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Published: March 27th 2009
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I got back on Tuesday from a very exciting trip to the south of Italy. I went with Samantha, one of the students this semester. It worked out really well because we have very similar ideas about how to travel—which basically means that we don’t plan things well because we think it's more fun to explore (this also involves getting lost a lot and walking around aimlessly). We also think that food and drink are the most important part of any trip. Following these rules, we had an entirely random and delicious trip.
Friday evening we took an overnight bus to Salerno, a beautiful city on the coast about an hour from Naples. We left Siena at around midnight and found ourselves at the Salerno bus station at 6:30 in the morning after a pretty uncomfortable bus ride (we couldn’t sit together and I had to sit next to this guy in a really puffy coat who took up so much space). After getting off of the bus, we realized that we didn’t really know how to get to our hostel because we only had a very vague map of the city. On top of that, I have never before
seen a city with so few street names marked, so it was difficult to navigate even once we got ourselves a better map. We basically just wandered around, stopping in various cafes to ask for directions. Finally we made it to our hostel, and then spent the rest of the day visiting Salerno.
On Sunday we decided to visit Pompeii, so we took a bus there from Salerno, not realizing that we had gotten on a local bus that stops every five minutes along the way in all of the little towns and places between Salerno and Pompeii. While it only takes about 20 minutes by train, we had a lovely two hour bus ride through the area. When we got to Pompeii we still didn’t know where we were or where to get off the bus, so we just sat there until the driver finally asked us nicely to leave.
Visiting Pompeii was my favorite day of the trip. We entered the site and were just walking around for about fifteen minutes when this security guy came up and started talking to us. His name was Vincenzo and he started showing us around, taking us to a lot
of different places and giving us so much information about the city. He ended up showing us around for about 5 hours. He even got out his big wad of securityman keys and took us to all kinds of places that haven't even been opened to the public yet! He kept unlocking gates and moving barriers out of the way, taking us all around where there were no other people. We got to go to all of these places that they are still working on and he took us up on top of some of the buildings so that we got an amazing view of the city. When we thanked him for everything, he laughed and told us that ‘Le donne belle sono sempre le più fortunate,' beautiful women are always the luckiest. He also told us that for him, ‘Le donne belle sono come cigliege,’ beautiful women are like cherries. When you pick one (he made a delicate little gesture with his hand as if he were gently plucking a cherry), you just want to keep on picking them. I swear though, it was really only mildly creepy. He let us stay inside after Pompeii had already closed to
tourists, then he took us out for coffee before saying goodbye and heading home for the night. Sam and I couldn’t believe what had happened and it really still doesn’t feel real.
On Monday we spent the morning in an ancient city called Paestum where there are some amazing Greek temples. There were hardly any other people there so it was beautiful to walk through the ruins with no one else around. After visiting the town and museum, we hurried back to the train station to catch our train back to Salerno, but we ended up missing it (trains in Italy are hardly ever on time, but of course when we were just two minutes late, it pulled away right as we were arriving). The next train wasn’t for about three hours so we just wandered through the winding streets surrounded by farmlands. We saw a sign for a farm that sold mozzarella di bufala so we decided to try to go get a snack. After following a tiny road that wound through the fields of animals, we arrived at a building that had a small store and a porch overlooking the fields. We bought huge balls of the
most delicious, creamy, milky, fresh mozzarella and sat outside eating it in the sunshine.
We took the train back to Salerno, then decided to hop on a bus that drove along the coast to Amalfi. It was breathtaking, both in the sense that it was stunningly beautiful and that it was somewhat frightening and nauseating. The bus drove on these tiny, curvy roads that wound through the cliffs along the water, giving us an incredible view of the coast. We had to keep stopping suddenly if cars would come from the other direction, inching over to the edge to let them by. We arrived in Amalfi and spent a few hours sitting by the water and exploring the town that’s built into the cliff.
On Tuesday we took a bus from Salerno to Naples, where we stayed for a few hours before making the journey back to Siena. Unfortunately the museum that we wanted to visit in Naples was closed on Tuesdays (our lack of planning caught up with us a little bit), so we just explored a little and ate some pizza and pastries (Naples is known for pastries called sfogliatelle, which are these little flaky pastries
Pompeii
Samantha standing on the stones that formed a bridge across the street for when it rained so you could just walk across without getting your feet wet. This was one of my favorite parts of the city. with a sweet ricotta cheese filling). Although we didn’t see very much of Naples, I’m glad I saw the city because it has a completely different feeling from the other places I have visited. It’s huge, loud, lively, and chaotic, with people speeding everywhere on motorbikes, cars honking for any reason they can think of, and animated people bustling through the streets. It was nice to visit and I’d like to go back to see more, but it also felt like a calming sigh to return to the tranquility of Siena.
All in all, the trip was quite an experience. We met and talked to so many people and, most importantly, ate loads of delicious food. The pastries were incredible-we would just walk by a pastry shop and be immediately attracted by the huge, fluffy, creamy pastries in the window. In Salerno we got to know the people who worked at two pastry shops that we frequented every day of the trip. We would go to one in the morning for breakfast and one in the evening for dessert. We ate donut-like pastries called zeppole, flaky pastries filled with nutella, and so many other kinds of treats. There was
a restaurant in Salerno that we went to twice. It was just a tiny little room with a few tables and no menu. The cook would come over to your table and list the few things he was making that evening that you could choose from. Then he would come and sit at a table near us and chat for awhile before going to the other tables. We sat there for hours eating and drinking wine, then at the end of the meal he just came over to our table, talked to us for awhile, and, after thinking for a second, decided on a price for the meal that really didn’t seem to reflect what we had eaten at all because it was so cheap- he certainly wasn’t charging us for everything. It was wonderful.
I’m excited to be spending this weekend in Siena- it will be the first weekend for over a month that I’ll be here!
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