Italia

Once again, full disclosure: It’s almost October and I’m posting about July. Life happens. Enjoy.

Alrighty, we left off at the bus trip from hell. First, we had these people kick Alyssa out of her seat and claim that they had reserved seats (there were no reserved seats). Then, they leaned their seats all the way back, and I mean ALL the way back. We were way too close and personal. Then, the lady kept getting some spray bottle out and spraying it all over, including on us. We have no idea what it was, but anyway, the point is that it was a horrible bus ride and we got no sleep.

You can imagine how happy we were when we finally reached Florence! We wandered around until we could go check into our Airbnb and ended up finding a great deal on some leather purses, so we were really excited about that! Finally we could check into our Airbnb and we ended up having a short 5 hour nap hahaha. Then we decided to go out into the city and walk around a bit and find a place for dinner!

We ended up at a nice little restaurant and we had the most AMAZING pasta ever. Seriously, we were in heaven. We enjoyed a nice glass of wine before wandering around a bit more and heading back to the Airbnb!

The next day, we wandered around Florence and enjoyed taking in everything the city has to offer. It was sooooooo hot though. My sweat was sweating, which meant we had every right to enjoy some delicious gelato. Later, we went to a fabulous pizza place. They kept the prosecco flowing and even gave us some extra pizza to try. After several glasses of prosecco and a shot of some kind of Italian liquor called grappa (I think?), we were in very high spirits after we left the pizza place hahaha. We did some more walking around and exploring before eventually calling it a night! Florence was beautiful! Definitely my favorite city that we went to in Italy!

Next stop was Pisa! We had plans to make just a little pit stop there so we could see the leaning tower and then move on to Rome! After a nice photo shoot, we made our way to the bus stop, but the directions they gave us led us astray and we ended up missing the bus. We had to wait at this convenience store place for about 8 hours until the next bus hahaha. We got a bit bored, but we had some delicious pasta and it’s just another weird story to tell haha. Finally, it was time to catch the bus! We made a friend who is from California and was also heading to Rome! We enjoyed chatting with him on the way! Also, we got to see the lunar eclipse a little from the bus! Finally, we made it to Rome and we were worn out, so we went straight to sleep!

The next day we started off bright and early at the Colosseum! We enjoyed seeing the beauty behind the ancient structures! There is so much history that happened there, it was incredible to walk around the forum and think about it! Then, we headed to the Trevi fountain, of course. We wandered towards the Pantheon before heading over to the Vatican.

We realized very quickly that the street vendor people are quite aggressive. We had people approaching us outside the Colosseum shoving stuff in our face and then calling us racist when we said “no thanks” so that was a bit of a culture shock haha. Also, the people selling tours do the same type of thing. We had one guy come up to us and he was selling tours to the Vatican museums and St. Paul’s Cathedral (keep in mind, St. Paul’s is free). He told us there was a 2 hour wait to get into the Vatican, but the price of the tour was really a lot, especially considering we could get in for only 8 euro, and St. Paul’s was free. Besides, the tour of the Vatican was 2 hours long, and we really only wanted to go in and see the Sistine Chapel, we aren’t really super into art, so it would have been a waste of our time. So, we stuck to our guns and carried on. As we approached the museums we came across more people doing the same thing. At one point, a guy came up to Lyss and a lady approached me, and then the two of them got into an argument about who got there first or something. Then we were approached by ANOTHER lady and I told her we weren’t interested and she said “well, can you let me finish” Seriously, by the end of the day we were absolutely fed up with it. As it turned out, there wasn’t a two hour wait to get into the museums. In fact, we went straight in and went through security and purchased tickets in about 5-10 minutes. We saved about 35 euro by doing this. Definitely worth it. It was even peak tourist season, but it was also about 3pm, in the heat of the day, so that’s probably why the lines were short, regardless it worked out in our favor! So we made our way through the museums and to the Chapel! It was soooo stunning to see! The actual image that we all have seen is very small, and your neck gets a bit sore from staring up at the ceiling, but it was incredible to see in person. My favorite image was the depiction of Adam and Eve. I thought it was amazing. Pictures aren’t allowed and you can’t talk, but I did manage to ‘scratch my head’ a few times and sneak a few pics hahaha. #YOLO

Then, we made our way back around to St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Cathedral was absolutely stunning. It was amazing to see. I don’t know how else to describe it other than it was just incredible. It was a very kind of religious experience (for obvious reasons lol), but I mean it just seemed to have this spirituality emanating from it. It was great.

At one point they stopped everyone from walking across this one area. There was a doorway everyone was standing near and everyone was getting hyped up. Lyss and I were thinking the Pope was coming or something because everyone was so hyped lol. Turned out they have a Saturday night mass in Latin. It was not the Pope. Haha

After a long day in the heat, we were really exhausted, so we headed back to our Airbnb. There really wasn’t anywhere to go to escape the heat, so I think we were experiencing a bit of heat exhaustion and the next day we were heading to Pompeii, so we wanted to be well rested!

We took one of the fast trains to Pompeii, which was really cool! Pompeii was very easy to get to from Rome! They have these tour buses that go, but they were really expensive! We ended up finding a good price on train tickets to Naples, and from Naples you take one of these other trains for like 4.80 euro return to Pompeii, so it worked out in the end. Plus, we scored getting student discounts at a lot of places, or EU discounts in my case, so our trip to Pompeii ended up being only a fraction of the price of one of the tours! The tickets on site were only like 8 Euro, plus we got there early so the lines weren’t bad! Although once again there were tour people trying to trick us! In fact, they told us we were going in the wrong direction to try to lure us in. How freaking rude. Anyway, we just followed the signs that pointed us to our destination and we found the archaelogical site!

Pompeii was soooo freaking cool. Seriously, the body casts were haunting yet incredible to see. Walking around the ancient city was amazing too. You could really sort of piece it together in your mind. We were slightly disappointed they were out of guidebooks that were written in English, but the maps they hand out were really helpful! Also, one of the most famous attractions about Pompeii is the brothel. It has all kinds of dirty images on the walls because apparently these…um…customers of the brothel would come in and ‘order’ what they wanted like it was damn McDonald’s. Like “yeah I’ll take a number 5” “small medium or large sir” I wonder if they had a dollar menu. Hahahahaha okay sorry, that’s vulgar, I’m done now.

Anyway, Pompeii was badass. We journeyed back to Rome and then we spent the evening with our new friend from California and his friend from France! We went to a nice little cocktail bar for a drink and had a nice time! Eventually, it was time for our adventures in Italy to come to an end! We had an early flight back to London.

Italy was so beautiful and has such a rich history. It was a great time!! Although, it was hotter than Hades and the lack of AC was a major concern hahaha.

Next up: More adventures, this time in London before Lyss heads back to the US!

Bye for now!

Meg