Proprio Italia
After journeying for 10 days through southern Italy, I have officially traveled to all of the cities in Italy that I wanted to see! While I was traveling, I started thinking about the purpose of why I travel. After living in Bologna for 5 months, I know that seeing a city for 1-5 days is not enough to understand the culture.
So, my goal was to just love the city and love the people and meet with God in these very different contexts… and if I found myself pleasantly content in a particular spot, I was going to stay there and drop the rest of my itinerary.
First, my amazing study abroad program took all of us on a final excursion through Tuscany. After we saw the medieval town of Monteriggioni, we went all over Siena in our free time and also explored the city with a guide. After seeing the main piazza, we went to the Duomo di Siena, where Nicolo Pisano’s pulpit was constructed and remains in total grandeur and detail! (That was one of the pieces some of us studied in a History of Italian Art class, so we were amazed!). For lunch we stopped and got Gorgonzola and pear pizza. Gorgonzola+pear has become my, and a few other girls’, favorite combination… but on a pizza it was wild. We felt sick after it seemed like we each ate a whole wheel of cheese, so we abstained from cheese for a week. After we saw Siena, we took off to the hills in Siena to sleep in the spooky, abandoned rooms of an ex-monastery. After winding through the alleys of another quaint and beautiful town, Pienza, we made our last stop at a vineyard in Montalcino. We all brought lunches and ate in the backyard of the home vineyard that overlooked the vines and hills. Then, the family-run vineyard showered us with fresh bruschetta and shared the story behind their business. We had a tasting with 3 of their wines (that Brunello, though…), then hiked a 7km trail through the hills that I really enjoyed. My coordinator asked me which city I liked best- I said I loved the bus ride! Our bus wound around the hills through the sun, the rain, and another beautiful double rainbow.
The countryside of Tuscany had a distinct way of life: it was slow. 5 months ago it would have irritated me, but now it makes me joyful that the people have a simple peace as the day comes and goes. There was nothing there except the amazing rolling hills that were perfectly set by God, and the people loved the fruit of the land.
About half way through my semester I decided that one day I would come back to Bologna to live, but the countryside of Tuscany is the only place to make me reconsider my location.
After Tuscany I came home to Bologna to wash my clothes and repack for a 7 day journey through the South. I started by myself in Rome, where I loved the historic city. I got lost in the Forum and Palatine Hill, dreaming that I was in Paul’s stomping ground as I read excerpts of his letter to the Romans. Unfortunately, the present city didn’t impress me much. That being said, I really enjoyed the Coliseum, Trevi Fountain, the Forum, the Sistine Chapel, and the massive St. Peter’s Basilica.
My favorite part of Rome was a surprise Rome gave to me on my walk home from the Forum: Rome’s Rose Garden.
I have make it a goal to see a garden or park in every place I travel to in order to give the flowers some of my sunshine and breath in some of their sweetness. I enjoy all of them… but this was the greatest flower treasure in the world, pulsing with life and hope and beauty.
In a huge acre there were two semi circle gardens with a road in between them, and every 3 feet there was a different type of rosebush planted with different colors, different scents, and different origins from all over the world! I got so overwhelmed when I walked through half of the gardens, that I just layed down in the middle, enjoying all of them, reading Isaiah 60 and the beauty of the glory of Israel. Nothing could take away that sweet smelling hour.
In Napoli there was a thrilling spark and things got bo$$y… the girls crimped their hair and were total G’s. The men were always fighting and greeting eachother with vaffanculo. After 3 total nights by myself, Kyra finally joined me! We ate the famous pizza of Da Michele (featured in Eat Pray Love); shopped at AMAZING stores/vendors; explored the underground Napoli by crawling through caves; entered churches that had exquisite sculptures. Furthermore, the Mediterranean sea and the active volcano Versuvius were in the background of it all! We were couch surfing with a great host who guided us to the best places: for dinner and dessert on our last night we had the Panuozza and Graffa (fresh sugar donuts that are filled with a crème of your choice right in front of your eyes! Honestly, the only time I’ve ever said that a donut was better than Krispy Kreme’s) that you can only find in these small towns. In Sorrento we tried a million limoncello’s throughout the day, and then made our way to Positano, a tiny city that inserted itself literally on the side of a cliff without taking away any of it’s vegetation! The winding bus ride had all of us worried that we would go tumbling over the cliff and into the water at any moment… but the view was spectacular. This town has now become my favorite vacation place in the world, and I’m sure Kyra was annoyed every 5 minutes when I gasped at it’s beauty at every turn in the stairs.
After sleeping in Sorrento we woke up to do a day trip to Capri. It was another beautiful, natural island. We took a chairlift up to the very top of the mountain that overlooked all of the white houses and clear, tropical water, until a cloud literally consumed us and all of our view! It was unreal. To get down we opted for the 45 minute hike that I really enjoyed (but my knees didn’t). Next, we took a bus to the Blue Grotto, a cave that naturally glows a brilliant blue from the sun reflecting through a small hole onto all of the white sand below. I’ll never see anything like that again.
To get to Sicily we chose the cheapest option- a 12 hour ship through the night. Things got weird. When buying our tickets, there were three options: a bed, a chair, and the 37euro ticket (cheapest, but no further explanation… we took it). Not knowing what to expect, we finally found our carrier ship, passed all of the 18-wheelers that parked at the ground level, and a worker told us to go to floor 5. We opened the doors and found ourselves in the ship’s Bar and Casino, where everyone on the ship hung out until they went up to their bed. After downing a liter of wine to help us pass out, we laughed all night and then curled up on tiny couches along the perimeter of the room and “slept” there. We were freezing and paranoid by the sassy-southern-italian women and the outstanding amount of men, 20% truck drivers, the other 80% in the Sicilian mob.
We made it. We were in the port of Catania, and my first thought was about how much I loathed my black back-packing bag that weighed way too much and I had carried for 7 days too many. I couldn’t even look at it. We remained in the ghost-town of Catania after sadly cancelling our day plans to the beautiful Taormina. Throughout the day we ate well for 5 euros: a fresh brioche in the morning as a reward for making it off the ship alive, and Sicilian arancini with ragu, spinach, and eggplant-ragu for lunch.
That night, Kyra and I made it to Modica (Sicily) so hungry, so we took the advice to go to the family-run Osteria for dinner. We sat next to the cutest group of 4 retired men and women from Venezia. We shared stories over our liters of wine and a 3 course meal, (typical modica antipasti, pasta, and of course a real Sicilian cannoli). We spent 3 hours total with that group in the restaurant and left so content with happy hearts and fully tummies!
We met Salvo, our couchsurfing host who had a particular character full of an intense consciousness and care for other people. Salvo was the town celebrity and lived spontaneously as he spent everyday on his bike checking in on the other locals (when he’s not on excursions and with the environmental organization). The next day we stayed on the beach and met the 3 new couchsurfers who came in (how he hosted 5 couchsurfers in his 2-room* beach bungalow is comical). Everyone had a different story, including a 25 year old Norwegian girl who has traveled to 95 countries with* an undergraduate degree. What a boss. This trip was amazing because of the places I saw, but it was unforgettable because God put me around people so different than me, and I learned something from each of them. Their wisdom wasn’t dependent on their age, or their credentials, but on their passion. And that is inspiring.
