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Published: October 1st 2008
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Laurel, me and Hannah
With our Arancina's. They were really good! Well since Iceland, I’ve had a busy couple of months. My trip to Italy has been and gone and I loved it, and over the coming blogs, by the photos you will be able to see why. I originally thought I would only need one for the whole Italy trip, but due to over 1,000 photos taken, that made that a little ambitious! But first things first; a week after Iceland, I moved into a new flat with (originally) two South African girls, Kim and Meg (sisters), one Aussie girl, Ally, and a French couple, Ben and Kat. But the French couple are no longer a couple so it’s just me and the four girls. It’s a pretty fun place to live and bigger, closer to the centre and cheaper than my last place so I’ve really lucked in here!
Over the next few weeks were some highlights, and definite lowlights. I headed up to Leeds for the Leeds Festival - a huge 3 day music festival that had The Killers, Rage Against The Machine and Metallica as headliners. Not too bad! It was definitely not hotel accommodation and because I had not thought I would need gumboots (I did),
Me with my brioche
As you can see, they aren't small, and they get quite messy I ended up with one of the last pairs available. A nice pink pair. Very masculine. Thankfully they were covered with mud most of the weekend so no one else knew.
Following that were some more happy occasions like Clay’s birthday and catching up with Claire, a friend from NZ, then the lowlights of goodbyes. In the space of a week, I had three farewell parties! It’s the end of the summer, so it’s that time of year I suppose. But it was especially sad seeing Leah go as she has been one of my best friends over here, but it is her time to move on, and knowing some of her plans for what she intends when she gets back to NZ, the education system will be lucky to have her back.
Then after all that, it was time for my summer holiday. The first leg started with Hannah and I flying to Palermo in Sicily on the Friday night, where we met up with Laurel, a friend of mine I met travelling last year. It shows what a small world it is when me, a New Zealander, met Laurel, an American, in Romania, then again travelling
Hannah's brioche
Hannah getting messy on the night train to Hungary. She then came and visited me in England, where I am living, then I go and visit her where she is living in Italy! Anyway, we landed and immediately started sweating. Fantastic! We had left London’s 16/17 degrees for Palermo’s mid to late 30’s!
Despite it being 10pm, Laurel started out Italian introduction straight away with some local delicacies including arancina (basically a bread-crumbed rice ball with mince and onion on the inside) and brioche (gelato in a bread roll). Then after a quick introduction to what Sicilians do on a Friday night, we fell, exhausted, into bed.
Our first full day started similarly to the night before as we tried more local food for breakfast. This time, cannelloni, similar to an éclair. Then it was off to the local markets, and a bit of relaxing before some long awaited time at the beach. In amongst all the sun darkened Sicilians were Hannah and myself, who haven’t seen proper sun since May. Needless to say, our British tans stuck out a bit, but we set out about changing that in the very hot temperatures. It was fantastic to be back in the
Beach near Palermo
Look at those tans, and the water! salt water again as well, but after several hours, we reluctantly retreated back to Laurel’s flat, where she cooked us a lovely pasta meal with some of the most delicious tomatoes I have ever had.
The following day, Laurel was packing up her life ready to move back to the States, so after Laurel’s famous Palermo Walking Tour in the morning, Hannah and I went off on our own little exploration to a town recommended by a few people called Chefalu. It was a cute little town and after dragging Hannah out of a number of shops, we made it to the beach where we spent another couple of hours relaxing in the near 40 degree temperatures with dips in the sea every 15 minutes to cool us off. It was a tough way to spend the afternoon. For our last evening in Palermo, Laurel took us out to the best pizza restaurant in town, and it was pretty good. Though, and I may be bias here, but Italian pizza has nothing on Hell!
The next morning, we said our goodbyes and started our two day trek to the Amalfi Coast. We headed East and stopped at a
Hannah in Heaven
After making pizza with chips on for years, Hannah actually finds somewhere that sells it! place called Agrigento which I fully recommend. The ruins there are some of the best I have seen, and as you can see from the photos, we had a bit of fun there too. Then it was off to Catania, where we caught our night train to Naples. Night trains are never that fun, but it saved us a bit of money. After looking at some more ruins at Paestum (south of Naples), we made our way to Salerno, the gateway to the Amalfi Coast.
Alright, that concludes part one of my Italian Odyssey. Also a huge thank you to Laurel for letting us stay with her, and for being such a fantastic host. We would never have experienced Sicily the way we did without her secret knowledge, and it was one of the biggest highlights of the trip.
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