Tourist life

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.

La Grotta del Turco or Montagna Spaccata

When I was visiting Gaeta for a week, I always wondered if this small city had any historical mysteries. As I did my research I found out about Grotta del Turco or “Montagna Spaccata” as Italians call it. It’s a mountain split in half located right beside the church.

My best friend and I were at the beach and we decided to ask people around where it was located. When we asked a man who worked at the beach, he had no idea what we were talking about. I tried to explain somehow in English since I do not speak Italian and their English isn’t perfect. Few minutes later, his friend jumped into the conversation and surprisingly said: “Si, si! Montagna Spaccata!” He showed us where it was. And guess what? It was right beside our beach!!! We found out about it two days before we had to leave. Even though it was really hot, we got some gelatos and started our little trip. As we got there, we saw a very pretty church. We had to pay €1 each to get to the Grotta del Turco. Luckily, few guys who were walking ahead paid for us. How nice of them though! :)

As we entered the gates, we had to go down the stairs. I counted about 276 steps… I think. When we got there, the view was amazingly beautiful! I took couple of pictures of course, but photos are different than reality. There were a lot of people, you could totally see the sea and people on the shipping just swimming by. It was a very precious view. I definitely recommend this to anyone who ever visits Gaeta. Hands down you’ll love the view!!!

There is also a photo of how la Grotta del Turco looks from the seaside. 

P.S walking back upstairs was a good workout too!

August in Italy

Canadian summer is weird. It may be rainy, cloudy, hot or chilly. (#canadianproblems). No matter how humid it gets all the malls and shops are open. On the weekends most of them are open till 7pm. I went to Italy in the beginning of August and the weather was amazing! (And by amazing I mean it was real summer weather there that I was enjoying every second of it.) But I didn’t know that everything closes either early or shops are just closed. August for Italians is the month of the summer when they go to the seaside of Italy, that’s why most of the shops are closed, but tourist’s sights are open. Another reason some shops are closed is because of the hot humid weather. They even have a special name for it. Streets are pretty quiet, but everything get busier when people start coming out in the evening time, except tourists, who are out the entire day. My friends and I had to pull long missions to find a restaurant that was open where we could go and eat and enjoy our time together. But hey, it’s a part of their culture that I learned about Italy :)

When walking in Rome, we could find small water fountains with drinking water. Isn’t it so smart? Especially when your bottle of water finishes, you can easily go and refill it anywhere.  OR you can refresh yourself with cold water and get a really nice tan without trying hard.

P.S oh and by the way you should really try Italian ice cream (gelato)! The most delicious thing over there besides real Italian pizza of course.

Tourist problems in Italy - Tips

Rome, Italy is a lovely place to travel in summer time. The weather is amazing compared to unstable Canadian weather (where I live) when one day rains and another day it's humid.

All you need there is comfortable summer stylish pieces. Here's a TIP for ladies of course, do NOT ever take any kinds of heels with you!!! I learned it hard way. I grabbed few heels with me, because I thought I would need them at some point of the trip...But... I never wore them. Next time, I won't even bother taking heels with me. Unless you really cannot go a day without heels, then you might prefer taking wedges. The streets of Rome are old fashioned (you can see it in the picture),

which makes it impossible to wear any kinds of heels. I remember when I was wandering around with my best friend, we were wearing some kind of fancy shoes, and all we did is look down so we wouldn’t trip or fall, but of course we couldn’t avoid it…

Whoever traveled to Italy knows my pain and whoever is planning to travel in the future, keep that in mind! :)  It’s probably the major issue of travellers who are loving the architecture and trying so hard not to fall while walking around and being busy taking pictures.

Besides that, Rome is beautiful. I got very lucky to live 7 min away from the heart of Rome, Vatican City.

Since you’ll be a tourist, you may need to get used to seeing people coming up to you and telling you to buy flowers for your friends, or buy tickets to skip the lines (which are insanely long and tiring) to museums, buy a bottle of water because it’s very hot and stuff like that. That’s something I couldn’t get used to personally. My friends and I tried to escape those “sketchies” but at the same time we enjoyed the moment of being most valued tourists in Rome.