settimana numero 3

This week in my Italian culture class on Tuesday we had Italian students come in to do a discussion on the differences between American and Italian cultures. That was fun and we’re going to do it again. It was interesting to hear the things they had to say about us, but at the same time we went over stereotypes we had about Italy and ones we had found that were true. Most of the Italians in our mini group had never been to America, and knew only things about it that they read in newspapers, magazines, or saw in TV and movies (we were like.. oh no!). so some of the things they came up with right away about America were George Bush, people getting shot all the time, rappers like 50 Cent (or 50 Cents as the Italians called him) being rich, or rappers and musicians in general being extremely wealthy and the fact that like anyone can be a singer, crazy girls (girls gone wild), etc. We were like, great this is what people think of us! I mean maybe ours towards them weren’t good either.. but it was just interesting to hear.

On Wednesday we decided to go to Napoli (Naples) for the weekend. This was after much debate about the location we should travel to and where or how long we should stay etc. But Napoli had a pretty short, cheap train ride and we found a really cheap, nicely rated hostel for 2 nights (Friday and Saturday). So we left on the 6:10 am train from Viterbo to Rome on Friday morning to catch the 8:25 train from Rome to Naples. We made sure to get to the train station early this time to get the correct tickets and had no problem. Then we arrived at the train station in Rome and again had no problem getting our connection tickets and getting on the next train. It actually sat there for like 30 minutes until we even moved. The trouble started when we got to Naples. We walked around the train station looking for a tourist information booth which was at the other side. Then we went looking for another booth that wasn’t really helpful. Finally we went and bought a ticket for the metro since the hostel was one or 2 stops away. Well the metro isn’t really the metro there, it’s like some sort of regional train and we could not figure it out. Our stop, which was shown on the map, was not on the maps at the stations or on the station lists. So we got on, went one stop, and got off and tried to follow signs to Museo, right near where we were staying. We thought it meant we would get on another train, but we actually ended up walking underground to that stop (I think the line is still under construction?). From there we found the hostel pretty easily and everything it turned out to be a nice place. The only bad part was that it was up 5 or 6 (huge!) flights of stairs and the elevator cost 10 cents so we always took the stairs. So we stayed in an 8 person room (4 sets of bunks). The only things that weren’t true about what it said on the website was that we paid for an all girls room and it was mixed and there were no locks on the cabinets in the room. There were lots of English speakers at the hostel from all over and we met some nice people from Sweden on their gap year (so jealous) just traveling around for the year. So we dropped our stuff off and decided to go to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale right near our hostel. This was a big museum that had a bunch of statues and artifacts excavated from Pompeii. We spent the majority of the afternoon there and when we went to leave it was pouring rain. So we ran back to the hostel to figure out where we wanted to eat dinner – we knew we had to try the famous Neapolitan pizza. We ended up going to a restaurant suggested by one of our guidebooks that, according to the sign, recently was in a Sofia Loren movie or something like that.. the sign said Sofia Loren, but I don’t think she makes movies anymore. The pizza was good, and slightly different than what we were used to (slightly thicker crust, buffalo mozzarella, basil leaves) but we were just so pizza’d-out, that it was difficult to really appreciate it. It was still pouring down rain (and cold) when we left and I’d conveniently left my umbrella at the hostel, so we couldn’t really walk around. Either way, we were tired so we just went back to the hostel and crashed. We got up the next morning to go do some of the Amalfi coast towns. We had to go to the train station and get on a different type of train (not the Trenitalia train, or the Metropolitana), the Circumvesuviana. That took us to Sorrento, where we spent a few hours walking around. It was a beautiful little town right on the cliffs next to the sea. It was such a nice day weather-wise, that day. It was beautiful! Then we took a bus from Sorrento to Positano, because most of us had seen the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun” and that made it reason enough to want to go there. The bus ride was crazy though! It was the tiniest windiest roads I have ever been on, right on the cliffs over the coasts too. It’s really not that far from Sorrento but it took about an hour just because of how slow the bus had to go (not slow enough in my opinion because of the windy roads). Luckily the town of Positano was well worth it, and even prettier than any postcard, movie or picture could show. It was really touristy like Sorrento was, but it was still really nice. We walked all around the town and down to the ocean, which was clear and pretty warm. If I had to choose a beach to go back to in Italy, Positano would definitely be it! We all liked Positano so much that we decided to stay until dinner and then went and had dinner on the beach, where we saw 3 weddings going on! We got to see the sunset and then once we were finished dinner we took pictures of Positano at night, which is also beautiful. And you could see the stars! We took the last bus back to Sorrento, where we met a lot of other Americans studying abroad in Florence at the bus stop. Once we got back to Sorrento we took a train from there to Naples, and got back to Naples pretty late.
The next day we woke up really early to walk around Naples before heading off to Pompeii. We took a bus down to the water and saw a castle and the theater and the Galleria Umberto among other things. Of course, nothing was open since it was Sunday, but it was also nice because no one was out and we could take unobstructed pictures. We stopped at a café and got fancy coffee drinks, which they had a lot more of there than they do up where we are. While we were down in the Napoli region we tried many regional specialties – the pizza margherita, a sfogliatella (a flaky pastry with ricotta and pieces of orange inside), a granite (like a slushy, only with real fruit or espresso), gnocchi alla sorrentina (gnocchi with crushed tomatoes and mozzarella), and they also had more frozen coffee there, called caffe del nonno, which I love, and is hard to find up here in Viterbo, and good pastries and thicker bread and drinks to go! Like someone got a cappuccino to go, which is like an unheard of phenomenon here. We had such a good trip thus far and we were about to head back up to the hostel, check out and go to the train station to get on the Cirumvesuviana to Pompeii. So we got back on the bus to the hostel, but before we could even go one stop, the people who work for the bus came to check our tickets (which never happens). We had bought something called a weekend ticket on Saturday, and had multiple other tickets bought from the same company, so we thought we would be fine. But it turns out the weekend ticket is only good for one day (why is it called weekend then?!) so the person made us get off at the next stop (which was like 20 feet away) and fined us close to 40 euros! He knew we weren’t from there and we tried to explain in Italian/English that we thought our tickets would be fine and that we didn’t understand but they were like the meanest people ever. That’s when it started to be a bad day. So we paid the stupid fine with the last of our cash (and no where accepts credit cards in Italy, by the way) and then bought another bus ticket to get back to the hostel. We go our stuff, got on the train to Pompeii (later than planed of course) but made it none the less. Pompeii was bigger than I expected. I knew it was a whole city but I just couldn’t believe what it must have taken to build that entire thing (houses, stadium, schools, public areas/forum, etc) and everything out of stone. It was a really pretty location with Mt. Vesuvius in the background. It was also impressive to see that so much of the city was still intact, after the volcanic eruption and thousands of years later; with so much wear and tear it seemed impossible that anything could still be so sturdy. We tried to see the top sights listed in the guidebooks since we had to be back in Naples for the 4:38 train to Rome so we could catch the last train that night to Viterbo. Our train schedules (given to us by the information counter at the train station) were a little off, so we ended up only having 15 minutes between trains in Napoli Stazione Centrale. We got on the very crowded train right before it left. The train trip seemed long, but I guess it wasn’t. It was probably just because I didn’t really have anything to do, and couldn’t fit my school books into my bag. We got into Rome termini and got our tickets for the last train to Viterbo, which leaves from Roma Ostiense or Trastevere. We still could not figure out how we get to that other station in Rome (is the metro ticket included in the price, what is the C. Urbano train that it tells us to take? We still don’t know). So we ended up buying a ticket from Roma Termini to Roma Ostiense for 90 cents, which we almost missed because the binaro (platform) was really, really far away. Luckily we made it, got on the train to Viterbo at the next stop, got back to Viterbo around 10:45, back to the dorm around 11, and then I did all 16 exercises for my 9 am class until 2 am, got up at 6 to write my lettera ufficiale (also for the same composizione class) and then went to class. Overall a good, jam-packed weekend!