Farewell

As we travel somewhere for some time, we get used to that place and those people who surround us. We also become a little part of their culture, because we are curious about the way they live and we want to know about it. Visiting Italy for few weeks, showed how small cities can be enormously different from big cities.
It also taught me how every culture is unique and how people see everything totally differently. Let me give you the most simplest example. In Toronto, when we go to the bar or restaurant we are most likely to tip the waiter/waitress who served us because that's how it is for us. In Italy, tipping the waiter is totally something big, because their wage is as high as the wage of an engineer so it wouldn't matter for them at all.
Shopping boutiques and grocery store would close early on the weekend.
All these small, different, unique and cultural things we learn make us understand and learn more about the culture and also get used to it very quick.

As my amazing trip ended in Italy, I can say that Italy stole my heart. I may not be Italian, but as they say "Home is where your heart is." My home is in Gaeta now. I'm planning on living there happily every after! :)

Italians don't like to shop

Everybody loves shopping, right? For some reason, I didn’t think like that about Italians. In Rome, I never saw a big mall with neither shopping stores nor shopping places. 

However, they do have small clothing boutiques that open till 1.30pm afternoon on the weekends. Isn’t it so weird? Because usually people go shopping on the weekends, afternoon time, but not early in the morning.

Also, when you do go shopping for clothing or shoes, make sure that you know the sales associate who works there’ll assist you. Basically, the shopper sometimes isn’t allowed to touch anything and the sales associate does the job and everything for the shopper. Shopping for clothes is one thing, but when you go grocery shopping Italians have their own schedule for it too. For example, grocery stores, supermarkets and other business places close on Sundays after 7.30pm in addition to that they take long lunch breaks. They might be from 12.30 till 3 or 4pm. It seems very strange to me. Business wise, it’s good to have grocery stores open to make budgets and make extra money, but I guess that’s not the case. They prefer leisure time to working and making money. Speaking of shopping, since Rome is visited by millions of people each year, they have souvenir shops only in the shopping heart of the city, which is located on Piazza del Popolo. 

Despite's that, Italians clothing shops are amazing! Too bad they do not carry some of the brands in North America.

Naples Pizza

From my previous blog post you probably know that I visited Naples for couple of hours.

Naples is known for the best Italian pizza!!! And it’s so true. :)

Of course my friends and I had to stop by at the restaurant because we were so exhausted and hungry. And because we were so exhausted and hungry we realistically didn’t look at the name of the restaurant. BUT I’ll update this if I remember the name :)

As soon as we enter the restaurant, the waitress welcomed and seated us. It was a pleasurable environment: music playing, people enjoying their time. Since I’m from Canada, I’m used to waitresses to bring water as a start... Clearly, it’s not like that in Naples. When I asked for water she looked at me like I was asking for million bucks. Haha. She brought us all water and took our enormous order… Four different pizzas! It did not take them long to make those pizzas. We all shared and tried each one of them. They were so damn delicious with crispy thin dough and fresh vegetables.

As our drinks we all got Coca-Colas with different fancy things on it.

Honestly, it was a pleasant experience in that restaurant and I loved Naples pizza!

They definitely do have and make the best and most delicious Italian pizza ever!

If you ever end up in Naples, come by and enjoy their pizza :)

 

P.S Hopefully, I’ll remember the name of the restaurant and will ask my friends, stay tuned.

World's garbage

Couple of days in Gaeta, going to the beach everyday and having fun got a little boring. So my friends and I decided to go to Naples for a day just to see around. We scheduled a day, went to the station to buy tickets that were pretty cheap. Our train ride was about one or one and half hours. As we came out from the station, all we could see is garbage. Garbage was everywhere. Besides garbage, there were a lot of weird people, I guess they were homeless, but they were in dirty clothes sitting on the ground. Honestly, I never saw so many “homeless” people outside of the train station. Since I’m from Canada, seeing something like that was so shocking. It seemed like Naples was completely different country because it was so different from Gaeta, which is one of the smallest Italian cities. We were walking on the street made of garbage. Everything I could feel underneath of my sandals was garbage. It felt like the entire world threw the garbage at Naples. I wish I could take better pictures to show you what we were going through.

We started walking away from the train station, so we could head to the centre of Naples and see the tourist sights, take pictures and have fun. 

As we were walking down the street and talking in Russian, discussing our plans, some random man came up to us: “You guys are Russians? I’m Russian too, I just want to let you know, keep your purses and expensive stuff to yourself. A lot of people get robbed here, but anyway enjoy your trip, guys!!!” We couldn’t even reply to him and he disappeared in the crowd. After he said all that to us we started walking closer to each other and held tight to our valuable belongings. I really appreciate him for that.

Honestly, Naples is very pretty city! We saw the most prettiest church, the most beautiful view to mountains, very tall buildings and architecture looked so nice.

 I wish it was much cleaner and I really hope it will. But if you ever travel to Naples, here's my tip for you: do not take any valuable stuff with you and make sure you are ready to see world’s garbage everywhere. However, it’s fun to see how other cities are so much different from each other. Oh, and we lasted there only few hours and were so glad to come back to our “home” in Gaeta.