THIRTY-EIGHT (Idle Time in Italy)

Though my trip with Jared--my last bout of bouncing around before "settling" in Italy, where I am now in my final stretch with a beautiful Italian family near Verona--began and end in Paris (see previous post; "SEVENTEEN"), there was some time spent in Italy as well. We mocked ourselves for essentially just repeating the style of trip we did two years ago in 2013: a week in France and a week in Italy. In our defense, Paris was the only repeat city!

This time around, we hit:
France- Paris, Digne, Aix, Cannes, Nice
Italy- Genova, Rome, Napoli

1. Genova. Genova was chosen largely because we were able to get there fairly easily by train from Nice (Nizza in italiano, I love that), and we found a cheap flight to Napoli from there. Lucky for us, we also found an amazing Couchsurfer to host us. Alfredo was just an all-around cool dude, very smart and funny, and so generous with his time, his home, his food, and his city knowledge (which was impressive!). Jared and I couldn't get over the extent to which we lucked out in finding Alfredo. He was a poet and he didn't know it, but he was also a great friend to make.

I think I was considerably more excited about the fact that pesto sauce comes from Genova (hence, pesto alle genovese) but did you know that apparently Christopher Columbus hailed from there as well? The building below...is like something that has to do with him. Maybe his house? I donno--where is Alfredo when you need him!?

Ah, here he is. Droppin' knowledge bombs on Jared, LIKE A BO$$.

This is the baller view from Alfredo's house. Epitomizes the world "villa," don't you think?

2. Napoli. Napoli was the great thing that almost wasn't. Originally, when we decided to do Italy (in planning the trip, South of France was the sure thing, but we were considering tacking on Spain), I was pretty vocal about having my heart set on Napoli. For whatever reason (read: pizza), it has been a city on my list for a few years now, ever since I really started dreaming up trips with some inkling that they could really happen. Later, I backed off as it started to seem unrealistic to get from Nice all the way down to Naples, then 2.5 hours North to Rome in time for our flight back to Paris, all in a matter of days. 

If not for the persistence/optimism of my traveling companion, who seemed to pick up on how much I wanted to go (and who wanted to go, as well), I don't think it would've happened. So I am so thankful for him, because we found a flight to Napoli from Genova for about 50 euro, and I got to see an Italian city unlike any other I've visited. Naples is like it's own little world apart from the rest of Italy; the closest Italian city I could compare it to would be Palermo, in Sicily, which has a similar grungy-ness. Naples is just doin' its own thing. It is laid back and chaotic, beautiful and ugly, young and old, all at once. It's certainly colorful, and diverse both in population but also in all that it offers: visits to Pompeii, Vesuvius, Herculaneum, Sorrento, the ocean--there's so much within reach! 

"This year will be legendary." If Napoli says so, I'm inclined to believe it. Considering that I rang in 2015 in Berlin and am currently writing a post on traveling Italy, I'd say the prediction has certainly held true thus far. I feel very, very lucky. 

We visited Herculaneum instead of Pompeii, in the interest of time. It's smaller and less-visited, but ultimately in better shape. It took us a few hours to see everything there was to see, but it was so worth it. We even saw skeletons, which drove home the fact that people really lived there perhaps a bit more than the remains of frescoes and murals on the walls. 

We stayed in the amazing Six Small Rooms Hostel, which has a great location and a lovely small staff (internationals who work at the hostel in exchange for a bed, mostly) who are more than willing to help you out and make personal recommendations. One American chick who welcomed us, Anne, actually helped me plan our entire itinerary for our limited time in the city! It was ABSOLUTELY NOT a party hostel--as the name suggests, it is cozy and fosters a feeling of community in an almost familial way. It is not the place to stumble home drunk at 5 AM--in fact, there's a midnight lock-up (though no fear, you can get keys from the front desk, so we managed to experience the nightlife a bit). But I've never stayed in a hostel with such a warm, home-y atmosphere (that's a lie, Mosquito Hostel in Krakow was like a home away from home; I never wanted to leave). But it's rare. I'll stop now, but we loved it. I want to live in Napoli--preferably there. I'm thinking a couple of months would do me--maybe in 2016, so that year can be legendary too.

And I'm deadly serious about wanting to live there, for many reasons. I felt myself falling in love with the city alarmingly quickly. The chaos is just shy of overwhelming, and the grunge factor is mixed in with so much color, so much life, that I just relished it. It felt like the people there were exactly the stereotypical image I had in my mind's eye when asked to conjure up "an Italian." The language is spoken loudly, quickly, and with abundant hand gestures. There are markets in the streets and stalls fighting for space amid stores whose wares seem to be spilling forth out onto the uneven stones, and old ladies dragging their purchases behind them do battle with loud, smelly motos. It's great. (I'm mostly on the sideline trying to avoid death-by-car, eat a quickly-melting gelato, and take a picture all at once).

But let's be real, I could also stay just for the pizza.

Dinner on night #1, at Di Matteo, where we split a bottle of wine, a bottle of water, a plate of fritti misti, and 2 pizzas...for 20 euro. Unreal. That's the other beautiful thing I forgot to mention: Napoli is cheap. It's fantastic. 

The cheapness extends to the nightlife, which is unlike anything I've ever experienced, but should be adopted by all countries&cultures. Bars are rendered moot, replaced instead by bar-like shops where you get super cheap drinks (my delicious German beer was 1 euro a bottle!) and stand outside in the piazzas, lounging against stone fountains and church steps, making random friends and enjoying the nice summer nights. 

3. Rome. The upside to being an extremely lucky human with a couple of generous, well-educated and well-traveled parents is that even at a young age, I had already visited quite a few places. The downside? My appreciation was limited, and so are my memories. So when I say that I had been to Rome 3x before this trip, it can't mean much. Certain places, like the Vatican-area (see below), looked like postcards pulled from a box inside my head, I remembered them so clearly. But most things, and certainly the general vibes of cities, are lost to time. 

Still, I was reluctant to return to Rome, since I didn't remember loving it, and I have found that most people have a strong love or hate relationship with the place, and the binary is strict. It was a Jared pick, but RyanAir took his side, and so we went to Rome. 

I'm so glad. 

It was overwhelming in some ways, like in the seemingly constant presence of hordes of other tourists, and in the overloaded column of things falling under Sights to See. We had only two nights there, which was not enough and which forced us to run around all day and wake up way too early every morning, but we still had a great time. Lots of walking, lots of waiting in line (NEVER AGAIN WILL I GO TO THE VATICAN MUSEUMS, THAT IS MY SOLEMN VOW--Jared, if you're reading this, that was for you kiddo. But NEVER again). But it was beautiful, it was lively, it was so fun to explore--and there were so many neighborhoods off the beaten track that merited a visit. I want to go back again and spend time in those places, now that I've refreshed my Swiss cheese memory. 

Praying to the Gods of queues--MAKE IT GO FASTER

This night was magic. This is our friend Patrizia, in her son's restaurant, where she runs the game. She is wearing my necklace, which she complimented, so I gave it to her. (Want to know how to become instant best friends with a sweet Italian lady? That's how). Little experiences like that set Rome apart for us--it wasn't just jostling tourists and pounding the pavement, throwing elbows to get a good picture of Some Old Thing. It was a beautiful place, where real people live and authentic kindnesses and interactions occur. You just have to wander a bit, maybe...say, to Bistrot San Lorenzo!