Our first trip outside of Rome was certainly an adventure! This is about to be confusing, I’m sorry…. It started on Saturday morning when Bridget and I left our apartment to take the tram to the Trastevere Station that would take us to Roma Termini where we would catch our train to Napoli. We are really only about 15 minutes from Termini so we gave ourselves an hour to get there—just to be safe. Of course we had issues with the ticket machine not printing so we missed the first train to Termini. It shouldn’t have been a big deal (they run every 20 minutes) except the next one was delayed 45 minutes. The trains here DEFINE the word unpredictable! By the time we got on the train to Termini, our train to Napoli should have been pulling out of the station but we thought we would give it an attempt anyway & good thing we did! When we got to Termini, we realized the Napoli train was also delayed and we had about 10 minutes to print our tickets (we booked online) and find our ‘bin’ where the train picks us up. Naturally, we couldn’t get the tickets to print and there wasn’t a soul in sight to help us. It was a good thing we only had our backpacks because we were literally sprinting around the station like lunatics trying to figure out where to go & laughing so hard Bridget had to whip out her inhaler—CRAZY AMERICANS. Getting on that train was the biggest relief!
Once we arrived in Napoli, we were a little bit scared… The areas around train stations are never the nicest, but we felt like we were alone in the wrong part of Detroit. It was incredibly dirty, I’ve never seen so much trash in my life and the people didn’t seem like anyone we wanted to linger around. Luckily, the farther away from the station we got, the safer we felt. Finding out hostel wasn’t that difficult and it ended up being a really cool place…
One of the reasons I like staying in hostels (aside from being college budget friendly) is because of the people you meet—everyone has such different stories. We met an Austrian girl, Lily, who just finished her doctorates in physics and needed a break so she was backpacking around Europe. Another one of our roommates, Morgan, has been in the Army, stationed in Germany since 2008 and has traveled to a different country every weekend. Anyway, as soon as we tried to leave the hostel to go sightseeing, a hailstorm hit. Seriously, the hail was the size of grapes—thankfully it didn’t last long & switched over to rain. Since sightseeing was out of the question, we grabbed our first fried pizza. It was similar to donut dough but filled with tomatoes and cheese—kind of bizarre but soooo good! Afterwards, we ended up shopping inside this gorgeous “mall” for a few hours before dinner.
We unsurprisingly got lost trying to find our way to Gino’s, a pizzeria that was recommended to us by someone at the hostel but it was a good thing! We ran into Lily (the Austrian girl) on the street and she walked us to another pizzeria she had eaten at for traditional Napoli Pizza—so delicious and only 3 euro! Bridget & I felt horrible though; in Italy it is considered rude and insulting not to finish your food but we just couldn’t do it! We got about halfway through and thought we were about to explode.
A little side note about the beauty of getting lost… A few of my roommates brought their iPhones to Italy and at one point I was a little jealous; they never get lost, they have maps at their fingertips and can still text their friends back at home. What I’ve come to realize is they also never get the chance to accidently wind up somewhere amazing by mistake. Honestly, being away from my phone is kind of refreshing.
The next morning, we checked out of our hostel (so we had to carry our bags around) and had a few hours of clear skies so we decided to attempt sight seeing again… Let me tell you, Naples is beautiful! We found our way to the coast and were in awe at the sights: Mt. Vesuvis, two castles, the homes stretching out into the water—gorgeous! We also counted over 40 runners along the coast, which really surprised us… I have yet to see a single person out running or exercising in Rome.
When the rain started again, Bridget and I were totally pooped. We had already walked around 5 miles (with heavy backpacks) and were freezing cold. We still had around 6 hours before our train back to Rome so we walked another 2 miles to the underground catacombs for a tour—but as luck would have it, they were closed because of the rain. We tried to warm up with another pizza (sandwich style) and traditional Napoli Baba (disgusting yeast cake dripping with rum) but it was no use—we were ready to head home.
We asked for directions back to the train station and a really nice, older Frenchman walked us there since he was headed in the same direction. We both agreed that the people in Naples seemed a bit more relaxed and friendly than our Roman neighbors… Luckily, Bridget and I were able to change our tickets and trekked home.
When we got back, all of our roomies were already home from their weekend in Florence—their weather was just as horrible and they took earlier trains home too. Amber comes to visit on Friday and we are headed to Venice Carnevale next weekend so we are all crossing our fingers for good weather because we hear the canals are frozen right now!
