the jewel of italy, last stop: verona!

apologies for the lateness of the blog... we're home and havent had time, sorry!

we originally werent going to go to verona, but after hearing that ms basini (our old english teacher) had cousins there we thought it would be cool for a last stop. we got to verona at 12.30, rang roberta and sara (the cousins) and they said to meet at 2pm. we had to get to the camping and back, so we caught the bus (which was supposed to take 20 minutes) and were still on it at 1.50. hmmm. we had got the right bus in the opposite direction! and it didnt help that the driver stopped for two cigarette breaks AND the ticket inspectors wrote out tickets for 75% of the people on the bus. we got off the bus and looked up in dismay to see 300 stairs leading to the campsite. we powered up them, and now have rock hard calves. when we got to the camping at 2.20 we were met by a topless guy with dreadlocks. he was quite stoned and took half an hour to explain where everything was in the campsite, and we kept trying to say that we needed to go and could we check in later. we finally convinced him we had to go and caught a taxi to meet roberta and sara. we met them at the arena, which was like a mini colosseum. they took us to a cafe and they gave us a really nice book on verona. sara had highlighted everything we should go and see, which was fantastic. they took us to see some roman ruins, juliets house and the tower. sara convinced the guy on the desk to let us all in for student prices. i dont know exactly what she said, but it worked! from the tower we had a fantastic view of verona. they all had gardens on the roof! after the tower we went to check out the arena but it was the only day ever that it had closed early. 'you MUST see inside!' ordered sara. we made plans to go visit lake garda on the saturday and parted ways.

we got back to the campsite and picked up our bags. we found our way to the rent-a-tent (did i mention we left our tent on the train from sorrento?) and set up camp. we have a knack for picking campsites with awesome views, and once again we could see the whole city.

on friday we set off to explore verona. 

we went to the arena, which was very impressive. they still use it today, which is cool. we also saw castelvecchio, the bridge next to it and everything else there is to see. when we told sara and roberta about our exploration they exclaimed 'mumma mia!'

saturday was one of the best days that we have had on our whole trip. we had agreed to meet roberta and sara at the roman theater, as they were taking us to see the lake. we set off early morning in order to get a good part of the day there as it is about 40km away and the roads were clogged up with people doing the same as we were. after many vineyards and a few very tight corners, the scenery unfolded to a huge beautiful blue lake. it was like when you are heading towards the horizon and then you finally see the ocean. i was amazed, because when i picture a lake, i picture a dark murky sort of thing.. on commenting this thought to sara, she tutted and said that i was thinking of a billabong. the lake i'm talking about is Lake Garda, and it is the biggest lake in italy. it is pure crystal blue, and stretches as far as the eye can see, with huge mountains surrounding it and small villages dotted along the way. 

the town we stopped at was called Malcesine and was so beautiful. there were no cars allowed in the streets and it was an intricate maze of cobblestone. we went to a restaurant for lunch which overlooked the lake and the mountains behind. we had the nicest lunch, and ange and i had brought along our italian book , so we had many a comical conversation. for the most part, sara translated for us. she is really good at english, and it made us feel a tad ashamed that we only know english. we got talking about movies, and sara pointed to the mountain across the lake and said that that was the tunnel that there will be a huge car chase and accident in the new james bond movie coming out. knowing that i was at THE lake that they filmed james bond made my day.we wandered the village for the rest of the afternoon, seeing the castle with its breathtaking views, eating delicious gelati, and even seeing the smallest street in italy - it really was tiny. on the way home sara invited us out to dinner with them that night, and they dropped us off at the camp ground and roberta and her husband picked us up at 7.30. roberta had asked sara to tell us that she doesnt know any english at all. 

the car ride to the pizzaria was full of very animated conversation, half in italian and half in english. it was great! and we reckon that roberta is pretty good at english, she just needs some confidence in herself, because we managed to have a long chat with them about perth, and roberta could understand a lot of the individual words, as we could in italian. they absolutely LOVE perth. it was great talking about home with people from the other side of the world who loved it as much as we do.we arrived at the pizzeria which is in the heat of what they called their swan valley. it was a stunning view over the vineyards. we were greeted by roberta and sara's mum and dad, and saras husband and kids. they even wore perth t-shirts :)

 we learnt that ms basinis mum and sara and robertas dad (they are brother and sister) were born in the very place that we were eating at. we had the best night, with lots of laughing and lots of trying to explan things with oversized hand movements, and great pizza. they taught us sayings like 'vedi napoli a poi muori' which means 'you see naples and you die', which ange thought was hilarious. in return we taught them australian phrases like 'bloody oath', 'fair dinkum', 'woop woop' and 'higgeldy-piggeldy'. there were only a few pronunciation problems with the last one.

we were so chuffed that they had only just met us, but it felt like we had known them for ages. its hard to find people like that, and we are so grateful to have met them.

the next day we set off for paris. it took us two trains to get there, and we crashed in the hotel that night. we snuck out the next morning to get crepes for breakfast before checking out, and headed to charles de gaulle. the plane was delayed by half an hour to london, and then we nearly missed the plane from london to singapore because no one (qantas or british airways) would check us in. BA finally decided to open the flight for us and we ran through two terminals to get there. at singapore the flight was delayed by two hours (the longest delay we have had - thank goodness it was the last flight we had to take!) but we decided the best airport to be stranded at is changi. we had massages, showers AND got a free meal! we love singapore!

we got in to perth and were greeted by australian accents(!!) only to find that someone else had picked up jess' bag. we waited in customs for an hour before realising, and the airport delivered it the next day. so now back to the real world, but we'll leave you with a few favourites:

- icecream: stockholm soft ice (or mjuck glajss - pronounced mucus)

- pizza: rome, pizzarius (soooo good, and you choose how much you want!)

- meal: anything prue cooked!

- city: berlin, by far!

- country: sweden

- trains: ireland

- people: germans, irish, swedish

- day: there was a few - budapest, scootering the amalfi coast and lake garda

- morning: paris after a hideous train ride. go des Champs-Élysées in peak hour traffic!

- night: (s) dancing at the seine in paris, dinner in verona, dinner with kelly and prue, full sunlight at three am in sweden and sitting up with jon and fee at the caravan.

- 'oh my god the worlds going to end' moment: getting on the train from berlin to paris. jess will never let me forget it.

and many more, the list goes on...

vedi napoli a poi muori*

*a note about the title. this is actually a saying. we were told about it in verona but i cant tell you the story because you dont know we went to verona yet.

we arrived at napoli train station and high tailed it out of there. that is really all you need to know about naples. 

we arrived in sorrento and were hit with sun, beach, pebbles and poms. much nicer. we stayed at a campground just out of town overlooking the bay. on the first day the skies were clear and we could see naples, but for the rest of the week it was too hazy. we settled in and headed straight for the beach. we saw, we ran, we - were stopped? 'six euros please'. well that killed the dream a little bit. we refused to pay, claiming it was a natural resource and how could they charge us for something we could get for free by jumping off the jetty and swimming around anyway. they said '6 euros please' and the dream was over. dejected, we headed back and found comfort with the pizza from the nice man at the campsite.

day two saw us backtracking to pompeii. we took my mums advice (for once!) and bought a huge bottle of icy water to take into the ruins with us and walked around for a few hours doing the whole 'woah, look at that, they actually LIVED here' thing. we found out fee was obsessed with mosaics in rome, so i had a new found appreciation of them and saw quite a few in pompeii. when you think about it, they are pretty impressive. 

we found the casts of the human remains they found in pompeii. they were tucked away in a corner behind dirty perspex. that was a bit of a let down, but jess got much delight out of taking photos of the sleeping dogs that were lying next to them. they werent moving when we got there, and they didnt move even when we poked them, made loud noises and scratched their backs. they were definately alive though as one started snoring and the other was running and howling in his sleep. 

day three was recover from pompeii day. we spent the day walking around sorrento, window shopping and looking at the beach. well it wasnt even a real beach. just some silly black sand and a tiny swimming area. stupid beach ... six euros... stupid. 

on day four we took the bus to amalfi. well. how to describe the road. suicidal, maybe? treacherous, perilous? and the bus driver. oh my goodness. even more dangerous than the road. he beeped his horn once before turning the blind corners without slowing down at all! we feared for our lives and got off the bus feeling quite ill. amalfi was pretty. we had the nicest pasta so far in italy and sat on the rocks (again refusing to pay for the beach) over looking the water. 

on the way home we stopped in positano (we werent going to but the bus driver was worse than the first one so we had to get off!) and the beach there was beautiful. the town was full of expensive designer labels but still very pretty to walk around.

the next couple of days in sorrento were great. the only trouble we had was when two guys decided to set up tent next to ours. we did the friendly thing and smiled and said hello, and then went into town. when we got back, they were all set up, but they'd moved the chairs so that they were facing directly towards us, not towards the panoramic view of the ocean.. strange we thought, but she'll be right.

 so we got a woodfired pizza to share and a beer each, and settled on the bench next to our tent for a nice afternoon/evening of playing cards and enjoying the view. you know when you get that feeling someone is watching you? well we got this straight away, because they were just sitting there, not saying anything to anyone, not even each other, and staring at us. we shuffled the bench a bit further away, but it didnt stop them. they made a flower out of sticks and toilet paper and put it on our bench. we looked at them and they just kept staring, so we put it as far away from us as we could without seeming rude. then all of a sudden they both came over with a long strip of toilet paper that they had witten on with the carbon of a burnt stick, and placed it on our bench without saying a word. it read 'to two wonderful girls' so now we were a bit creeped out, and i looked at them and said, thankyou, but no thanks. they didnt get the hint and then came over saying that they were from naples, and that we are very beautiful and tried to get us to go with them in their car to amalfi. needless to say we declined. we got another note not long after that said 'but=bad' got knows what that meant, and ange grabbed it and ripped it up violently. we told the nice british guys on the other side of us what they were doing and they said they had noticed them staring creepily all night and offered to stay up until the creepy guys went to bed. that was very nice of them. all night we heard them saying hilarious british things like 'of ALL things to write to a lady on, WHY toilet paper!'

 we found some time and checked our e-mails and we had one from jon and fee saying that they were in sorrento, and that theyd been staying at the same camp ground since two days ago! we couldnt believe we'd missed them! we finally got in contact and found them staying in a cute little caravan right near us. 

we met up and decided to hire scooters for a day, go up the coast and have a picnic. this was a good idea in theory... except only jon had ever driven a scooter.. so we got them anyway, one between me and ange, and one for jon and fee. jon and i were driving to start, and i took off to a shaky start. we pulled over, and i asked jon where we were going to go. 'lets follow this road' he said. ok, so we set off, and after nearly hitting a few cars, i had the hang of the thing. 

as we started to get further away from sorrento, i realised that the road we were on is the one that we went on the bus to amalfi! it was the amalfi coast. i tried not to spew when i remembered the busses hurtling blindly around the corners, and told myself to relax. we wound around the coast, around the petrifying hairpin turns, and only nearly got hit by buses, so it was going quite well. we stopped off in a little town for a quick swim. then it was anges turn to have a go at driving. 

can i just butt in here and say that jess is THE worst passenger anyone could have on a scooter. second to possibly only my mother. comments like 'YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST!' when i was doing 5kmph and 'OH MY GOD THERES A TURN!' when it was still on the horizon were frequent, as were the crippling and winding digs of jess' fingers in my side.

ok, so i may have overreacted a bit when i got on the back. but i definately know now that i cant handle being a passenger. it is truly terrifying having no control over a machine that could possibly kill us. i dont know how ange didnt need to scream when i was driving, in fact, she was wooping and cheering telling me to drive faster! when i was on the back i was reduced to a blubbering mess and possibly dug my fingers a tad (A TAD??? i still have bruises!) too hard into anges kidneys.

but my fear was warranted, and we did have a slight crash. we were turning a particularly tight corner, like going around a 5 cent piece up a steep hill, and i wasnt helping the situation by saying we were going to crash, and we lost speed, and long story short, i am heavier than ange, i was on the back, and scooters are very painful when they fall on your leg.

in my defence: 

1: the 'particularly tight corner' was unbelievably tight, almost impossibly so. 

2: some words of encouragement wouldnt have gone astray. if someone had been yelling 'you can do it!' as opposed to 'we're going to die!' i might have had a bit more confidence in pulling the throttle to accelerate out of the turn as opposed to shrieking and letting go of the scooter. 

3: if jess hadnt eaten so many crepes in france and knew to lean to counter the weight instead of gripping my sides and hanging on for dear life we might have made it. note i say might. it still was an impossible turn. 

ok, so i've just been ripped to shreds (not by the scooter, by anges defense just now) and i cant say anything but never drive with me as a passenger in anything but a car. but getting back to the story, we got back on the horse, so to speak, and ange drove us all the way to positano. the view along the way was breathtaking. it was clear blue skies, bright blue ocean, and beautiful, frighfully winding roads. but i must say, ange did a really good job of getting us there alive.

when we got to positano we went for a huge swim. the water was awesome! jon and i swam out to a pontoon with some other people, and ange and fee stayed closer to the beach. we spent the afternoon swimming and eating gelati and living the good life. i drove back, following jon and fee, and when we got back, we still had more time on the scooters, so jon and i went off to explore, and ange and fee went back to the caravan park. that night we all sat around eating watermelon, and then got a load of pizzas and sat outside telling stories of our trips.

on our last full day we bid jon and fee farewell and they set off to calabria and we headed out for a day trip to capri. after purchasing the ridiculously expensive ferry tickets ($50 each return for a 20 minute ferry ride) and ranting about how ridiculously expensive it was to no one in particular (ahem. ange ranted to ME) we set off down to the ferry catching place and caught a ferry to capri. the island was very beautiful. we contemplated hiring a scooter for about two seconds before realising how unbelievalbly scary the roads would be and took a boat trip around the island instead. we saw mussolinis old house, sofia loren's mansion and also giorgio armanis. we had the option of going in to the blue grotto but we had run out of cash and surprisingly the men in the little row boats didnt have portable waterproof credit card machines. oh well. those little boats looked dangerous anyway. after the boat cruise we looked in all the shops. if it was linen, they had it. if we'd stayed there longer than half an hour i swear we would have come home with complete linen wardrobes. 

the next day it was time to head up to venice. we caught the dodgy rattly regional train from sorrento to naples. we were both reading our books and didnt realise when the train pulled in. i grabbed all my stuff and yelled at jess to get a move on. we got off the train in plenty of time, and just as it pulled out of the station jess realised we'd left the tent on the train. 

after an 8 hour train ride from naples we arrived in venice and set off to find our hostel. we had the map, i'd drawn a line straight to the hostel and we followed it for two turns and promptly got lost. it took us an hour to find the hostel, but it was a nice one and we were IN venice as opposed to on the mainland, which was a plus. 

we had one full day in venice and we explored/got lost all day. it is an awesome city. its great that there are no cars or scooters around. we went glass shopping and drank coffee and ate gelati. lovely. that night i was a tad sick - chills and a high temperature (no i didnt drink the water from the canals) so we had an early night ready for our last leg: verona.

when in rome...

apologies everyone for the lack of blog, we've not really had much chance to access the internet other than to check e-mails. besides, we've been having too much fun :) 

we bid farewell to france, with high hopes for italy. the train ride was as usual a very long one, but we eventually arrived in florence. we were hoping for a fresh change of scenery and culture from france, and we were not disappointed. florence was so welcoming in every aspect of the word. it seemed to have a really nice glow about it. we made our way to the camping grounds, which were only 5 minutes walk from the centre of town (five very steep minutes) and were absolutely blown away. from the campsite itself, we had a full panoramic view of florence and right into the hills. it was amazing. (i'm trying not to write awesome too much, but just between you and me, it was AWESOME!) we had such a nice stay there.

every night we went to the bar area, ate dinner overlooking the city, and sipped on an icy cold tuborg beer. that definately is the life. we explored around the city for a few days, going to the famous gold bridge and the leather markets - ange bought a leather bag that she was very excited about, we saw michelangelo's david - well, the fake one out the front - which was good enough. 

one thing i find really amazing about the italians is how much they like a good tan. florence has no beach, but it didnt stop a whole load of people going down to the local marshlands in their budgy smugglers and bikinis and actually hiring deckchairs to lay in the sun for hours! it really is a funny sight to see, but i must say, they put a lot of effort in, and it pays off. italians have the most amazing evenly tanned skin. here i was thinking i was getting a nice mediterranean tan, until you stand next to an italian and look like frosty the snowman. 

one of the days we took a day trip to siena, which is a very cute little place with lots and lots of gothic architecture. we spent most of the daywwinding through impossibly small alleyways that open out to massive piazzas. 

on another day we took a day trip out to pisa, of course to see the tower. that day trip wasnt really a day trip, because once you've seen the tower and taken a photo that looks like you're holding it up (which i think is hilarious and made ange take a hundred of me holding the tower up), theres really not a lot more to see.. 

so after 5 really nice relaxing days in florence we packed up our things and headed for roma.

so we got to rome, checked in to our hostel and went out for lunch/dinner. we went to a pasta place down the road from the hostel and ordered tortellini. well, we got fettucine and it tasted like dishwater. not a great start. on the second day we set off with high hopes to see the colosseum. we walked down a main road, got slightly lost and then turned a corner and it was right in front of us! it was breathtaking. we sat outside it for a while before heading off to explore the rest of rome. we got hopelessly lost and ended up in suburbia, which was strange. 

when you think of rome you think of ruins, togas 

and sandals, not modern apartments. we realised we were off the tourist map we had, so we found the river and headed to the west bank. we found the piazza we were looking for (apparently it had the best coffee in rome) but the shop was shut. instead we went to 'pizzarius' for lunch and had THE BEST PIZZA EVER! my faith in italian food was restored! we went back there every day. 

on the friday we got up early to go on the walking tour organised by our hostel only to find out that it was cancelled. we headed to the cute espresso bar next door before walking back to the colosseum (hereafter know as 'the big C'  because its really annoying to write) to do a tour of that and palantine hill. the big C was definately more impressive from the outside, but still worth going in.

 we did it with a tour group, so we skipped the HUGE queues. hooray! after the big C we headed over to palantine hill to see where the ancient roman palace was. the tour was worth it because its hard to imagine amazing gardens and marble arches from the rubble that is left today.

we made sure our knees and shoulders were covered before going to the vatican. saint pauls basilica was stunning. it was massive. jess was disappointed with michelangelo's ceiling, but the rest of it was impressive. we went into the tomb below the basilica and saw all the popes graves, including the recent pope before climbing the cupola, or the tower. it was SO crowded at the top and not worth the effort, really.

we saw the spanish steps, which were so crowded you couldnt move, and the piazza nuova before heading out to the beach on the sunday. well, the beach was not like anything we ever imagined. it was just rows of umbrellas and deck chairs and people frying. there must have been at least 100 people on the beach and of them about 7 were swimming. we dumped our stuff, ran into the ocean, 'cleansed' as jess would put it, got out, dried ourselves and got out of the sun. people thought we were crazy! we were the only girls that went in the ocean.

we met up with jon and fee when they got to rome. it was great to hear some australian accents again! and having a guy around meant that we got jeered at less. we went to the trevi fountain, the pantheon and through piazza navona before taking them to the awesome pizza bar we found. they agreed that it was totally awesome. we wandered around for a bit, found the spanish steps and piazza poppola. we saw a sign for a michelangelo exhibition so we went to check that out. they had examples of all the inventions that michelangelo had written about, and it was hands on so we got to play with them. our favourite type of museum. that night we went and sat in a dodgy park near out hostels drinking wine and watching the locals.

the next day, our last day in rome, we went to the catacombs south of the city. they were cool; well, more freezing! there were no bones or skulls down there which was disappointing. i expected them to be as they were when they found them. after that we headed to the vatican museums. they were huge, long and draining. by the time we got to the sistine chapel we were exhausted and it was so packed we found the exit as quick as we could.

then it was arriverdeci rome, buongiorno sorrento...