Advertisement
Published: August 11th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Ciao a tutti! How are u all? Finally I am getting the chance to update the blog. A lot has happened since our last entry.
I have had to change my mobile number as my greek simcard stuffed up. My new number is +393337515945. Also I have already put photos up on facebook (which is so much easy to use) so check them out if you havent already done so.
Paxos We spent nearly 2 weeks on the island of Paxos, where Ange's dad is from. It is on the western side of Greece, just under Corfu. We stayed with Ange's 2 aunties, Niki and Anthi, and also her nieces Niki and Panayiota (who I nicknamed Gollum because of her resemblence to the Lord of the Rings character). She was crazy and obsessed with us lol.
We went to some of the most beautiful beaches everyday and soon developed a daily routine:
- Get up at about 9 am
- Breakfast (usually just coffee due to all the food we were fed throughout the day)
- Go to the beach
- Have lunch
- Siesta
- Wake up for Gilmore Girls at 4 pm (who knows
why but now I want to buy the DVDs)
- Ice cream at about 5 pm
- Walk and play with children
- Dinner
- Sleep
Our routine was broken when we took a boat trip around the island to the Blue Grottos and then to the small island of Antipaxos for the day. There was actually SAND on the beach! We got very sunburnt.
Other alterations to our routine were seeing traditional Greek dancing at a restaurant in the main town called Gaios, visiting relatives and hanging out in the main square eating more icecream.
Ange's niece Niki became our personal chauffeur and tour guide. Although only 12 and does not speak English, she called taxis and showed us the island.
In our quest to save money, we decided against the direct ferry from Paxos to Brindisi (Italy) and instead caught a boat to mainland Greece and waited 7 hours for our midnight ferry to Brindisi, which arrived at 8 am and was MUCH cheaper. We then caught a train to Napoli to meet up with Maurizio.
After our 25 hour journey, we soon learnt that our plans to stay at his student accommodation
were impossible as he had been evicted that morning. Luckily we found a hostel in an okay location which included breakfast (always a deciding factor). Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Maurizio as he was going home for the holidays.
This left us alone in what is probably Italy's craziest city. People basically do what they want; we took off our watches and gold as stories of people being mugged scared us. We spent the first day seeing the sights of Naples, including Castel Nuovo, the main Piazzas and we went shopping because of the summer sales. The only problem was that our hostel had lockout from 9am-3pm, so we had to sit in a park like homeless people (again) until we could return to the hostel and sit in the air con.
On the second day we went to the beautiful island of Capri, and caught up with Melissa and Kelly. We went to the hilltop town of Anacapri and caught a chairlift to the very top. Unfortunately the Blue Grotto was closed because the sea was too rough (so I missed out again). It was unbelievably hot on Capri, so we went swimming at the beach
before catching the hydrofoil back to Naples.
In hindsight, Naples was not the best first impression of Italy for Ange - I think she was shocked by the craziness and dirtiness of the city.
Next we took the train to Sorrento, where we spent 2 nights exploring the town and the Amalfi Coast . We stayed in our first dorm room with other people, which was heaps of fun. The hostel was in a good location but the only thing was that it was right next to the train station, like most hostels (as we have found). We were lucky with the people in our dorm, except for a weird Texan who talked crap. He entered the room speaking Italian with the receptionist, so I greeted him in Italian. After chatting for about 5 minutes, I learnt that he was from Texas and I made the joke “Haha, I’m Australian and you’re from Texas and we are speaking Italian, how weird!” But he continued speaking Italian for the rest of the night. Finally the next day he decided to switch to English.
The Amalfi coast was amazing - we swam at the beach in Positano and also
went to the town of Amalfi, where we ate the best Panini.
We spent most of our time with another Australian guy called Andrew. We really wanted to go to the beach in Sorrento but were soon disappointed when they all turned out to be manmade or jam-packed with Italians. I offended an old Italian woman by commenting “You call this a beach”.
We caught the train back to Naples with our Australian friend. Everything was fine until we reached our stop - Piazza Garibaldi. I thought that this was the last stop so I took my time getting off the train. Andrew got off and waited for us. Suddenly the doors closed and we were stuck on the train to God knows where, waving goodbye to Andrew. Some Italians realised what had happened and called the driver who stopped the train. Everyone was yelling at us to just get off at the next station, which we ended up doing - luckily it was only 5 minutes away.
We then caught the metro and met up with Maurizio to go to his hometown called Piedimonte Matese. It’s a beautiful town, lush green mountains and fresh country air
(which occasionally smells of cow pat). The complete opposite to Napoli. Its really good just hanging out in his apartment and relaxing. We also planned our road trip to Croatia, which will be the next instalment of the blog…
We are currently in SPLIT (just letting you know cause im already behind with the blog)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.204s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0369s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Danny
non-member comment
Poor Andrew!