“Fair go”. Stiff bickies Dad, it’s my blog, I’ll call you what I damn well like! I also apologise for the lack of description and detail in this blog – lack of sleep has melted my brain. Anyway, I had the pleasure of being tour guide for my parents, more affectionately known as the olds (even if they don’t like the nickname) for five days across Italy. This ran reasonably smoothly, though I can’t say that the accommodation interactions went off without a hitch. Let’s just say that we had more time to immerse ourselves into the culture of the surrounding environment when we arrived. Each time. Sigh of frustration. Ah well, golden rule of travelling……everything always goes wrong….but it always works out.
After a day of relaxing and some shopping we were off to Napoli for two nights. Although we had to wait for another hour for the owner, the apartment turned out to be a gorgeous little thing on the top of a building, which meant a breezy ‘courtyard’ overlooking the city. Not too bad for €15 each. Not too bad at all. Had dinner at a great little trattoria which served us some handmade mozzarella, which was amazing. Damn, I hate eating in Italy. It just sucks.
The next day we bore the brunt of the disgusting humidity and trekked off to Pompeii. Even though I have been there before, it was still an amazing place. You are always stunned at the size of the place, forcing you to remember that it was a city, not just a palace or individual property. Mum and Dad in particular were quite taken with the ruined city. We wandered around semi-aimlessly (and somewhat listlessly at times!) in the humid heat, admiring the vestiges of temples, the remnants of painted facades and even some quite well preserved frescoes.
We were pleasantly surprised that it only cost us €3.70 return each to get there; certainly helps offset much of the expense of spending-without-blinking here in Italy. I was delighted to discover some possessions of my mother that still fascinates (and cools me). Mum was given some little white tablet/mint lolly-looking things. Add water to these and it expands and folds out into a cool little towel. You wipe your face and feel refreshed. Towel heating up? Wave it around and it cools down automatically and you can go again. To top it off they are biodegradable and will completely break down within 3 days. Best invention ever.
We headed back to Rome for another two nights for our day trip to Pisa. We had a bit of a mix-up at the B&B where they shifted us somewhere else for a night which was really freaking inconvenient, but it wasn’t too bad. Mind you, they got shirty with me when we hadn’t left at 9:30 (check-out time at 10:30) and tried to get us out before 10:00. Screw you hippies. We hates them.
But, on the bright side we went out for dinner with Michelle and Leigh, near the Pantheon. It was absolutely fantastic to catch up with them, and the girls (bar me) proceeded to drink the night away and many giggles were had. We made an impromptu stop at the Trevi fountain and it was amazing to see that there were actually MORE people there at night than during the day. I had warned Dad about the plethora of people, but I was even surprised at the number milling around.
The next day we got up early (to transfer our stuff back to the original B&B. Sigh. And) to head to Pisa. Snuffy decided to spend the day doing administrative tasks as he is going there in a week or so with his mum, so it was just the fab four. We took a regional train which took just over four freaking hours to get there (whose idea was it to day trip there??) and set off for the famous tower. We walked through the town and had a quick look along the way, but we, like so many, really only had one goal in mind. We got there and were quite taken aback at how short the tower is. I guess because it is such an international icon I was expecting something bigger, but it is really only a few stories high. Add to that that we entered perpendicularly to the lean and it was almost disappointing. It wasn’t until we moved around that we could really see how slanty the tower is. Chels and I were all geared up to climb up its narrow stairs, but upon finding that we had to wait until 5:30pm (nearly 3 hours away) and that it cost €15, we decided against it.
We did the obligatory tacky tourist photos holding up the tower and such, and admired the beautiful buildings in the vicinity of the tower that are disgracefully overlooked in favour of a reasonably unimpressive tower whose claim to fame is an inability to stand up straight.
Dad was a little chagrined that we had to catch a more expensive train back home due the late arrival of the regional train. We were, however, overcome with love and gratitude for Andrew (no, really – all of us!) because he went out and bought and cooked dinner for us. It was so good we all ate far too much and were consequently in pain. Nice one, doosh. But the homemade gnocchi was out of this world.
The next morning the folks packed their bags and headed off to Greece and Chels checked out the Sistine Chapel before joining Snuffy and I on an adventure to Le Cinque Terre, which is a whole other story…
Pisa photos
More Roma photos
Pompeii photos
