Athens to Rome or bust

Fabulous news, lambs: I'm doing Europe this summer!!!

I'm going with my fam, which is great since that means my sister (aka one of my BFFs) and I can hang out shopping together every day in "giant floppy sun hats" as she says. I concur. She and my mom are going to Turkey for three weeks in June, then taking a train to Athens, Greece where my dad and I will meet up with them. From there we'll explore Greece and some of the Greek islands. We're still planning an approximate route from Athens to Patras, which is where we'll cast off for Corfu, but I do know that Corfu will be our last Greek locale before taking a ferry over to Italy. 

Once we dock at the port city of Brindisi in Italy, we plan to rent a car and drive up to the Abruzzo region, which includes some of Italy's best medieval castles and villages. (The area is also where Clooney's The American was filmed.) Towns I want to see there include Castel del Monte, Sulmona, Castelvecchio, Pescara and Teramo.

From Abruzzo we'll head back down the boot and cut over to the opposite coast. Again, not sure how far south we'll go -- we might try doing Sicily, but we're not sure yet. I do know we're planning to head up the Amalfi coast where we'll rent an apartment or villa in either Naples or Sorrento for a week and use it as a base for day trips to places like Positano and Pompeii. At the end of our trip we'll fly out of Rome after spending a couple days there too (funny enough I am the only one who wants to see Rome again, everyone else is sick of it. How anyone could ever get sick of Rome eludes me.)

Anyway, mapped out our trip is going to look something like this (not counting the still-unplanned path from Athens to Patras):

One thing I love about traveling with my family is that they're a very off-the-cuff bunch, especially my mom. Making sure we know exactly where we're going to spend each night is not their style, which means advance hotel reservations aren't in their vocab. We usually pick a starting and ending location, buy our plane tickets, then plan a rough idea of where we might be every couple days. Aside from our rented apartment on the Amalfi coat and whatever hotel we book in Athens when we land, I have no idea where we'll be staying along the way and I love the spontaneity of that. I need a good adventure.

Anyway, is it weird that I've already started packing? I guess its symbolic of my near-pornographic eagerness to get this party started. The last time I went on a major trip was when I went to Rio and Buenos Aires in the summer of 09. As on that trip, J won't be coming on this one either since he has to work, but he's very happy for me (I think some of that may have to do with the fact that he can play golf the entire month of July without me getting on his case about it).

The best thing of all about this trip, over all the indigenous olive oil and pasta and wine I'll be consuming? I don't have to ask for any time off to do it. I'll be gone for three weeks and no one can tell me I can't have those days off or I can't leave for that long or any other bureacratic bs. Winning!

Italy is not "alright"

Venice was a major maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, a staging area for the Crusades and an important center of commerce and art in the 13th century up to the end of the 17th century. I guess it's...alright....

Today at work my friend, B (the one who got proposed to in Paris), signed online to chat for a second while she and her fiance waited in Rome for their flight back home.

This was a big trip that meant more than just that new ring on her finger -- B and Co. had never been to Europe before. They'd saved up for nearly a year for this 10-day trip and were excited to finally see what all the fuss about Europe was about.  They spent the first three days and nights in Paris, which of course is one of the most amazing cities in the world and deserves much more time than just three days, but they adored it all the same. According to her, if she ever wins the lottery she's planning to buy a vacation home there (cue the millions of others -- including me -- who are pining for Parisian vacation homes of their own). 

With her second leg of the trip done, I asked today how she had liked Italy. Her answer?

"It was alright."

And this is basically how I inwardly (thus silently) responded to that answer: 

"Are you *%$@^$# kidding me?"

Okay, so maybe I'm a little biased about Italy. It is my favorite country on Earth and I've had many spectacular memories on that boot-shaped land mass, so perhaps I took it more personally than I should have. It's not like she was trying to insult me, after all, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I just don't think it's fair to spend only FIVE DAYS in an entire country and think you can make an accurate assessment about it -- especially a country as culturally and historically rich as Italy. (This same thinking would go for any European country. No wonder she liked the city of Paris since she spent three whole days there, almost the equivalent amount of time she spent exploring the entire country of Italy.) 

After leaving Paris a day later than expected due to an airport strike, B and Co. arrived in Venice at 6pm and left the following morning. Venice is one of my favorite cities and I know for a fact that you absolutely can't see it all in under three days, minus in under 24 hours. But c'est la vie. Next stop for them was two nights in Florence, which she said "wasn't what she expected." When I asked what she was expecting, she described something that sounded more like the real Tuscan countryside, a medieval village like Sienna perhaps, surrounded by rolling vineyards and picnic baskets and people pedaling past on old Italian bicycles with baskets full of produce attached to the fronts. Regardless -- Florence is an awesome city! Even if it's not what you expected, the difference in perception versus reality is delightful on its own. 

ANYWAY, they spent their last two nights in Rome (only two nights for the former capital of the world -- I'm dying inside!) She said she liked it but it was too touristy. Again, wrong time of year to go, and what did she expect? It's still warm there and the summer crowds are only beginning to wind down since there's...well...a lot to see there. It was, at one time, only the capital of the entire Roman Empire for, oh, 700 years.

No offense to B, but I guess my problem is that I hate when people go Europe (or anywhere, really) for the first time, try to cram 3,000 cities into a week or two, and then grumble about how it wasn't that great, or it wasn't what they expected it to be, or it was just "alright." No one could possibly capture the essence of any one of those sprawling cities in so little time.

So no. Italy is not "alright." It's fabulous.