The Italian coast

After Rome, we headed off to Naples in an early morning train (to save on reservation costs). We had chalked out a plan of going to Mt. Vesuvius and then on to the Amalfi Coast or Pompeii, but as soon as we got to Naples all that went out the window. If Rome is like Delhi, then Naples is like Bihar. We reached and typically you would expect tourist information at the railway station and there was none. The office existed, but it was shut since it was about 8:30 and although everything else at the station was open, the little govt. Office wasn’t.

Anyways, we figured out our way to our hostel and got some info there. I think we had an experience which pretty much summed up Naples for us as we were leaving the hostel after that. We had just left the hostel and were walking towards the station about 500m away and just outside the hostel is a market. While we were crossing the market, a guy came running into the market shouting “Police, Police” (in Italian). In 30 secs there was no market anymore, everyone had immediately packed up and left their stalls. We stood in shock just observing what was going on. The first thought was “do we have our wallets). Napoli is the home to the best pick pockets in the world and this was our biggest fear going into Naples. So we very carefully managed our way to the station.

My research told me that there was a bus from Naples to Mt. Vesuvius, but everyone in town ignored that and were adamant that the only way was a train ride to a small town called erculano and then a bus ride from there. This added some 5 Euros each to our budget and also about an hour in time. It was almost as if everyone in there was getting a commission from this guy who ran the bus business. In any case, we made it to the station and got on the bus. This bus took us to a pretty reasonable height and left us about a kilometre under the crater of Mt. Vesuvius. From there onwards, we were supposed to trek ahead.

The trek was actually quite a difficult one, given the elements and the fact that we were carrying a bit of luggage. But the worst part was the other fit people who would just walk past you making you feel useless. But after the long trek, we got to the top and it was quite a sight indeed. Not only were we treated with brilliant views of the sea and Naples from the height, but obviously there was the volcano. I think if someone is around this area, this is a must do for them, unless they find something like Mt. Edna, which at the time was erupting!

After an hour at the top, we got back to the bottom and took the bus back. From there we headed on to Pompeii. This is basically an ancient town, which was buried under the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius  in 79AD. Its an interesting site where you can figure out how ancient Romans lived back in the day. Its like a Harappa civilization, but for the Romans. After many useless audio guides and expensive tour guides, for this we had downloaded an app by Rick Steves, a travel author and also read up on the place before we got there. So basically, we knew what was what. I think the most interesting things there were the small things like roads with marble chips in them to light the way for people in the night by reflecting the moon light.  Another interesting thing was the reconstruction of the dead bodies from Pompeii. The thing is that the volcanic ash, when it descended on the city had taken it by such a surprise that people did not have time to react, let alone evacuate. Due to this, there are several bodies of people just in shock, trying to protect their faces etc. these were all reconstructed from the ruins. The ruins are quite nice and we spent about 3 hours there. Some of the structures were just massive and its shocking how they were hidden for so many years. They even had a Colosseum like structure though not as big obviously, which was underground for so many years.

In any case, on our way out from Pompeii, we realised that all of Italy is basically out there to rip you off. Everyone told us that we had to take a train which cost us 2.5 Euros to get to a village to get a bus for Vesuvio we could have got the same bus from Pompeii as well and the train to Pompeii was included in our Eurail pass. Even to get back from Pompeii, everyone would direct us only to the station which was paid and not the one which was included. In any case, we got back to our hostel and had a nice dinner interacting with other tourists. I think this is the best part of living in a student hostel, we get to meet new people who all have very different stories and its very interesting getting to know some of them. Some hostels really help meet such people and it adds to the experience.

The next day, we made our way to the Amalfi coast in the morning, but once again this was not easy. Nobody in the station recognised the existence of the station at Vietri sul mare, one of the small towns on the coast. It almost seemed as though they all wanted us to take some expensive bus or train to the coast once again. However after a lot of information searching we finally got to know that we could get there from Solerno and so we took a train to that place. Solerno is basically a town from where the Amalfi Coast starts and we walked from that city to the coast. It was a bit of a let down, it wasn’t as spectacular as we had expected it to be, but at least we ticked off the Amalfi coast. Perhaps we didn’t visit the best part or maybe we needed to give it more time. In any case we made our way back to Napoli after a few hours and then ran to get some original Pizza from Napoli (Napoli is where Pizza was invented).

On our way to the place where it was started, we saw a Lemonchello store. This is a local drink which is made by dipping lemon peels into alcohol rather than fermenting the lemon. The person at the store actually gave us a tour and made us try some for free. We quite liked it and bought it on our way to the pizza place. There are many different places which claim to have the original pizza, but basically they are all the same and we chose a place called “Vesi”. The original pizza is just either marinara or margarita. We ordered one of both and it was shockingly cheap. While pizzas were 8-10 Euros in Rome, the original pizza was just 3 Euros. What’s more, it was absolutely brilliant, don’t know how the marinara without even cheese managed to have so much flavour, but the preparation had more flavour than most pizzas I’ve had in my life, the difference was probably the use of olive oil in the pizza. In any case we rushed to the station and got on the train for Frankfurt after the pizzas, thanking our stars that we were not robbed or mugged throughout our stay in Naples.

Roma

So reopening my blog once again, since i recently realised it existed. This time its mainly to document my Eurotrip. Bharat and I are on a 50 day tour of Euro and will hopefully have a nice experience travelling through Europe by ourselves for the first time. We also had some support in the form of our uncle in Frankfurt.

After flying in to Frankfurt, we headed out asap to the station and took the train to get to Rome. The first thing we realised was that reservations are a bitch! Our daily budget was 50 Euro each and the booking for the first connection itself took 17.5! The reason was that we were using a premium night train, which did a 2 hour journey in 5 hours and gave us a place to sleep for the night as opposed to waiting for the morning train in some obscure station. We thought that was bad till we got to Switzerland. Voila!! another train booking from Brig to Milan and this time it was 22.5 Euros each! Out of the 22.5 Euro, 10 Euro was the charge for making the reservation at the station, as opposed to over the net. This is when we got to know that we could actually do it over the net. Rutvik after 3 months in Europe said that there is no way to find out what the reservations costs are and there is no way to book it online.

In any case http://railtrains.raileurope.com/us/rail/point_to_point/passholderrequest.htm is the link to reserve online or to get an idea of how much it costs. I think there is also a surcharge they take for booking it online, so booking online is cheaper for Switzerland, but probably not for all other places, which don’t charge you extra for booking at the station.

In any case Milan to Rome cost us another 10 Euro each and that was it for our daily budget, trains itself cost us 50 Euro each, just to get from Frankfurt to Rome. However, Rome is one hell of a city and after we took a hostel, all we did from 4-7:30 was walk around. This was our route: Day 1 Route

Basically, we covered a lot of nice areas like the Spanish steps, the Trevi fountain, which was quite Grand, the Panthenon and some other places which wouldn’t really feature on a tourists handbook, but were quite good none the less. There is the Piazza di Venezia and the Tearto Argentina and Piazza de Republico, all of which are nice places to visit.

The next day, we went to the Colloseum, one of the ancient wonders of the world. Its quite majestic and although most of it is ruined, it is well worth the hype. I didn’t know that all the marble from the Colloseum was taken basically to build the Basilica in the Vatican! In any case, we took a guided tour and it was quite interesting, since we had no real previous knowledge about the Colloseum. After the Colloseum, we again took a walk around the area and found a few more monuments, one was basically what used to the a club (the bridge and swimming pool kind, not the weird music and awkward dance kind) for ancient Romans and also found circus Massimo, which was their race track, where they used to have their chariot races. Rome is basically a lovely city to walk around, you will find nice architecture and good eating joints all over the place, however, it is not a city to visit on a budget, because we kept finding one nice restaurant after another and wanted to splurge on food.

One thing though is that Rome is full of thieves. They are all thieves.. not just the thieves, but also the tour guides, the restaurant owners, the police, everyone! If you thought that India was bad, think Bihar and then think again. In restaurants, they will stare you down if you don’t order at least for 20 Euros each, "free tour guides will cost you 15 euros and the "student" discounts will only be for Europeans. 

Once again, we spent the day walking around town and also visited the Roman Forum, Pallatino  and a couple of new piazzas: Navona and Campo de Fiori (Route). I was totally taken in by the city and just kept wondering why Delhi doesn’t have the number of tourists that Rome does. Delhi, just like Rome is also a museum as a city. There is as much, if not more history in Delhi as well, however the old part of Delhi, unlike that of Rome is just a mess. If a tourist enters the Chandani Chowk area or tries to get to the Old Fort, they will die simply out of shock. I think Delhi has the potential to be one of the top tourist destinations of the world, but we simply don’t utilize our resources well. There is no marketing what so ever. Humayun’s Tomb is as big as the Taj Mahal and nobody comes to visit it. Right next to it is Khan-e-Khana Tomb and nobody outside of our colony and the ASI has heard of it. A stones throw away is Lodhi garden, which once again is full of old structures nobody really cares about. We live in the middle of all this history and don’t really bother because we don’t really know its significance. People here tell their stories with such passion that we get taken in by that, but are not really aware of what happened right next to us. I honestly don’t know anything about Delhi either, but a city that was built 7 times!! I think there is a lot more history than we give it credit for and I honestly feel it should attract more tourists that it does as of now.

The last day in Rome was reserved for the Vatican. After a 6-7 Km walk, we reached the main plaza and it was actually quite a grand sight. All the marble stolen from the Colloseum was put to good use. Although we intended to get it done quickly, we went in and couldn’t stop clicking and just looking at everything with wonder. The main basilica was quite grand and we also went to the top of the dome. The view from the dome was pretty good as well, I think it must be pretty much the highest point in the city. Anyways, we also did the long and boring Vatican Museum after that, the only real interesting (and familiar) part of the thing was the Sistine Chapel in the end and frankly it was pretty good. Its a lot better if you have the time and probably a guide, if not, its still a decent place to visit.

Once again, the last day was consumed by walking around to different piazzas and a park: the Villa Borghese (Route). Along the way, we grabbed gelatos from a few locations and basically this was what we found, the most expensive and famous place: Tre Scalini also had the most average gelato. The street side vendors and the normal roadside shops like Blue Ice were the better ones and the ones close to tourist locations were obviously more expensive.

Anyways, with this, we pretty much finished our tour of Rome and I genuinely feel that its a brilliant place for any tourist, you can walk around all day and keep running into new and awesome locations. The architecture is brilliant and the food as well, just that we were on a budget and I would advise you to spend a bit on the food.