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Published: August 11th 2006
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Ciao!
We are still in Salerno in Southern Italy. The old man at our hotel made the wise suggestion of staying in Salerno where accomodation and food are much less expensive, and where we can take the bus or ferry daily to the Amalfi Coast. Right now we are staying in own private hotel room for 19£ each a night, and it's literally seconds from the bus and train station. It turns out our inconvenient stay in Salerno turned out to be a fairly positive alternative to staying closer to Amalfi. I use the term "fairly" because the bus ride to the Coast is pretty brutal. For example, to Amalfi you take an hour and a half bus ride up the side of a cliff with extreme winding roads. We have both felt sick on the four bus rides we have taken so far. Lindsey threw up out of the window three times this morning. This is information that would be good to include in the various travel books. The Sita bus should have a sign posted that says: "Warning: Will cause you to barf out the window or at least on your shoes." At least it is a free bus ride, meaning we stopped paying because they never check your ticket. Last night on our joyous bus ride back our bus broke down and we were on the side of the road for an hour and a half before another bus saved us. We were ready to hitchhike. Sorry parents, but it really was that close.
Despite the bus situation, the Amalfi Coast is breathtaking. We spent the last few days on the beach and perusing the old town of Amalfi. We have eaten some fantastic, though expensive, food. Amalfi prides itself on their massive lemons and so yesterday we sampled a variety of lemon concoctions.
This afternoon we took a boat ride to the popular Amalfi grotto (cave), and had a guided tour in Italian. We didn't understand what the tour guide was saying, but it was quite interesting nonetheless. I did however get a "guided tour" on the boat by a young man who thought it necessary to approach me and ask me if I wanted to pose for a picture by myself with my own camera. He then continued, in broken English, to tell me the name and background story of every beach and villa along the way. Lindsey laughed at me from the other side of the boat.
After the cave tour we bought two blow-up flotation thingies that you can lie on in the water. We used them for about 20 minutes when it started to rain, no not rain, but pour, and then, after desperately trying to un-inflate them and with no luck, left them on the side of the road, knowing that no establishment would let us seek refuge if we were accompanied by what looked like two blow-up dummies. We named them our blow-up boyfriends.
We just had dinner at a place in Salerno. It is suprisingly tasty for being super cheap. You can get entire pizzas for 3.50£. We have been there twice already. Our waiter this evening looked like Mario from the Nintendo dynasty. He was adorable. He spoke about 20 words in English, which made speaking to him a game full of wild flailing gestures. I've never used my hands so much in my life. He did manage to tell us that his favourite band is Iron Maiden.
On this trip, many people have taken pity on us. It's all about the little things, like not knowing how to flush a toilet, where to put the shells from you meal, how to properly eat the live sea animal on your plate... A few days ago in the grocery store we were looking for ice and had to actually draw what ice looks like, because the man in the store thought we wanted to put ice cream in our coke. He waved his finger at us trying to communicate that combining coke and ice cream is a bad idea.
Little kids especially are amused by our Englishness. They laugh at how many times we say "thank you," and yesterday when our bus broke down, and we didn't know what was going on because the bus driver didn't speak English, this little boy who kept calling us "English" kept us up to speed. We were lying in the dark in the back of the bus and every time he had an update he would run on the bus yelling "English, English," instead of calling us by our names.
Today on the beach this boy came up to me and told me in Italian that I had bad breath because I was eating sour cream & onion Pringles. We laughed pretty hard, because what stranger feels the need to come up to you to tell you that the food you are eating is stinky, and perhaps even more amusing is that the kid who told me this looks like he has eaten more than his share of Pringles. For a moment I thought I had recognized him from a Maury Povich episode. I know this sounds mean, but I speak the truth.
Then later on when we were trying to deflate our what I will call "thingies," he came and stepped on it to help us out. It was pretty cute actually. Kids are so honest and to the point. I respect that.
Well, since Europe sucks up your bank account at a surprisingly rapid rate, I must say goodbye, though there is much to say. We are staying here for at least another day or so and then are heading to Roma.
Love, Di and Li
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