The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Sports & Leisure => Topic started by: theinevitable on June 06, 2016, 04:09:50 pm
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So, at the end of this month I am going to Italy. My parents are both turning 60 this year, and in addition my maternal grandparents announced that soon they will be too old to go on any more trips. So the whole maternal side of the family is renting a big house in Italy near Florence and going for a week. Very excited.
Any of you suckers been to Italy? I am planning on making a 1 or 2 day trip down to Rome. Otherwise my schedule is open.
We are going to be staying exactly as far from Florence (in travel time) as I live from NYC. I cannot escape commuter trains. But I think I can handle riding a train in Italy for an hour and looking out the window. Actually that sounds kind of great. Probably prettier than the parts of Jersey that I see from the train.
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Rome, Florence, Venice, along with side trips to the Vatican, Pisa and Milan - all in 1987 during the summer after my HS senior year. I really liked all 3 places, and would gladly have gone back many times.
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I have never been. But my mother, after retiring, got hooked up with volunteer/charity work in Italy through her church. First at an orphanage in Naples, which sadly closed after people embezzled funds from it. Then at a Protestant retreat center thing near Florence. She's gone almost every year for about ten years now. And she's audited Italian classes at local colleges. (We do not have a drop of Italian blood in us. Nonetheless, when we get a postcard from her on one of these trips, I shout "It's-a from Grandmama, in Eetaly!")
So, she's been around. It sounds pretty fantastic overall. I know I would eat like eight meals a day if I went.
From what I can recall her saying, the trains are usually fine, but there's sometimes a transit strike that can leave you stranded.
If you have specific questions, I can pass them on.
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Go to Pompeii and Herculaneum for me. I'm sure they're going to be covered up by another volcanic eruption someday and I will kick myself that I never went.
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Rome, Venice and Turin in 1985. I was 19 and it was beautiful.
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I went to Italy when I was 14 or 15, I am really interested to see it almost 15 years later when I have learned to appreciate... pretty much everything... a lot more.
Ordered a big new backpack today (maximum carry on dimensions). So pumped.
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So, she's been around. It sounds pretty fantastic overall. I know I would eat like eight meals a day if I went.
As you should.
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You'll be in Italy, so there's no real reason you should do this, but if I were there I'd take some time to visit Croatia. I've never been to the region so don't know how long it would take to get there, but I want to visit Croatia so bad.
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Dalmatian Islands? In college a professor said its why Italy entered WWII? There was probably more to it, but she definitely said it.
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Pompeii is really tempting. Maybe after I spend a day in Rome I can go down there for a day.
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I approve the Croatia sentiment. Inev will have to go back to Europe again shortly and tell us all about it.
(unless I get there first)
I was aiming for 2017 but looks like it'll be 2018 at the earliest.
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Talked to the fam about when we are doing whole-family things and it looks like I can't fit Pompeii in unless I skip Rome. This is a tough choice.
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Well, Pompeii is more likely to have disappeared under a volcanic eruption again before you get another chance to visit. Wikipedia says the last time the volcanos near Rome erupted were in 40,000 BC and 5,000 BC. How the hell do they even know that? But anyway, I guess that is a weird way to decide.
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Hm. This decision seems less difficult now that I see that going to Pompeii directly would take 5 hours each way.
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Plans have changed again. Going to Pompeii.
Just trying to figure out whether it's better to stay that night in Naples, or head back to Rome on a late train.
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Excellent!
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All packed. Only bringing enough clothes for 4 days (I'd rather wash boxers and socks in a sink than carry a heavier bag) but all the little shit adds up. It would save me almost a kilo to bring my kindle instead of 2 books, but what's vacation for if not reading fat paperbacks? And yes, that weight is in grams because I weighed the books on my kitchen scale.
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Longest voyage of my life. Every step involved missing a connection because of delays. But holy cow Italy rules. Arriving in Florence 24 hours late but I am not feeling like complaining as I watch the countryside go by. Much prettier than central New Jersey.
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In Rome alone, Pompeii tomorrow. I have done a good job on this trip until today... sunburnt and weird heat rash on my legs because I wore ##### so I could enter the Vatican sites. Unfortunately today the Sistine Chapel and Pantheon were closed for some religious observance. Walked around (outside) the Colosseum, saw the Trevi fountain. Best part was walking along the Tiber, because I walked down some stairs and there was nobody there. Just a shady path along the river that was mentioned in everything I read in 5 years of Latin class.
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Damn religious observances.
I'm glad you're going to Pompeii. I may just cross it off my list. Sending a figment of my imagination there is close enough, right?
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I have bad news. You need to put it back on your list.
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Dammit! What happened?
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Dammit! What happened?
Maybe he means that it was so spectacular that you have to see it for yourself.
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What Paul said. It was the coolest. Met a cute American girl on the train and we walked around Pompei for maybe 4 hours. Got wiped out and left and still hadn't seen some of the things I wanted to see. It's so cool!
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Yeah, definitely maxxed it. Just the right balance of days where I wore myself out and days where I sat pleasantly somewhere nice and read.
The coolest (besides Pompeii) was Milan. My sister's Italian friend, which of course she has because she goes to a different kind of fancy college than I did, told her where to go to dinner, and it was in the canal district. We left dinner during the Italy vs. Germany soccer game and it was insanity. People shooting off green and red smoke, fireworks, screaming, etc as they they watched the game on giant screens along the water. Milan was a nice mix of a big modern city and really old cool stuff.
Other highlights: heard an even more insane version of how my great-grandma became an orphan. Also that when they went to her childhood home to scatter her ashes in the river they found her initials carved in a windowsill.
Ran out of mobile data on the first day (10 hour nightmare of missing a flight in London and apparently looked at twitter way too much) so I spent the rest of the time with paper maps. Enjoyable because I love getting lost when I don't have anywhere to be.
Only had one fight with my sister, during that 10 hour layover, and the rest of the time we had a blast, even when my aunt and uncle were being shitheads.
Didn't get to go into the Sistine Chapel or Pantheon because of some sort of religious observance, but saw some nuns crying in St. Peters... which almost made me cry.
Some really great food once I gave in and stopped trying to order weird things. Might need to take a long break from prosciutto after One Bad Experience.
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Might need to take a long break from prosciutto after One Bad Experience.
Need to know more about this.
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Yes, and I also want to know the weird things you were trying to order. What's weird in Italy?
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I guess "weird" is not the right word. I just ordered things that sounded interesting that I hadn't eaten before, or things that I wondered what the "Italian" version would be like, and kept getting served very small dishes or things I could cook myself in the states (like a grilled giraffe with lemon). Later in the trip I just always ordered the pasta, and was always happy. Also had some great risotto.
The bad experience: our last day I was really really hungry because we were traveling all day the day before and didn't have any real meals, mostly just snacks. My sister's friend suggested a place to get lunch and we went there and the cheeseburger was beckoning me. The rest of the menu wasn't anything special so I decided to go for it. The meat had a kind of strange flavor and I slowly came to realize it tasted like a thick hunk of prosciutto with ketchup and mustard on it, and then I started feeling really nauseous. It is possible I read the menu wrong and it was some kind of cured meat hamburger, or else I was just suffering from psychological suggestion. But I felt gross the rest of the day and couldn't stop thinking about that bad burger.
I can't figure out how it could taste like that, since the menu definitely said beef, and prosciutto does not have any spices on it that could have been in the burger to make it taste that way. Hmmm.
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It was cat.
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It was cat.