Every time I set up to start one of these recap posts -- I'm not gonna lie -- I feel the weight of this just... immeasurable task bearing down on me. I have to talk about five days, and make it interesting, funny even, and true. I have to link pictures, and caption them wittily. Egad. And all for you people.
Of course, I say it's for you, but really it's for ME, so I have a record. So I can look back and remind myself how awesome my life was, at some future time when it sadly but inevitably will not be nearly as awesome. For truth, I have been having legit nightmares recently about my old boss, Ursula. Someday I will have to go back to all that (not to HER, but you know what I mean), but you better believe I will be eating up the company's bandwidth stalking my own blog for hours upon hours at a time.
It makes my stomach hurt thinking about it.
But for now -- for tonight -- I happen to be sitting in a very crummy common room in Genoa (Genova?), Italy. Italy has both charmed and challenged me so far, made me fall in love with her all afresh and then immediately done something completely unnecessary and obnoxious to test the exact limits of how far my love truly goes. And man, I do love her, but she is a solid brat at times. And I miss the hostels in Spain and Portugal. Also the prices. My stars, the lovely prices in Spain....
But before all that, we must bridge the gap from Spain to Italy, and that takes us to the tiny, very white, very hot island of Malta, smack in the middle of the Med.
... I just plain don't feel like doing a blow-by-blow Hemingway-esque recreation this time around though, I gotta be honest. "I walked through the hot bright sun and it was very hot, so I wiped my brow and walked into a cool dark cafe and ordered a whiskey and water. I sat at one of the wicker tables outside while the waiter took his time and I wiped my brow again and thought about..."
No no no. Just... no. Five days is a lot to tackle that way, for one thing, and frankly, while I did have a pretty darn good time in Malta, the days do not exactly merit that kind of attention. I took a fair bit of time off, in fact. I took a couple naps. I spent a lot of time planning for my future (that future being Italy, not any kind of real responsible future).
I got Italy all squared away, from my flight in to my flight out, from Rome to Athens on November 18. This works out so very, very well, because it means I will have my Hobbit Coming-of-Age birthday in ROME. Yep, Mama turns 33 soon (amazing, how did I ever let this happen), and I will dull the knife edge of another passing year by ordering my one no-holds-barred, throw-in-the-towel Italian dinner, in Rome. It's going to be epic.
Before Rome though, it goes: Pisa, Cinque Terre, Genoa, Verona, Venice, Florence, Naples, Sorrento. I think that's a pretty damn fine list, if I do say so myself. I will do day trips to Siena from Florence and to Vesuvius and Pompeii from Naples. Amalfi Coast from Sorrento. I wanted to stay in Siena and skip Florence altogether, since I was there in '09 and it didn't impress me, but fuck if there were ANY hostels in Siena at all. So, to Florence it is. I feel pretty good to have it all squared away, and now have a few weeks until I need to plan my next and last leg, to Greece.
But anyway, that happened, and it took a fair few hours, let me tell you.
But man, I am probably going to lose you if I don't pony up some mind-blowing photos of awesomeness soon, right? Here's one:
That sailboat chaos, apparently, was the warm-up for the Rolex Middle Sea Race. We watched in horrified fascination waiting for a truly epic sailboat collision but it never happened, and I guess that is because we were watching some true pros in action. 606 nautical miles around Sicily!!
Brian and Melissa were impeccable hosts. I knew Brian from way back, we had the same friends in college and played many a beer pong tournament. I was just meeting his wife Melissa for the first time, but she was instantly awesome. Brian and Melissa had rented this amazing white limestone house that my sister (when I skyped with her) said looked like a medieval castle. She wasn't far off!
We did a ton in the five days I was there... which honestly is kind of impressive considering there also was all that incredible lovely downtime. We visited the St. Paul Catacombs, which were huge and incredibly creepy. I just want to know -- where did all those bodies go?? Loved this... and especially loved that being three instead of one, I had the courage to venture with my companions into an area that may not have been expressly for us... I would be really interested to see how huge these things really are.
We toured an old monastery that had quite a beautiful chapel. Outside we could hear horses going by in carriages and people shouting in Maltese, and we joked that when we stepped back outside we would have gone back 500 years.
We toured all the old cities: Mdina, Valletta, Sliema...
Of course, I say it's for you, but really it's for ME, so I have a record. So I can look back and remind myself how awesome my life was, at some future time when it sadly but inevitably will not be nearly as awesome. For truth, I have been having legit nightmares recently about my old boss, Ursula. Someday I will have to go back to all that (not to HER, but you know what I mean), but you better believe I will be eating up the company's bandwidth stalking my own blog for hours upon hours at a time.
It makes my stomach hurt thinking about it.
But for now -- for tonight -- I happen to be sitting in a very crummy common room in Genoa (Genova?), Italy. Italy has both charmed and challenged me so far, made me fall in love with her all afresh and then immediately done something completely unnecessary and obnoxious to test the exact limits of how far my love truly goes. And man, I do love her, but she is a solid brat at times. And I miss the hostels in Spain and Portugal. Also the prices. My stars, the lovely prices in Spain....
But before all that, we must bridge the gap from Spain to Italy, and that takes us to the tiny, very white, very hot island of Malta, smack in the middle of the Med.
... I just plain don't feel like doing a blow-by-blow Hemingway-esque recreation this time around though, I gotta be honest. "I walked through the hot bright sun and it was very hot, so I wiped my brow and walked into a cool dark cafe and ordered a whiskey and water. I sat at one of the wicker tables outside while the waiter took his time and I wiped my brow again and thought about..."
No no no. Just... no. Five days is a lot to tackle that way, for one thing, and frankly, while I did have a pretty darn good time in Malta, the days do not exactly merit that kind of attention. I took a fair bit of time off, in fact. I took a couple naps. I spent a lot of time planning for my future (that future being Italy, not any kind of real responsible future).
I got Italy all squared away, from my flight in to my flight out, from Rome to Athens on November 18. This works out so very, very well, because it means I will have my Hobbit Coming-of-Age birthday in ROME. Yep, Mama turns 33 soon (amazing, how did I ever let this happen), and I will dull the knife edge of another passing year by ordering my one no-holds-barred, throw-in-the-towel Italian dinner, in Rome. It's going to be epic.
Before Rome though, it goes: Pisa, Cinque Terre, Genoa, Verona, Venice, Florence, Naples, Sorrento. I think that's a pretty damn fine list, if I do say so myself. I will do day trips to Siena from Florence and to Vesuvius and Pompeii from Naples. Amalfi Coast from Sorrento. I wanted to stay in Siena and skip Florence altogether, since I was there in '09 and it didn't impress me, but fuck if there were ANY hostels in Siena at all. So, to Florence it is. I feel pretty good to have it all squared away, and now have a few weeks until I need to plan my next and last leg, to Greece.
But anyway, that happened, and it took a fair few hours, let me tell you.
But man, I am probably going to lose you if I don't pony up some mind-blowing photos of awesomeness soon, right? Here's one:
That sailboat chaos, apparently, was the warm-up for the Rolex Middle Sea Race. We watched in horrified fascination waiting for a truly epic sailboat collision but it never happened, and I guess that is because we were watching some true pros in action. 606 nautical miles around Sicily!!
Brian and Melissa were impeccable hosts. I knew Brian from way back, we had the same friends in college and played many a beer pong tournament. I was just meeting his wife Melissa for the first time, but she was instantly awesome. Brian and Melissa had rented this amazing white limestone house that my sister (when I skyped with her) said looked like a medieval castle. She wasn't far off!
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| View from their roof! |
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| They just kind of went on and on and on. |
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| Dome in the chapel. |
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| Wall around Mdina, the old capital. |
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| Just hangin' out in Valletta. |
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| Valletta, being gorgeous. |
Visited the Presidential Palace and adjoining public gardens...
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| Presidential Palace |
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| Brian and awesome dawg Janus in the gardens. |
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| Acting my age, again. |
And... one of my very favorite things (as you well know by now)... we had a beach day!! At lovely Golden Bay, and we even splurged on a taxi to get us there. I finally got my proper swim! Two of them, in fact. The water was cold at first but you acclimated almost immediately, and I just could not get over the fact that it was the last half of October and I was paddling around in my very own saltwater swimming pool. No joke, the water was utterly crystal clear. The clearest I've seen since Eleuthera, (Although the sand in the Bahamas was whiter. :) ) It was a perfect day... not too hot, not too crowded. We shared a bottle of wine and watched the sun set.
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| Never get tired of shots like these. |
And then... there was the FOOD. Oh my goodness, the food. We ended up eating in a fair bit, which I was so completely jazzed about after a month and a half of restaurants and hostel dinners. My first night we had chicken kebabs... the second night it was wine and cheese night along with some super spicy garlicky homemade salsa... and then, then was the chicken curry.
Melissa made chicken curry on Beach Day... slow-cooked the chicken all day while we were out and then made up the curry sauce when we got home. Perfectly honest here people -- this may very well have been the best chicken curry I have ever, ever eaten. Plenty of heat, balanced out with just the right amount of sweetness from the coconut milk... OMG. And the second-best part -- we got to have the leftovers for lunch the next day!!
There were a couple nights out, balanced quite comfortably with nights in. The three of us went to a wine bar one evening and had us a grand old time.
I adored this night, because it ended with Brian and I watching three episodes of Doctor Who right where I'd been forced to leave off!!!
My last full night, we went out with a bunch of folks from Brian's work, and they were a hilarious bunch. Started the night at a nice Italian restaurant, migrated to an Irish expat bar and then finally to this ridiculous district that reminded me WAY too much of the Jersey Shore!! No photos of this night unfortunately because I do that sometimes (I suck), but it was a lot of fun, trust me.
On my last day, I didn't fly until 9:30 PM, so had one extra full day hanging out and going for sushi. Hooray! Then it was one more Malta bus to the airport and I gave very heartfelt hugs to my two hosts. Hope to see you again soon!
But now... now we get to Italy.
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