Mishaps Galore!

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

The weekend of Mishaps…. It was bound to happen because ‘Hey! I’m Irish and Murphy’s Law has always applied to me!’ I decided to travel with my two friends Kelsey and Megan and we thought that going down to the Almalfi Coast would be a fantastic way to spend an extended weekend. In theory it was a great idea, in reality we didn’t plan enough. We took a flight to Naples on Friday night not realizing that our flight would be delayed and we ‘forgot’ that it would take more than an hour to get to our hostel in Sorrento. So we landed in Naples around 10 PM on Friday and we realized that we needed to get to the train station ASAP because the last train was coming up. So we hopped on the last shuttle bus to the train station. Let me say that ride was…uncomfortable. Naples is extremely dirty, with garbage everywhere and at one point we saw a dumpster on fire and a housing complex smoking also. We bolted out the door to get into the train station after seeing a small tour of Naples. Then once again we were lost and didn’t know which platform we needed. So a group of girls came over and saw that we were struggling. We thought they were being nice, but they gave us the complete wrong directions and as we hurried off we heard them cackling to themselves. So once again we didn’t receive the warmest welcome into Naples. We finally found our platform after looking everywhere and we got onto our train. Graffiti was everywhere! After around 45 minutes we began to feel a bit safer and more comfortable in our surroundings. Eventually, we got to our hostel (Safe and Sound! So don’t worry!)

Our hostel was amazing! In 2009 it had been recognized as one of the best hostels in Europe! Although we were quite confused when the staff brought us to a small closet door that was on top of the roof. We were pleasantly surprised when we walked in and even had our own private patio. The next morning we decided to walk around Sorrento and eventually made our way by boat to the island of Capri. Capri is beautiful! At first we were confused on what to do and we tried to rent scooters. Obviously the scooter shop didn’t trust us and said no. We were quite disappointed. ☹ So we walked around a bit more and found a shuttle boat around the island and we jumped at the chance. The ride was amazing! I love being on boats and jetski’s so I was just happy to feel the wind in my hair. Capri has such blue water, it still amazes me that water is actually blue. There were caves and rock formations everywhere. Looking back at my pictures I now see faces in the rocks in every single picture. We also got to see Giorgio Armani’s house, and Sofia Loren’s house. Our tour guide mentioned that this one house/mansion used to be Mussolini’s but now it is owned by a famous American family….In my head I was thinking which celebrity lives out here? The answer….The Gerber (baby food) family. I thought this was quite amusing, but apparently no one else did. Then our tour guide threw a fishing line into the water and after a while we caught a fish! As we came back into the bay we were so much happier that we stopped in Capri, but I would recommend not going to visit until you have quite a bit of spare change to spend or if you are older. As we were walking back to our hostel we decided that our night should be spent hanging out on the rooftop. It was a wonderful end to an exciting day!

The following day was a disaster. We tried many times to be productive but all of our plans fell through at the last moment. And once again we were rejected in riding scooters. (We even had a bunch of our guy friends that were driving, once again I don’t think they trusted us) At this point it was too late in the day for us to make it to Pompeii, so we were disappointed but it wasn’t the end of the world. We had a nice dinner downtown and went back to pack up our clothes for the flight the following morning.

We assumed that taking a 6.15 AM bus to Naples would be fine for us to arrive at the airport for a 9.15 flight. We were wrong…again. The hostel told us that it would take an hour for the bus to get to the airport, well 8.00 rolled along and still no airport. To make matters worse our gate closed at 8.15. We finally made it into the airport at 8.10 and luckily we printed off our boarding passes before we left. So we ran up to the security gate and low and behold, Megan couldn’t find her boarding pass. So we ran back to the gate check in and he printed another ticket. Finally we got to the security and in 5 minutes we needed to be at the gate so we talked to people and skipped around 200 people to get to our flight. We finally made it to our gate with a minute to spare. Since we made our flight we thought our morning was pretty hilarious but we didn’t think that we would have even more troubles.

We made it into Marco Polo Airport fine, and then took the shuttle to Mestre train station. At this point we had 45 minutes to spare so we eat some much needed breakfast at noon. Our train that normally takes an hour took 1 ½ and we arrived in Bassano del Grappa. At this point we really should have taken a taxi. This is the picture of us; freezing rain and trying to figure out the bus schedule. We thought we figured it out and bought our tickets as the bus arrived so once again we ended up running for another mode of transportation. The bus was packed so we had to stand in the aisle with our backpacks probably being super inconvenient for the nearby passengers. At Crespano del Grappa (the stop before Paderno) the bus stops and a new bus driver gets on and switches place with the previous. We should have gotten off right here and walked home, but of course we didn’t. Eventually we didn’t make our normal turn into Paderno and we went the opposite way. So we decided to get off at the next stop and walk home. Except we didn’t know where we were. After around 30 minutes of walking in the freezing rain we randomly stopped a car to ask where the Institute di Filippin is. All that we could understand was “beautiful and left”. And we just kept walking, finally after 45 minutes in the freezing rain we walked into our dorms and we all took hot showers and slept for a good two hours. This weekend was really something that I will never forget and I would have had a horrible time, but I had my friends. At CIMBA you will make amazing friends! I can not even imagine what I would be doing if I didn’t have my close friends here….I’d be lost. (And no, not in a physical way!)