the bus from Sorrento to Amalfi, we quickly began the ascent over the mountains, winding through olive groves and overgrown vineyard estates. I looked back quickly and almost teared up at the beauty of Sorrento behind us; next to the sloping houses leading down to the sea like a terra-cotta tile glacier, a massive rock cliff rose out of the water and continued inland across the peninsula. I've never seen anything so dramatic. It was such unexpected beauty, and it was right then that I knew I'd made the right choice in spending more time in Italy.
When I got off the bus in Atrani (right next to Amalfi, only much smaller) I met another traveler named Stephanie from Melbourne. I was trying to open the cargo hold of the bus before the bus driver took off, but it was stuck. When I finally got my bag out, I looked at her and she said, "Are you going to Hostel Scalinatella too?" I guess I didn't exactly look like someone who was headed for a luxurious villa. Once we had checked in (my room, by the way, was the size of a closet and had this wonky accordian-type door...really? Kind of weird.) we headed downstairs, through the tiny piazza, and out to the beach. The sandy part was a bit crowded, so we peeked around the corner and discovered a cement platform jutting out over some rocks from the foot of the wall that supports the road fifty feet above. It had a ladder going right into the water. By the time we set our things down I was ready to swim, so I hopped in. The water here is cool, clear, clean, and the most gorgeous bright blue. Stephanie and I napped, read and swam for the rest of the afternoon.
In the early evening we walked over to Amalfi for a drink and watched the sun set. On the way back to our hostel, we stopped in the little piazza and had some fabulous homemade pasta. When we returned to the hostel Felipo, our friendly proprietor, informed me there was a bed available in the dorm room. I was happy to not have to sleep in the closet! I was just getting ready for bed when one of the girls in the room, Aspen, invited me out with everyone to the beach. I wanted to go, but I was so tired that I assured her I'd be there tomorrow night.

June 19, 2007 -- Naples and Pompeii
I met an Australian couple in my room last night, Ian and Danielle. It turned out that we were all planning to go to Pompeii early this morning, so we made the trip together. The metro actually dropped us off right at the base of the park, so that was easy enough. Even though we got there at 8:30, it was already so hot. I can't imagine starting out at 12:00 or later! I had no idea the village was so big. It was once home to around 20,000 people. Most of it is still intact or has been restored, and there are even several marble statues, columns, carvings, and an ornate altar in excellent condition. It was really cool to walk down the streets and try to imagine what it looked like nearly 2000 years ago. There were a couple plaster casts of people who were caught in the ash fall-out when Mount Vesuvius exploded. It was quite interesting to see their poses of frozen anguish and surprise. There were also several well-preserved mosaics, though not as ornate as the ones I saw at Volubilis in Morocco. The most intriguing part of Pompeii was actually the brothel. There were a few tiny rooms equipped with built-in stone beds (probably had mattresses on top). In the hallway, there were graphically illustrated frescoes showing a "menu" of sorts to the clientele. It's pretty funny that those frescoes are the best surviving ones in the whole site.
After Pompeii, I went back to the hostel. I was so hot, and all I wanted to do was lie down and read. I was doing just that when a couple of the girls in my room, Elaina (Ohio) and MaryAnne (Tennessee) invited me to the beach. I know Naples is on the coast, but it seemed like such a dirty port town that I hadn't even bothered trying to research beaches. When we got there, the water was pretty gross: algae, broken tiles and a film of tanning oil floating on top. We went in to about our knees, then got grossed out and decided even that was too much. The afternoon sun was so harsh and scorching, I could barely blink without breaking a sweat. Luckily, there was a fabulous shower with cool water on the side of the beach and it felt so refreshing.
When we'd had enough of the sun, we went back to the hostel. I took a shower, but I had hardly dried my hair before I was sweating again. Oh well, such is life in Italy. The best thing about the hostel in Naples (besides the couches, free movies and internet, clean, modern showers and fridge full of cold drinks) was that it had an attached restaurant and bar open in the evenings with a 3 Euro menu--homemade pasta, pizza, salad, antipasti, etc.! I got dinner with Elaina and MaryAnne. I had a huge plate of gnocchi with this roasted tomato/red pepper sauce and tons of mozzarella. So good! This put me into a food coma, and I went to bed soon after.

June 18, 2007 -- Florence to Naples
Upon arrival in Naples, I immediately got a slice of pizza (eggplant, yum!) then took a bus downtown. Naples is crowded, dirty, and like the rest of the Italians, nobody follows traffic laws. Kind of fun to dart in between speeding scooters and buses though. More and more I want to rent a scooter, but I don't think it's worth the money or having to navigate the crowded streets. I sat on the steps of one of the many cathedrals and watched kids playing soccer in the piazza, with traffic speeding down the narrow streets. I walked around a bit more after that, but didn't find anything too interesting so I headed back to my hostel. Luckily, the hostel has a good common room, and even has DVDs available. When I got in, a few people were watching Good Morning, Vietnam! which I've never seen and is actually a very funny movie. It felt good to veg out for a bit, lounge on a couch, and watch a movie--something I haven't done in over a month.

June 17, 2007 -- Florence
Today I caught up on my blog and some reading. I went to the Duomo again because the piazza is so pretty and has some good people-watching. I got in line to see the inside of the cathedral, but lost interest after waiting too long and went out walking again. I stopped by the Accademia, which houses Michelangelo's David. After waiting in line for about 15 minutes, I realized what a waste of time it would be to wait for three hours just to see a few sculptures. I'm sure the David is amazing, but I'd rather come back to see it in low-season sometime. I got another delicious salad from the place by my hostel. After that, I read in the garden for a bit and took a nap on the grass. Such a perfect Sunday! Close to sunset, I caught a bus up the hill to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which overlooks all of Florence. Just as the sun was setting, I got a call back from my best friend Kelly. I had called her earlier today to wish her a happy birthday, and it was such a treat to talk to her!

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