Italy 2015 - Overview

Italy 2015 - Overview

It has been a year since my trip to Italy and I am ashamed that it has taken me this long to get around to writing about my trip. I hope not too much has faded from my memories. In fact, that is the main reason I enjoy writing about my travels. These posts allow me to review my past travels long after they have happened and refresh my faded memories.

This trip was rather "spur of the moment" for me. My dad informed me in November 2014 that he and my step-mother were going to Italy for Easter 2015 to visit her family. In a later conversation we were discussing Christmas and he asked what I wanted and I joked that I would like an invite to come on the trip to Italy. Well, he said he had been pondering just that as he and I both have a mutual love for ancient history whereas my stepmother does not. I would also be a bit of a relief for him while we were amidst the Italian step-family. And so I booked my plane tickets in December 2015 and had just 3 short months to plan this trip. That may be plenty of time for most people but not for me. I like to put extensive research time into my trips and so I felt very rushed. Working on my behalf was the fact that much of the trip was sorted already as it would be spent visiting family so I just had to plan out the in between parts. Here is a basic outline of where we went and what you can expect to see me post about: Rome, Milan, Lake Como, Genoa, Cinque Terre, Lucca, Matera, Alberobello, coastal towns of Puglia (Trani, Giovinazzo).

Rome - Arrival

We arrived in Rome via a connecting flight from London. In was about 6pm and raining. Getting our luggage and clearing immigration was a breeze. I told my Dad we should stop at the tourist information centre in the airport to get our Roma Passes. These were a great value and made everything so much easier as we got to skip the ticket lines, got into the pricier places for "free" and then got half off admission everywhere else. If we had wanted to we also could have used it for free rides on the city transit. Even though I had already done all the research on it and informed my Dad about it many times he thought that he should get my stepmother to ask the employees in the tourist information office about it since she could speak to them in Italian.... Well, that was a waste of 15 minutes and we came away with the exact same information that we had beforehand.

Next up was getting our train tickets to Termini where I had planned to either walk or catch a cab to our hotel that was nearby. It would depend on the weather. I saw one of the self-serve ticket machines and suggested that we use it but my Dad said it would be better to find an actual ticket counter. Okay.... Well, we ended up in the hall where you catch the train and there were about five different counters all saying that they sold train tickets and it was not clear if any of them were official Trenitalia counters. So, my brilliant father suggested that my brilliant stepmother go up to a counter and buy our tickets since she was the native language speaker....  Well, we ended up with three tickets for a shuttle bus instead of three tickets for the 15 minute Leonardo Express. I was very annoyed at this point. We ended up waiting around 45 minutes for the shuttle as they were waiting for more gullible people to get scammed into buying a shuttle ride. My Dad and stepmother tried to justify the mistake by saying that the shuttle would drop us directly at the hotel versus the train where we would have had to walk a short distance in the rain.

We finally got taken to the shuttle van and were off after our long wait. I chatted with a Turkish couple who were asking about where they should go. I was surprised that they hadn't done any research but it was a last minute trip for them.

I was excited to be on our way and couldn't help but exclaim every time we passed something that I recognized. My stepmother on the other hand was feeling car sick having to sit in the back of the shuttle van and kept yelling up to the driver about how much longer it would be... There were three other groups of people that needed to be dropped off. 1 1/2 hours later we arrived at our hotel. So, a trip that would have taken 30-45 minutes if we had followed my train plan turned into a 2 1/2 ordeal. Don't get scammed into the shuttle option people!

We checked into our room and then headed down the street to a restaurant that offered a discount for guests of our hotel. The food was good but we were all so tired that we just wanted to sleep and that we did after wolfing down our food.