The Southern Tour

So for those of you who read both Emily and my blogs, you already have a pretty good rundown of how our trip was.  But I’d be remiss to leave out my perspective!

So our trip began with me meeting Emily at the Termini train station here in Rome.  We had some communication difficulties with cell phones not working, but I was able to find here thanks to her sharp observational skills.  Anyway, we soon got on a train to Napoli, but the train was packed! We were not even in the car itself, we stood in the in-between between cars for a good hour and more and more people would get on at every stop and make it even more tightly packed! We did manage to get a seat relatively soon, which made our trip a thousand times better.  From the Napoli train station,we took a sort of Metro all the way out to Sorrento.  I was feeling pretty sick over this whole trip, with a fever and a bad headache, it might have been a weak flu or something, but I had managed up until getting on the Metro.  After maybe 15 minutes on the Metro I started getting really, really motion sickness, but luck worked in my favor again and we soon got seats. Phew!  By the time we got off in SanAngello, the suburb/part of Sorrento where out hotel was, we were quite tired.  By the time we found out hotel and had checked in, after walking down a very dark, creepy street with little traffic, we were so so tired we fell asleep at like 7 oclock with no dinner!

The next day we got up early to start exploring.  We bought a ticket and waited and waited for the bus, but we eventually found out it was easier to go to Sorrento and then catch a bus there.  So we used our 24 hour transit passes (great investment if anyone is going) and took a bus from Sorrento to Positano.  The ride was pretty crazy, from the low of Sorrento up up up over the hill and into the cliffs of Positano, snaking back and forth over the slope of the hill and then in and out of the cliffs.  It was funny on the cliffs, because you see every view at least twice, as the road curves out toward the ocean and then back in, following the contour of the different cliffs and inlets of the coast.   Talk about beautiful.  BE-U-TEE-FULL!! So gorgeous, out of this world incredible. Green vegetation clinging to the cliffs, grey and tan rock formations and cliff faces, and the beautiful blue of the Mediterranean.  We spent most of our time in Positano at the beautiful beach at the bottom of the town (the town hangs on the terraces cut into either side of a gully between two cliffs and the streets cut back and forth eventually leading down to the beach).  We got to see an Italian wedding, which is maybe the fourth or fifth wedding I’ve seen while abroad.  They little showered the bride and groom when they came out, maybe it was an inside joke, but in addition to rice they were throwing candied almonds I think, which is an Italian tradition (right mom?).

Anyway it was a very cute and couldn’t have been in a more beautiful place.  After the wedding, Emily and I bought some lattine (cans of soda) and went to the spiagga (beach).  I had bought some pastries before we got on the train, but they were long destroyed from the cramped conditions on the train.  Nonetheless, we had a great time enjoying incredible views of both the ocean and the town. The beach was pebbly (just like in CT!) and but we made the painful trip to the water’s edge to put our feet in, and then we spent a long time hunting down tiny little flecks almost of sea glass.  I tried to teach Emily how to skip stones, but the conditions weren’t ideal, so I’ll have to teach her another time.Sorry for the thumb! Isn’t she beautiful!the same beach we’re on above.

So after spending much of the day in Positano, we caught the same bus that brought us there and took it further out to Amalfi.  It was night by the time we got there and it was so cold! Very very windy and the temperature dropped considerably when the sun was below the horizon.  It was halloween night, and as we walked around town we same lots of little children running around in different costumes.  Halloween is apparently pretty new in Italy, and all the kids were going into stores to get candy, and not homes.  We went into the Cathedral in Amalfi, which has a huge staircase leading up to it.  I think they were doing Vespers? Because there was a few people in the pews, the lights were very low, and there was organ music going.  Emily and I lit some candles for the people we loved and admired the beautiful beautiful interior of the cathedral.  It’s funny, I am always amazed first that there can be so many beautiful churches in Italy, seemingly everywhere you go there is at least one breathtaking interior or exterior, and secondly I’m amazed that I can still be amazed! Each one has something different.  So after we explored Amalfi alittle, we longed for the warmth of the bus, so we went back to the little bar at the bus station.  I had a coffee and Emily had a lemon granite, which is like a slurpee in the States bus they use real fruit-and the Amalfi coast is know for its lemons.  It was really tasty! I’ll come back to the granite later.My favorite Amalfi Halloween costume.

So the next day, Emily and I thought we would go to Capri, but upon arriving in Sorrento and getting to the port, we saw the prices and decided to stay landlubbers for the day.  Instead, we spent much of the day looking around Sorrento, which is a beautiful beautiful town.  We had a tasty lunch at a little place right in the center, and sat next to a grumpy couple.  How could they be grumpy in such an incredible place! We bought lots of postcards, were offered lots of limoncello, went to a hypersexualized gelato store, saw lots of nice wood inlays (a Sorrentine specialty), explored a lemon grove, and just wandered around the quiet coastal city.  We saw the same mom and daughter duo we had seen earlier, with the little girl with the Michael Jackson hat and one sequined glove (R.I.P. Michael).  Before heading home, we stopped by a local bar for happy hour, but our Long Island Ice Tea did not have Coca-Cola nor did our Strawberry Daiquiri have strawberries… Italians do a lot of things right but some they do so wrong.  So we headed home and had a delicious meal at the Moonlight in San’Angello! It was so delicious there.  We had a Mixed Fried Italian antipasto with friend antipasto salad, fried mozzarella, simple fried dough balls, and some croquettes or suppli.  Suppli are rice with tomato sauce and mozzarella deep fried, aka delicious.  For main dishes Emily had, of course, Frutti Misti and I had wide flat tube macaroni with octopus in a spicy tomato sauce, but the octopus was not cut up, but instead they were all tiny octopus! It was very tasty, and a new experience.  We went back the next night and had an equally delicious meal, and they gave us free bruschetta, which was also incredibly tasty.

So for our last day, we decided to take a chance and head to Atrani, which, according to my mom, is where her grandmother was from before she came to the U.S.  We searched the internet after coming home from dinner the night before the last day and found, incredibly, that Atrani was the town over from Amalfi! Pretty wild.  Emily said we definitely had to go, so we took the bus again to Amalfi and then went on foot over the mountain road to Atrani.  Atrani was a beautiful town, very similar in outward appearance to the other coastal towns, but much much smaller (a fact they proudly proclaim) and obviously less affected by the tourism of their neighbors.  We bought lots of postcards, collected more sea glass, and took lots of pictures (especially of me next to things that said Atrani).  Soon it was time to go, and we boarded to Sorrento to take a train to Naples to take a train to Rome to take a train to the airport to take a plane to Madrid to take a Metro to the bus station to take a bus to Granada.  All things considered, that part was close to smooth, though there were some big bumps.Granada was, in one, word, incredible. It was totally different from living in Rome, it was much more laid back, much cleaner, with very different people and activities (aka hippies everywhere!).  Most of the time in Granada was spent relaxing, spending time with Emily, meeting her friends, checking out the different neighborhoods.  I was lucky enough to go on a tour with Emily’s school, it was a special tour of the Allahmbra, which is an enormous Moorish fort overlooking Granada from the hills surrounding (it is situated in the Sierra Nevadas).  It was a really incredible place, totally different from the types of architecture I see in Rome-every inch was covered in the intricate carvings that characterize Islamist architecture, also those specific types of arches, points, windows and everything.  It looked like Prince of Persia!First Schwarma! The true AmbrosiaThis is from a vista that Emily took me up in the Sacromonte neighborhood (correct me if I’m wrong Emily)The Allambra from the viewGetting to see the special parts of the Alhambra was awesome! The last two pictures are from inside the special bathhouses they had on the premises of the fort, they were so cool to get to walk through and so gorgeous and intricate, and they still had some of their paint, which is super super rare.

 

Granada was an incredible time in its bits and pieces:  just spending every day in a beautiful city where life is slow and the only thing to do is wander and enjoy good food and quality time with the one you love was what made it so incredible, it wasn’t the wild times or the amazing sights, but it was just enjoying the simple things with someone you really love!