En Reconnaissance de Paris: Tales of an Italia Spring Break, Part I: A Pasta Rebirth

Dry your eyes, my readers!

I have finally returned to update you on my European whereabouts. I know you are probably leaning over your keyboard, falling into your computer monitor, completely on edge as you await my spring break update, so here it comes. But first please wipe away that anxious drool that is dribbling down your chin, it's not a good look.

Now before we get truly into it, I'm going to give you the general itinerary of my past week in Italy:

- Thursday, April 14 - Sunday, April 17 : Amalfi Coast

- Sunday, April 17 - Wednesday, April 20 : Florence

- Wednesday, April 20 - Thursday, April 21 : Venice

- Thursday, April 21 - Monday, April 25 : Rome

So in order to make this both easier for me to write and for you to read, I'm going to separate these posts into four individual ones for each leg of my trip. Now, we can begin:

Thursday, April 14 - Sunday, April 17 : Amalfi Coast

Several of my friends and I had agreed to reserve all of our Italy travels of this semester for our spring break. We all knew that we wanted to visit Florence, Venice, and Rome-- but those are the easy ones. How would we manage to get down to the splendid smaller cities along the coast of Italy without any sort of guidance? It would take a lot of frustration and aggravation to do on our own, so we conveniently found a trip pre-organized by a college-student travel company called Bus2Alps. Four friends and I from Paris signed up to go as well as Brian and his friends, who were also on their spring break from Barcelona.

The Bus2Alps crew met us on Thursday in Rome's Ciampino airport. We were told we had to arrive by 11:30 pm, so Abbey and I flew in on the only flight that could get us there before that time, which landed, of course, at 2:20 pm. Ciampino is a tiny, tiny airport and actually a bit outside of Rome. Needless to say, I'm pretty sure I re-read the same two magazines about ten times each to fill the 9 hours of down time we had. Finally, however, it was time to go, and we shuffled onto the coach buses which drove us down to the coast.

We woke up early Friday morning (I mean, 6:30 am, early) to catch a ferry to the island Capri. Once we reached the island, we got off the ferry and onto smaller boats of ten people or so, which took us on a tour around the outside of the island. Unfortunately for us, the weather was less than ideal, so we were a bit chilly and even felt some rain. This did not, however, put a damper on seeing this beautiful place. At one point, we got into even tinier boats of four people and had to duck down as the man rowing took us through a small opening in a chunk of rock. When we came out on the other side, we were in the cave Grotta Azzurra, or the Blue Grotto. This is a small sea cave that allows just enough light in to illuminate the brilliant blue water. It creates a breathtaking effect in which it seems like the water in the boat around you is literally glowing on its own.

After we had changed back into to our bigger boats and returned to the island, we took a walk up towards the city center. This was an exhausting 15 minute hike uphill, which felt much more like an hour-long, perfectly vertical climb after the three hours of sleep we'd had the night before. We remained troopers, however, and snapped some pictures along the way in the beautiful gardens overlooking the water and the rest of Italy.

From the city center, we took a shuttle bus up to Anacapri, the locale of my first ever true Italian pizza. I will tell you that the pizza did not disappoint me, but at the same time did not impress me all that much. Of course it tasted very good, but I remained unconvinced that this pizza was any better than my Vincent's or Positano pizza back home on Long Island.

Following lunch, we took some time to wander around Anacapri. I tasted my first ever limoncello at a local shop. To be perfectly honest, I could hardly stomach the stuff. I did, however, absolutely love the lemon-flavored chocolates and candies. I actually couldn't get enough and kept popping into every shop we passed for more free samples. I even pulled a "grandpa" and filled my pockets with whatever extra wrapped lemon sucking candies I could get my hands on along the way.

Finally, several hours later, we ventured back down to the water's edge where the ferry took us back to the mainland and we returned to our hostel. Exhausted from the day and on so little sleep, our eyes were shut before our heads hit the pillows that night.

Saturday was the day that we took a bus to Positano. I was excited to visit the city that was named after my favorite pizza place back home. (What came first, the chicken or the egg?) Fortunately, the day started out unlike the day before, with a blazing sun and a pleasant breeze. We walked down the winding streets to the black-sand beach below where we set up camp for several hours. Unfortunately, in the early afternoon, the sun began to disappear behind the clouds. Brian and I decided it was a perfect time to sit inside for a nice long lunch.

We picked a random restaurant along the beachside called Chez Black. We decided that since we had not yet had the opportunity to eat most of the foods we wanted to be eating in Italy, that this was a good time to try them all at once. So, we proceeded to share a plate of pesto pasta, a breaded veal dish, and cheese pizza with mushrooms. (If you're judging me, you're just jealous.) I don't know how we got so lucky in choosing Chez Black, but from that first bite of pasta, I knew I would forevermore struggle trying to feel satisfied with anything else.

I was practically brought to tears by this pasta. Brian and I hardly looked up from our plates, except to ask each other questions like, "what will my life be after this plate is finished?" "how did I live before this pasta?" and "will I ever be able to eat again?" Eventually we learned that our reactions to this first plate of Italian pasta is normal as foreigners, and that we should not be concerned about our lives being substantially or permanently altered. Regardless, we couldn't help but sigh with relief at the fact that we still had a week of this in Italy to go.

After the long beach day, we returned to the hostel, napped and showered, and headed to dinner at Il LeoneRosso. Here I had another very good plate of spaghetti (this time with clams) and enjoyed some Italian wine. Wine in Italy is actually very good, and interestingly, many of their wineries are structured very similarly to those in certain regions of France. That said, you can call me a snob, but I'll still take French wines any day.

Sunday morning, we checked out of the hostel and took a bus ride to Pompeii. I had always heard this was a great place to visit, but I wasn't exactly sure what to anticipate. As it turns out, Pompeii is amazing. We saw ruins of a city that to me seemed advanced beyond it's time. We got to walk through a brothel and learned quickly that the people living in Pompeii had a good sense of business. The hard stone beds would not be covered with anything that would render them more comfortable. The logic behind this was that the pain induced by this would influence the clients and workers to "get the job done faster" so as to have the time to invite in more customers and more money. We also saw some incredible artifacts, like old pots and other similar objects that remained preserved. Most disturbing were the humans' and dogs' bodies that were frozen in time, distorted as they tried to escape after the volcanic eruption. They had been excavated and preserved in plaster, but we could still see detailed facial expressions and the like.

We returned to the bus, which would be taking us directly to our next spring break Italy location. This marked the end of an activity-packed but very fun-filled few days in the Amalfi Coast.

Next up: Firenze!