My Month in Italy

Hello again blog, it has been a while! 

As soon as we left Bologna, I was not able to pick up wifi again until we reached Sicily. Those 8 days of no wifi meant no blog posts and I got very behind in Sicily trying to keep up with the day while posting missed days in Salerno. Instead of summing up each day, I am going to use this post as an overview of the entire trip. 

To begin – Bologna! Our days spent in this modern yet Renaissancey city were filled with phenomenal food and surprising sights. The center of the city, Piazza Maggiore, is absolutely astounding with its historical buildings that take you back in time. The city is filled with college students are there is also something going on; my favorite event being the 9pm movie played every night in front of the cathedral. Every meal was a piece of art and the day trips that we took around Emilia-Romagna/other Italian regions were indescribable (Firenze, Venezia, Parma, La Spezia, and Cinque Terre).

Salerno was our next stop. The region of Campania has some incredible locations, making Salerno a good place to stay to take day trips. It was quite humid there and everyone was tan beyond belief! Honestly the food was not great here but I had some gelato that was one for the books.We rented a car and I finally saw the inspiration for Mariokart… take my advice… never rent a car in Naples, Sorrento, or Salerno. We saw the world’s largest palace in Caserta, travelled alongside the Amalfi Coast via bus and ferry, made some friends in the beach city of Agropoli, and revisited our favorite pizzeria in Sorrento. I don’t think I would stay in Salerno again, it’s a good city for day trips, but it was hard to communicate with loved ones back home and it is not the cleanest of the Italian cities.

Guy and Terry left us at this point and my dad and I continued our journey via overnight boat to Palermo, Sicilia. We watched the sun go down from the ocean and passed by Capri. Once we arrived, we waited an hour to get off and then took a bus to Mazara del Vallo (it was not an easy process). We decided to stay in Mazara because we have family/friends there and personally, I believe that the food there is some of the best in Sicily. Mazara is an ancient city that probably was inhabited by every empire/nation but its most prevalent influences are Norman and Arab, since it is right across from Tunisia. Thanks to the Normans, plenty of Mazarese people have blonde hair and blue eyes, so I fit in just right. We were welcomed with hospitality by everyone there and were always entertained whether it be family dinners, piano concerts in the middle of the street, jelly-fishing, or exploring parts of the city unknown. I probably gained about 5 pounds from this leg of the trip due to excessive over-feeding, also known as love, and from my daily arancini. Nevertheless, I still love the land of my heritage and I was bummed to leave, as always. 

We made our way back to Palermo, got off at the wrong train station, got lucky and found a group of bus drivers heading to Palermo, and continued our journey back to Rome. In Rome we revisited some of our favorite spots and discovered some new ones. I have a new-found love for Rome and I will definitely be back… maybe not again in the summer though. We pack up today since it is our last day of our Italian adventure. Lucky for me, my debit card doesn’t work and I’m going to be traveling sola for the next week in Spain… so send prayers! I’m going to miss Italy a lot, but I am ready to continue my journey in Valencia and walking the 150 miles on El Camino De Santiago. To address my goals I wrote about in a previous post, yes, my understanding of Italian has skyrocketed and it’s much easier for me to speak. I’ve learned so many new words and I will miss  hearing the language around every corner.

Thank you Italy for some fantastic memories and full stomachs! It takes a while for photos to load on WordPress, so when I get back I will put a link on my blog to view pictures from the trip. Arriverderci Italia – a dopo!

A Surprise in Caserta

We met Guy and Terry at 9 to go get our rental car from our friend and started our road trip to Guy’s family’s town, Serino. We got lost a few times. We arrived in Serino about an hour later, parked, and walked around to find not much except for a large number of senior citizens and a fountain of immigrants lacking water. Guy told us that when his great grandfather left Serino, he was one of the first of hundreds to immigrate to the United States. Since Serino is such a small town, it was greatly impacted by the amount of residents that left. 
We got a pastry for the road and decided to explore another part of Campania. My Aunt Fina had told us before the trip about a town called Caserta, so when we recognized its name on the map, we did some research and decided to head over. We really had no idea what to expect and the temperature was 36 degrees Celsius, so we just decided to go along with it since we were already so far on the autostrada. We arrived in the small town of Caserta and found a parking spot behind a bus. With some difficult maneuvers, my Dad parked our blue Ford Fiesta and we noticed a giant Palace behind us. I somehow persuaded the group to go investigate, so we walked about half a mile over a dusty path, without shade, leading to the entrance of this place. The front of the building had incredible shrubbery that was filled with dry weeds and the surroundings just looked runned-down. 

We reluctantly paid the €48 to get in and everyone thanked me at the end! So after experiencing this palace – more elaborate than Versailles – we did our research since we didn’t take a tour. The palace is the largest in the world and was home to Napoletano royalty dating back to who knows when. The palace itself was built in the 1800s and King Ferdinand II and his wife Maria Sophia lived there most recently. The palace was the location that the Germans surrender during World War II and many renown movies were filmed there, including Star Wars and Mission Impossible. In my personal opinion, the art in that palace was some of the most ornate I have ever seen in my life. As we finished seeing maybe 1/10 of the interior (that’s all that we were allowed) we went outside and found an incredible garden that was trimmed and taken care of, unlike its front counterpart. There was a path even longer than the one in the front that appeared to go on infinitely… you guessed it, I chose to walk all the way down it in the blazing sun to go and see the fountain at the end. I got a very nice tan from that… good thing I had a water bottle with me or I wouldn’t have been able to do it. 

After our unexpected sight in Caserta, we drove back to Salerno and decided to let Guy and Terry have dinner on their own. At 8 pm, my dad and I walked to Mama Rosa’s and found Guy and Terry on the street heading towards the same place! We ate together and then sat on their rooftop balcony that night and relaxed until my dad and I went back to our dungeon to sleep. 

A lesson learned from the day: let life take you where it wants.