| BELLS EMAILS |
| Wed, 7 May 2003 03:49:20 -0700 (PDT) Easter in Italy in springtime, I couldnt ask for much more except maybe 10 days travelling through Sicily topped off with a weekend in Sorrento on the way home...have set the books aside for a few days, well not that they were really out but even further aside for a little giro to the south of italy! What a week, have just had a very action packed backpacking week. Thursday before last myself and 5 other aussie gals boarded the 10.30pm train for Reggio Calabria. Thank god for the sleep carriages on 14 hour train trips! But when we woke up we were in beautiful southern italy. We caught the ferry over the Messina in Sicily and from there headed around the south coast, our first hostel stop was in Taormina which although it was pretty touristy was a beautiful coastal town built on the hills above the sea with a Greek amphitheatre in prime position. As good old aussies do we headed straight for the beach and our first (and last) mediteranean swim, wont be doing that again at least until sometime a bit closer to summertime! The rest of the week we moved our way round the south of Italy to Catania, Siracusa and Agrigento, I know you all have your maps out for this...each place had fantastic sights the usual churches and duomos and a few greek temples and of course the sleazy greasy feral italian boys on scooters who got pretty excited by a group of 6 backpackers, we were even offered sex at 8am on the way to the train and at 3.30 in the afternoon when we were sitting in the piazza easting gelati, they really dont get it, they are so repulsive.... We even managed to climb Mt Etna! well a part of it anyway, we climbed the crater which erupted in 2001 which sounded interesting but really it was a lot of black dirt and old lava looking rock, still we climbed a volcano! The whole week was spent finding the best pizza, pasta, gelato, paninos, coffee and wine as possible and then trying to spend as least as possible on all of the above and accommodation whilst getting to the point of not caring if its 5 or -5 star just as long as you dont have to carry a backpack anymore! We hit the accommodation hurdle when we arrived in Naples to try pizza from the home of pizza, no such luck, apparently the whole city was chockers full, we called every hotel in the book including the ones we know we couldnt afford, we went out into the street and fought through gypsies and beggers to walk into hotels but after 3 1/2 hours in Maccas we still hadnt found anywhere to stay, the atmosphere was getting tense although we did laugh when we found pizza and beer in Maccas, it was getting to 5.30 and we had no where to stay but we didnt want to cop out and head home! Luckily we didnt and we got on a train to Sorrento at 6 getting there at 7.30pm senza beds...lucky for us the hostel had another place 10 mins away, the lady assured us it was fine and we could go with the signore in the car, at this stage we just needed a bed so didnt think twice about jumping into a car with a man we didnt even know...turned out just fine, basic but a bed and when you can spend the day wandering the streets of sorrento and the afternoon lying on the beach in Capri what can be said.... We then had just one train ride home which lasted a lifetime due to no seats on the entire train and a corridor full of rowdy teenage boys, oldies fighting over space and mean others who wouldnt let us through to the toilet (for 6 hours) and dogs...but we made it! It was great to get back to the fun travelling, the kind when you have no idea where you will be that night or for lunch for that matter and its a whole nother ball game when you can speak some of the language, you even get quite annoyed when they speak to you in english! We spent the week trying to get people to speak to us in Italian as long as it was italian and not some strange sicilian dialect like most were speaking. The train conductor thought he had us figured out, he said that the reason we spoke italian was that there were so many sicilians in Australia especially Sydney, we couldnt really explain to him that we didnt just pick it up down at the local deli! I am glad that the travelling has wiped away some of the memories of cancelled flights and the cold and the thoughts of what on earth was I doing here...I am gearing up for a great summer once the assignments are out of the way, plenty of plans for amalfi coast, spain, portugal and some fun with mum and dad when they(fingers crossed) come over in august. Hope all is well with everyone, hope to hear all the news from home and other parts of the world. Lots of love, Bel |