Life in the Toon: Italia

It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote about my time in Europe, it has been a bit hectic in England and has been harder for me to find time to sit down and write. I’m currently writing this from a crowded airplane on the way to Paris as Drew sleeps beside me.

Last time I wrote I mentioned an upcoming trip to Italy which would include pasta and sunny beaches. The pasta part proved true; it was fantastic. Not so much on the sunny beaches front. A series of storms plagued Italy during our time there, so we were rained on several times. One day, we went on a day trip from Rome to Positano, a beautiful town located on the Amalfi Coast. We had hoped to be able to go swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, but the storms caused the waves to swell enough that it looked like we would not survive the waters, so we decided to hold out on that one.

Besides that, we managed to visit Rome, Florence and Pompeii also while we were in Italy. We had Venice planned and booked also, but we learned the night before our train from Florence to Venice that the island city was 70 percent underwater. No fun. We booked a tour of ancient Rome through the company Walks of Italy, who were exceptional. The tour featured the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. The Colosseum was breathtaking. It was so interesting to stand there and feel all the history. I half expected Russell Crowe to walk out and ask me if I was entertained. At the end of our walk through the Roman Forum, our tour guide stopped and very casually said, “Oh, by the way, this exact spot where you are standing is where Marc Anthony gave his speech about Julius Caesar.” She said it as if it wasn’t a huge deal, which it was.

St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City are both just as amazing as one would think they are. I had the bright idea for us to walk from the hostel to the Vatican and back as well, which is about two and a half miles one way. Torrential rain on the way back made it even more fun. We got yelled at by the Polizia because we took shelter in this little shack we found. Turned out that the
little shack was on the grounds of some kind of palace. We knew enough Italian that they were telling us to leave immediately, back into the rain.

Florence was much smaller than Rome but was just as beautiful. We did more museums in Tuscany as the renowned Uffizi Gallery and also Michelangelo’s David are both located in Florence. David was much bigger than I realized. I was thinking life size but is more like 15 feet tall. The detail Michelangelo put into David is astonishing. I was particularly fascinated by the lifelike precision of the veins in David’s hands and arms. You can spend an hour looking at David and not get bored. The Duomo in Florence is massive and is just incredible architecture. We climbed Giotto’s Bell Tower, which is right beside the Duomo for an impeccable view of Florence. It was about 450 steps to the top of the Bell Tower though, so we’re lucky we survived the upwards trek. Across the river, Piazzale Michelangelo (which is also an upwards hike to get to) offers some of the best views of Florence at night. An Italian woman put on a miniature concert by singing in a mix of Italian and English. It’s a great spot to relax one night and just take in the beauty of Florence.

Pompeii was a bit larger than I expected it to be also and is very well preserved. For being demolished by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, the citizens of Pompeii seemed to be surprisingly advanced for the time period. The most well-preserved building in Pompeii is actually the brothel ironically. Our tour guide took us through the main hallway where you can see into each individual room. The beds in the brothel are made out of stone, so maybe not so advanced after all.

I ate pizza literally every day for a week straight, had a lot of gelato and had lasagna probably five times, so Italy was a success. Italian food is about a thousand times better than British food if you couldn’t have guessed that. I definitely want to revisit Italy at some point and make the trip to Venice when it isn’t flooded. As I mentioned earlier, I wrote this from an airplane to France so my next piece of writing for you will feature my trip to Paris. Au revoir!