Italia!

A lot of water has flown under the bridge, since I sent a long travelogue mail to my friends, so I thought I would share the latest of my travels with you, and also update you on the latest here:-)

This time it was another European destination - Italy. However, the process that got me to Italy this time round was very different. I didnt know much about the country, despite my visit there some years ago (while I was interning in Germany during undergrad), so I decided to buy myself a Lonely Planet on Italy. I had figure out what was worth seeing, where to stay, how to travel and what not. For those who havent used the Lonely Planet, it is an amazing wealth of travel information, which beats the powerful combination of Internet + Google anyday:-)

I spent long hours poring over hotel sites, and travel sites to put together a good enough plan for my rushed 5 day Easter weekend trip. And it turned out to be absolutely fantastic!!

The trip started off with me flying into Frankfurt and then catching a bus to the Frankfurt Hahn airport, which is a small village airport outside Frankfurt, and flies only cheap airlines (unlike the US, where most of the cheap airlines also fly out of the larger airports - Europe is a bit different). I had booked a hotel there for to change and shower, and thats when the adventure started. We landed up at the hotel to find that it was closed:-) Shivering in the lovely German summer temperature of 5 degrees Celsius, we ventured to ask an old lady walking by about the whereabouts of the hotel staff, and were duly informed that the owner was probably in a bar nearby! The owner was promptly smoked out of the bar, and we soon had a room:-) We caught a flight from Frankfurt Hahn to Rome, and landed in the middle of a bustling airport.

This is where my knowledge of Italy (all from the Lonely Planet) started coming into use. I remembered to guard my belongings like I always did in India (as if someone is always on the lookout to whisk them away from you). I also remembered that traffic signals and other rules are for advisory purposes only, and Italians are quite happy to bend them if it is convenient for them:-) Rome was quite abuzz with activity at 10.30 at night despite it being the start of a long weekend - and we happily checked into our hotel.

The hotel owner gave me a first hand experience of how Italians communicate. After I checked in, he told me in a rather grave and loud tone - "Gupta, this is not a hospital. You dont come to Rome for one night. Next time you better come here for a week."

I was stunned for a moment, and then realized that the owner meant well, and these guys tend to be a little direct and in-the-face!!! :-)

The next morning, I left the "hospital" and caught a train to Naples, and then another one to Sorrento, and finally a bus to Positano, which was my destination. It seems very tiring and time consuming, but it was actually a very beautiful journey, along the famed Amalfi coast. We had a view of the Mediterranean sea almost all the time, and the train/ bus drove right along the edge of the coast, oblivious of the cliffs that sometimes seemed periliously close! I couldnt soak in enough of the beauty, which was accentuated by the lovely blue cloudless skies, the clean air, and the freshly bloomed spring flowers that dotted the countryside.

Reached Positano in the afternoon, and was overjoyed to see what lay before me. A small town, built on a steep mountain facing the sea, littered with white houses, a winding road leading to the small beach at the bottom of the mountain, and the wide expanse of the sea in front of us. It was a sight to behold! After quickly checking into the hotel there, we walked down the steep stairs to the beach. The walk was more of a hike (similar to a trip from Vaishno Devi, for those who have been there!), and we reached the beach ready for a nice pizza and wine:-)

The wine had its desired effect, but I hadnt planned on the long hike back to the hotel, and decided to take the road instead of the steps this time. Bad idea. Reached about 45 mins later, completely sober, and extremely tired:-)

The next day was a day that I had been waiting for quite some time. It was a day of utter rest. It was a day that I finally decided to give up running around to check out everything that a city had to offer, and decided to grab a better, and just lie at the beach, and do nothing. It was a garangutan effort for me, and those who know me well will appreciate it:-) However, I was rejuvenated by evening time, and I promise you, the bikini clad Italian girls that nothing to do with it:-)!!!

Positano probably had more shops selling clothes than the whole of Paris! It was littered with shops selling all sorts of dandy clothing, and it was fun walking through these crowded streets, with the latest Italian fashion on display:-) The cheese that the restaurants used in the city was out of the world too. I am not a huge fan of cheese, for all the right reasons, given my weight, but I indulged and indulged this time! Be sure you eat cheese when you go to Italy next - its out of the world!

After the day of utter rest, the journey back to Rome began. However, the adventure was just starting. After a good 1.5hrs journey from Positano to Amalfi, we witnessed a harmless but interesting accident, where our bus rammed into a car. Crowds thronged the scene, as if it was India, and not Italy:-)!!!! It was fun to see! However, we couldnt check out the beauty of Amalfi for too long, because the bus information guy took my bus schedule, crumpled it in front of my eyes, and told me "No good today - Easter Sunday - different schedule"! So we rushed to catch another bus to Sorrento, only to be told that the train service had been suspended for the day too!!!!!! Now I was in a fix, but some helpless running around got me on a bus to Naples Airport, where I caught a train to Rome!!! So a 3 hour journey turned out to an 8 hour one - and I reached Rome dead dead tired at night.

Managed to see the Piazza Venezia, a magnificent structure that is so huge and imposing that one and only stare and wonder how they managed to do it! However I was careful enough to forget my camera at home, so you cant see any of it in my photos:-) A Google search can help you here:-)

I finally got on my flight back the next day from Frankfurt, and I was back to the grind soon enough.

However, it was a lovely lovely trip, and there are such good memories!!! Feel free to check them out at photos.yahoo.com/daredevil_inc under the Italy folder!!!

Take care, and if you managed to reach the end of the mail, kudos to you. Not too many achieve it!!!!!:-)