Italy I

Ahh, Italy... land of sun, surf, sand, gelato, and a whole lot of steep, high hills. Or so was indicated by the week we spent there. We arrived midday Wednesday and eventually made our way by very hot bus to the hostel, about 2km up a switchbacked hill. We were pretty worn out already from the shock of the heat (Italy's weather being a distinct improvement on Nederland's!) so we just took an "easy" (read: slow but steep) hike up the rest of the hill above the hostel. It was all parkland so we had plenty of peace and quiet and nice views of the valley behind us. When we got to the top, we hung around appreciating the sights (such as a castle) and avoiding the used condoms on the ground. I guess it was a popular "drive and park" location. We wandered along the ridge for awhile longer and located some ice cream - the packaged kind, so not nearly as good as true gelato, but welcome nonetheless.

We ate at the hostel that night, one of the few "real" meals we had in Italy: pasta with local pesto sauce - very nice, and pretty cheap, too. My dad wondered once how young people like us can afford to travel. The answer is complicated, but a big part of it is that we stay in hostels, travel by hot bus, and eat a lot of bread. In Paris, it was baguettes from the boulangeries. In Italy, it was foccacia from foccacerias. We had breakfast included at the hostels, but this too was bread - normal white crusty buns with butter or jam and a hot drink. Lunch (and sometimes supper) usually consisted of foccacia or a panini sandwich. We took a chance the second day and just ordered something random off a sandwich board which turned out to be a ham and cheese sandwich. After that I remembered to pull out my little Italian phrasebook and learned some helpful words like crudo (raw) and cotto (cooked). Stephanie cannot live by bread alone, however, and so there was gelato. A lot of gelato.

Italian ice cream is a remarkable thing. Not only is it smooth and creamy and full of flavour, but it's also reasonably cheap. We could get two medium sized scoops of gelato for 1.30 (a little over $2). For Europe, this is nuthin'. We ate gelato at least ten or eleven times. Some of the flavours I tried really were full of fruit so I figure it might count towards my vitamin intake for the week. I ate chocolate chip mint, plain mint, strawberry, chocolate, chocolate-banana, watermelon, pineapple, raspberry, hazelnut peach, and I can't remember what else. It was sooooo gooooood.

But back to the plot... we didn't stay long in Genoa, but took off to a resort town on the Italian Riviera. As a side note, I had long assumed that the French and Italian Rivieras were located on some sort of river. I'd never looked into it before and so was distinctly pleased when I found out that "riviera" is Italian for coast and that I would be spending two days on sandy beaches on the Mediterreanean. Sweet!

But I've really got to break for food, so this shall continue later.

Transportation Woes

In the last couple of weeks, I've not fared particularly well in the transportation department. First, my bike was stolen. It was securely (ha!) locked by wheel and frame to a bike rack near my friends' apartment. I was gone for less than 3 hours on a sunny afternoon in a busy neighbourhood and not a bit of it remained. Not even my 25 euro (~$40) chain. And the most ironic part? It was right in front of the "Justice in the Neighbourhood" office.

After that, I bought a 20 euro transit strippenkaart ticket, used 2 of 45 strips getting home, put it in my pocket and then promptly washed the pocket. 20 euros quite literally down the drain. Dumb. Very dumb.

This week, I went to Amsterdam on Wednesday as per usual to do my cleaning. After the first place, which is within walking distance of the train station, I discovered that the city transit workers were all on strike and I wouldn't be able to get to the second place to clean there. Annoying, though sort of nice to go home early.

So I came back the next day, bought my ticket to A'dam and then discovered that there was work going on on the tracks between Utrecht and A'dam and trains were being routed through Hilversum. Not a huge problem, but it meant that the trains went only every half hour and took another 20 minutes. Vaguely inconvenient but okay. On the way home, however, the train stopped unexpectedly in Hilversum and we were told that the train was too long and due to renos at the Utrecht, all the platforms there were too short. Eh? Wtf? Who planned that? So they stopped in Hilversum to figure out what to do about it. Five minutes later, they added a second problem: due to a recent heat wave, all the canal waters had been heated up and couldn't be used as cooling for the electrical generators at the train station in Utrecht (apologies if my details are messed up - I got the translated version from a fellow passenger). Essentially, the power was out and no trains were going in or out of the station. Gah! After much fussing about, they finally decided to let us off in Hilversum and send the train back to A'dam. Of course, no one was sure when the power was going to come back on at Utrecht, so 200 of us decided to take a bus. Fortunately, this actually worked. The buses (we had to transfer) were jammed, but we did all get back into town eventually. It took me over 3 hours to travel 50 kms! Craziness!

Anyways, after all of this, I was rather wishing I had my own car here. But then I reminded myself that if I'd had a car stolen I'd be much more upset about it all, and that if I had mechanical problems with my personal vehicle, I'd have to deal with them - I wouldn't be able to jump ship and take a bus home. So there are certain advantages to this too.