Pompeii e Napoli

Yesterday was a very long (yet fantastic) day. It started at around 2:30 am, when my apartment mates arrived home from being out and about in Rome and proceeded to talk loudly and cook for a few hours. I listened and tried to sleep for awhile, but eventually I just got up at 5:15, since I had to leave at 6:25 to meet up with Jenn, Angela, Rachel, Courtney, Christina, and Juliet for our trip to Naples and Pompeii.

We were a little afraid of taking the train yesterday because a train strike had been scheduled and then called off. They publish the strike dates months ahead of time so that everyone can avoid traveling during them. Italy’s strange like that. This one was called off because everyone was afraid to fly Alitalia because it was in the process of being sold or shut down. But I was afraid the train workers were planning to just take the day off anyway.

BUT trains were running and we got to Naples at 10:30. And then we went out for pizza. We went to Antica Pizzeria da Michele, which boasts the best pizza in Italy, and since Italy’s pizza is the best in the world, Antica Pizzeria is the best pizza in the WORLD. It’s pretty amazing. The pizza crust is incredible. It’s crispy and gooey at the same time, and very thin but not dry. SO good. They offer two flavors: margherita and marinara. Jen, Angela, and I split two pizzas, one of each flavor. The margherita has tomato sauce and some fresh mozzarella. The marinara had no cheese (which is a little weird) but it still tasted delicious with fresh chopped garlic and oregano and some other spices and tomato sauce. The guys working there were super nice and invited me to come over and take photos of them making the pizza. They use a wood oven, of course. I kept watching to see if the guy would throw the pizza dough in the air to stretch it, but I don’t think he did.

After pizza for lunch, we walked back to the train station to catch the local train to Pompeii. I have to say, Naples made me miss Rome a lot. The drivers there are a little insane. Ok, well the drivers in Rome are a little insane. The drivers in Naples are beyond insane. They made me fear for my life at least once every 5 minutes. The locals in Naples are very different from Rome. People were less dressy and spoke in an angry tone. I’ve heard that the tone has something to do with the local dialect, but it looked like fights were about to break out all around us. The streets weren’t as pretty either (I guess it’s hard for a city to be as pretty as Rome, but still.) There were skyscrapers and other ugly buildings.

A weird thing that Neapolitans did was that they used buckets on a rope to haul deliveries up from ground level to their apartments. I laughed the first time I saw it, but then we saw it happen again and again. I wish I had gotten a photo.

So, after almost dying more times than is normal before noon on a Friday, we made it to the station, got on the train, and headed for Pompeii. The place is huge. You never really think about what it means that a whole CITY (about half the size of Endwell) was preserved until you start wandering around and realize what a huge place it is. We decided to hire a guide to tell us what we were seeing and Jenn went off on her own (seeing as she did a huge project on Pompeii and knows what’s what). The guide’s English wasn’t the best but he definitely knew his stuff. I took pictures of EVERYTHING so you can go through them and read the captions to see the awesomeness of Pompeii. Just a warning, the people of Pompeii had different ideas about proper images for decorating a house than modern Americans, sooo some of the frescoes in the album are a little raunchy. I’d call it about an R rating. (The souvenirs available were like NC-17 though.)

After our two hour tour, we met up with Jenn again and headed over to the Villa de Misteri (“House of Mysteries”). On our way, we wandered through the Necropolis, an old graveyard that was actually within city limits by the time Pompeii was destroyed at 1 pm on August 24th 79 AD (The tour guides like to repeat this time and date over and over. I really just did that from memory.) The Villa was a pretty huge house, even by today’s standards, so we wandered around through the twisty hallways and the different rooms. The coolest part was Room 5 though, which has huge frescoes on all three of its walls that depict a woman going through an initiation ritual or a ritual marriage to the god Bacchus. No one really knows what the frescoes mean exactly, but this was the part that Jen wrote her 20 page paper on, so she talked us through the whole thing. The pictures show the woman getting ready, then getting drunk with Bacchus, then being whipped by a Roman version of an angel (I forget what they are called) and then finally in a picture by another artist she is sitting on a chair all pretty. It’s a really strange panel and I took a huge panoramic picture of it that only leaves out the last frame. These frescoes and the Awkward Doorway Man (see photo album) were my favorite things in Pompeii. Oh, and the brothel. That was pretty funny too.

After the House of Mysteries, we decided to not go up to the top of Vesuvius. It was an hour bus ride and we would only have about 15 minutes at the top before the last bus left to come back down. We got back on our train to Napoli, planning to eat dinner at Trianon, Antica Pizzeria’s top rival for world’s best pizza. There was a protest going on in Naples’s main street though, so Trianon and mostly everything else was closed up. We wandered around a bit and found a tiny local restaurant with outdoor seating. It was a pretty amazing find. It was called (and this I’m copying off a card in case someone ever reads this thing in preparation for their own Italian adventure) Caffetteria e Tavola Calda, Centro Storico, di Marco di Matola e Umberto Aiello, on via Gradini Forcella 1. Anyways, this place was awesome because the owners and waiter were super nice and because you could order the traditional Italian 3 course dinner plus drinks and unlimited bread for only 6.50 euro. In comparison, the cheapest pasta (and just the pasta plate, not the other two courses) that I’ve found in Rome is 7 euro. This place was awesome. Oh, and we got free bruschetta. We might have gotten free limoncello and/or coffee at the end, but we had to run to catch our train home. The menu had three choices each for pasta (primi piatti) the main dish (secondi piatti) and for a side (contorni). It was completely in Italian and handwritten, so mostly we had very little idea what we were ordering. I just avoided seafood (yay intensive Italian for teaching me fish types!) I had pasta with tomato sauce with BEEF in it. This is the first red meat (excluding bacon) that I had had since leaving the US. It was EXCITING and, of course, mouthwateringly delicious. Then the sides came—mine was a pepper and olives ‘salad’ in olive oil. I thought it was a little slimy and odd at first but then I pretty much just piled it onto bread and it was delicious. The main dish I had was chicken breast, served with lemon and greens on the side. It was pretty good too. This much meat in one meal was a pretty big deal for all of us after living on our own cooking and getting pasta (always cheaper and always delicious) whenever we went out. I wish we had more time for dinner because it really was good enough to eat slowly and linger instead of scarfing down our main dishes and asking for the check right away.

Once we got to the train station, we discovered that our train was delayed. We went to McDonald’s to use the bathroom, and while we were there I impulse decided to get an ice cream for dessert with a few other girls for the train ride home. I decided never to eat at McDonald’s while in Italy (just because there is a lot more delicious local food that costs less, is healthier, and tastes better) so I was slightly disappointed in myself when I remember. BUT Italian McDonald’s ice cream is very different from the US kind. It tastes better, almost like it’s lighter (maybe they use corn syrup? Or whip it somehow?) I had a brownie McFlurry (very very good choice, I must say.) So I went a month and 2 days in Italy with no McDonald’s and I don’t plan on eating it again. Except maybe another brownie McFlurry.
We played a fun game of Never Have I Ever on the train ride back (the details of which I won’t reveal here) and arrive home around 10, with plenty of time to wash off Pompeii’s dirt and go out that night.

It was odd, but I missed Rome while we were in Naples. I’m going to go into complete withdrawal when I come back to the US. I’ll just have to bring Nutella back with me and get better at making my own pastas. And go to Italian conversation hour or something.

Una classe memorabile

This isn’t much of an update, but yesterday my Italian class was held in a bar. I just needed to record that fact for posterity. We had a substitute teacher and at the beginning of class she asked what our class normally did. So of course everyone responded with things like “We go out to dinner! We eat sushi. We go to cafés!” (in italiano: “Ceniamo! Mangiamo il sushi! Andiamo al café!”) But surprisingly, she went along with it.

We left the school and decided to go to a bar instead because it was a little early for dinner here (it was 6:45, people eat late in Italy). So everyone ordered drinks. I had ‘un bichierre di vino rosso’ and the teacher got a Bellini, which is a Venetian drink with peach juice and something along the lines of champagne. The two boys in the class split this ridiculous looking tower of Hoegarden. And then she led conversation in Italian about our likes and dislikes of Rome, about the football on TV, and about different dialects of Italian (I guess Neopolitana and Siciliano are practically different languages).

Anyway, it was quite awesome. I love Italy.

The first of (hopefully) many posts!

Sooo now I’ve been in Rome for about 3 weeks and I’m just now starting this journal. I’m a bit of a procrastinator, what can I say? But I keep hearing that this is something I will read for years and years to come, so I better start it now rather than the last weekend before I leave. Because Rome is way too awesome to forget about. (I might do a retroactive journal of Sorrento and Capri . . . I took notes to start a blog that week, but that never happened. I still have the notes though.)

Let’s just start with a Top Ten list of Rome so far. (These are in no particular order, just the way they came to me)

1. Nutella. I’ve seriously had a whole jar (it was little) of this stuff in the last three days. Amazing. I just wish peanut butter would find its way across the Atlantic so that they could make the perfect almost-healthy-but-incredibly-delicious sandwich together. Maybe someday. . .

2. Pretty old things. Today I was doing my art homework, which consisted of sitting on my balcony attempting to sketch the buildings across the street, when I realized how incredibly intricate and pretty they were. I don’t know if you will ever see the picture I drew, but it definitely does not do them justice. All the gorgeous intricate decorations are just scribbles in my version. Check out the photos off my balcony though. It’s a pretty awesome view. Anyway, that’s just one ancient apartment building on the outskirts of Rome, to say nothing of the billions of ancient churches, monuments, gorgeous old government things, and fountains. I love just wandering around. There’s too much pretty stuff to even see it all on your way to class past it.

3. Italian. It’s such a fun language. I seriously hope that I leave here with more than the 100 level version of it. It’s hard to practice (almost everyone gives up on me and speaks broken English) but I’m going to keep trying.

4. Its proximity to the rest of Europe. I love Rome, but I’m so incredibly psyched to travel. I’m going to try to go everywhere I can—so far it’s going to be to Ostia, Sicily, Brussels (!!!), Greece, Florence, Tuscany, London, and Paris (!!!). And I still have the weekends of Oct 4-7 and Oct 31-Nov 1 open, if any fellow study abroad-ers would like a traveling partner to anywhere at all. Oh, and I already went to Sorrento and Capri, an awesome seaside town and a beautiful island, both near Naples on the west coast of Italy. (Just trying to help out people who struggle as much as I do with geography.)

5. Lack of drinking laws. It’s pretty awesome to be able to chill in a piazza with friends and people watch while splitting a few bottles of wine. Or to actually be able to go to bars. America, you need to get on this policy.

6. Art history classes. Yeah, I know we have those in the US too. But it’s not the same as when the teacher says “and we’ll see this in Florence in a few weeks. . .” or “this work is housed in the Vatican museums” and you realize that means its about a 15 minute walk from the classroom where you’re sitting. I haven’t gone to the Vatican museums yet though, other than when I was in Rome few years ago. I have seen St Peter’s three times now though, once running, once drawing (my class), and once less than sober and searching for Castel Sant’Angelo (it was supposed to be open till 2am for Notte Bianche, but the posters were filled with lies.)

7. THE FOOD. How in the world did I get to number 7 without thinking of the food??? I guess Nutella is food, but just because I was eating a spoonful when I started number one. Oh where to start. . . pasta, panini, pizza so much better than meal plan Domino’s that it’s hard to remember they are technically the same type of food, GELATO (gelato might get a separate entry after this, as a tribute to it’s amazing-ness), and just pretty much everything. Not to mention, expensive European chocolate is cheaper than Peanut M&M’s here. And I think there might be a chocolate shop in Trastevere (that’s my neighborhood of Rome). I need to investigate the shop soon. I’ll report what I find. But anyway, let me just list a few of the amazing pastas I’ve had, if only for myself to remember in 5 years when I reread this thing.

• · Gnocchi Sorrentina (On my first day here. I think Katie rather enjoys this dish, seeing as she orders it EVERYWHERE),
• · Fusilli with mushrooms and truffle oil (at Elizabeth’s birthday dinner. Also amazingly delicious),
• · Ziti with eggplant, sweet pepper, and cherry tomatoes (seriously the best pasta I’ve ever had. It was at San Antonio’s Pizzeria in Sorrento),
• · Spaghetti carbonara (it’s got eggs and bacon in it—I just bought the ingredients to try to make it myself. Wish me luck.)

. . . and that’s all the pastas I can think of at the moment. I’m sure there will be many more.

8. Gelato. Because I said it deserved its own bullet point. The best place I’ve found is the Sicilian place on the corner of Francesco a Ripa and Viale di Trastevere. For one euro, you can get two flavors of gelato (I recommend cioccolata fondente and cocco—dark chocolate and coconut) and a little cookie. They completely overfill the tiny container and it is amazing. I love these people. Also, they will serve hot chocolate starting in October. I am beyond psyched.

9. The laid back atmosphere. Class doesn’t have to start on time, no one’s competing for participation points, discussion isn’t forced. You can also wear whatever you want (I kind of like European fashion—anything goes) and almost anytime you buy anything, the price isn’t set. They will let you haggle or round down (in the case of L’Insalta Ricca, they always round down. I love those people. A full dinner with wine for 7 euro? Awesome.)

10. I can’t think of another specific thing at this moment in time. So I’ll just reiterate the food.

I should probably get back to doing my government reading now that I’ve procrastinated it long enough. Hopefully, this won’t be my only entry. I’ll have more homework to procrastinate tomorrow night, so maybe I’ll type up that bit about Sorrento and Capri. In conclusion: Rome is fantastic despite the lack of peanut butter.

(Hint: Peanut butter in the mail would be an amazing birthday present. I would be the sender’s best friend for life. November 17^th, people.)