All Roads Lead to Rome

They say that "all roads lead to Rome," and on any given road trip throughout Italy, I'd have to agree with Roma signs pointing in various directions. I'm convince that there is more to the saying, and they left out the part about "...but some will take a lot longer." A lot longer.

Why? Well, various of reasons: the distance of the road, weather conditions, paved vs unpaved roads, traffic patterns, the speed of the driver, the mode of transportation, etc. Oh one more little one- if your co-pilot when so kindly already fighting the borrowed GPS unit for you inadvertently tells it to avoid toll roads.

Now, yes. I should have trusted my gut and proceeded on the tang as I always do, but hey, if the technology is nothing short of calling you an idiot for thinking about going any other direction? You do your best to put aside your control freak nature and listen.

Even when you realize you're headed to the port city of your least favorite ship ever that causes more headaches for you than Tylenol has pills.

Even when you keep seeing signs to the road you know you should be on.

Yes, even when you start to follow the signs you know you want through ity bitty towns.

Sigh. It's about the journey- right? This journey was beautiful through the green mountains on a rainy day, but sometimes you want to just reach the destination already! Needless to say, we finally reached our destination (a train station in Rome) to ride the rail into the city for our whirlwind tour of the Vatican, St. Peter's, the Spanish Steps, Roman Forum, and Coleseum. As I saw many of these places for a second, third, even fourth time I realized I had never really posted pictures or blogged on them. Oops. Guess it's time to do that? Domani. Dopo domani.

100% Real

Over the summer one of my coworkers picked up this really annoying saying that he felt the need to bring back it Italy with him:

Hey, I've got a question. (Long pause) Are you for real?

As annoying as it is to be asked multiple times  a week if "I'm real" or not when I speak words that he often doesn't want to hear, I've found myself asking myself on multiple occasions if this life of mine is real. The funny part about it, I know it is. This is my life and it's all REAL.

Well, today was another "is this really my life" sort of days. It started off by me actually watching the sunrise in my bed (nope, still woke up at 0400 but refused to get up). Ask anyone who has actually be on my patio, the pictures have nothing on the real deal of my view. Over 365 days of watching the sunrise, I'm still caught in awe in the mornings on just how fabulous the sky lights up; especially those mornings when I can watch the stars fade. Totally worth being a minute or two late for work!

Next stop I was headed to the main train station with the Minions' mom to get her back to the minions. As I chose to ignore the GPS for the signs, and then went back to listening to the GPS I realized that I have some trust issues. Well...maybe more like control issues? Seriously. How many times I have written about me and the latest battle with my GPS? Luckily I wasn't solo during this adventure, but with the time crunch to get her to the station in time for the train....we may have flown through Chinatown. Like I told her...I only have one speed here in Italy. It's a tad slow for the autostrade, but in towns it's just fine. Yes. She made it and when I listened to the GPS on the way out, I even recognized where I was. I mean, prision in the middle of town is my landmark for SHOE ALLEY.  But that's tomorrow's adventure.

The final destination of the day was the Cuma ruins. A place I've been wanting to go for about 6 months but due to crummy weather or sheer laziness on the weekends it hasn't happened. For a while we even talked about going after work over the summer, but never made it. But that's okay, because we made it today and couldn't have planned a better fall day to go check out this part of my backyard.

Literally. I drive by this ancient city every day on my way to work. (Pretty cool that I can say that- right?) At any rate, we finally showed up and conquered the city. It was rather amazing to see all that was back there- tunnels, towers, steps all holding the history of this area from a long (long) time ago. Even while playing "use your imagination" to recreate the temples and towers that once stood tall, covered in marble and other stone where only rubble now exists.

As far as the history of the city and everyone who lived/built there is still lost on me and I'll probably pay more attention next time around. Yep. Next time around. With admission being so cheap and giving you enterance to other monuments and ruins in my area of the peninusula, I think I found my new "time to get away and think" place. It's for sure made it to my "we've gotta go check this place out when you're in town" list.

Shopping, Hiking, Unpacking

I can't believe I've spent another Saturday in Italy! In fact, when chatting with Joe today I realized that between the move, trips, & having so much fun I've lost track of the time. I arrived in Italy on 26 May, stayed in TLA for 90 nights, and then have been at my (freaking huge) house for 3 weeks..so how long have I been here? Eh, I've got the majority of my 3 years to still have fun with but that's only if I get this unpacking done.

After a later night of unpacking than planned, my Saturday kicked off with coffee. I then migrated to get Signore Joe before hitting up the Bacoli market. We very much went the back way/scenic route but that was good since I'm still trying to convince him he wants to be a little further south than in the areas he's been looking at. (There's got to be a closer villa that will be perfecto for the family but also close enough for me to hijack their pup for running.) We left Ravi at the same place I used before and even got to take my car keys with me this time. AND I even got the gist of what the guy was telling me.

The market had even more vendors than the previous time I hit it- amazing what the difference in weather will make. I tried my best with new acquired Italian skills but I think they still caught on that I speak english since they would reply when they could in english. The one vendor who sold me the lettuce was super nice though. He just may be my new produce guy. We left the market  with nectarines, lettuce, tomatoes, mozzarella, olives, garlic and onions. I made the mistake of acknowledging the old lady with her shopping cart of onions, garlic, and oregano and despite the "no grazie" she sold us enough garlic to last through the year. (Seriously, my kitchen smells of garlic but at least I'm safe from vampires!) Now I just need that cilantro to grow another foot or so so I can finally make the salsa I crave!

The next stop on Katie's Round About Tour was Carney Park, but heaven forbid we went straight there. No ne possible. The round-abouts from this direction still confuses me a tad so we ended up seeing Solfatara (aka the stinky sulfur volcano) but the views are amazing from that mountain so again, just taking the scenic route. (Seriously though, that was strike 2 on taking the wrong turn off so I only get one more mess up before I have to learn it/actually look at the GPS while driving.) Eh, my coworker Scott wasn't meeting us anymore so we were in no hurry to get there. Don't worry- we did finally make it. Honest!

For this round of hiking at Carney we went up the ridge where I came down last time and wrapped around away from Pozzoli Bay, towards a monastery (with monks!) with the plan to continue along the ridge so I finally could say I hiked the entire crater. Hey, it was just a plan. After trail blazing from the 500 (?) year old house to the monastery and all the effort it took to continually being able to jump when a lizard ranging from tiny to enormous ran out of our way causing a ton of noise in the dried leaves, we were too tired to follow an unmarked road that we weren't sure if it would take us to where we wanted to be. (Let me clarify- I was doing the jumping, not Joe.) Unwilling to backtrack the way we headed up, we followed the other path which was wonderfully downhill and fairly lizard free. Yep. Too good of a path and we found ourselves in the driveway of the houses you can see from inside the park. Ha. They have a great vineyard up there and it was pretty...unfortunately it meant we had picked the wrong path and it was time for an about face. On the way back we took a turn off that Joe had seen and I still swear it just looped us around. As we started to discuss if we'd been on this stretch of trail or not we compared our foot prints to others on the trail. Um yeah. We'd been there before...but not sure when. I think we did find the real trail that we ditched for our climbing over rocks and going through the brush. (My legs have seen better days.) Clearly we made it and since it was a "do whatever day" we were in no hurry but by this point the sun was hot and although we looked tanner, it really was the volcanic ash and other grime coating our arms, legs, shoes, eh, pretty much our entire bodies. (Seriously- my hair even felt grimy.)

After snacking on our market buys Joe and Signore enjoyed the cross breeze upstairs while I worked on a box of things I realized should have already been put away. By the time my room was box free and I headed back upstairs, Joe had solved my hot water heater mystery of the E10 error. Turns out the water pressure was low and although I had almost solved it on my own the night before I didn't but it just goes to show that I really could be an engineer- right? (Possibly more on that idea to come later this week...) At any rate, with a few less boxes and hot water again we headed out to try the place I live above. We were side tracked though by an event happening in the adjacent piazza. Although we're still not sure what exactly everything was, we knew it was part of the patron saint of Naples holiday occurring on Monday. We watched some little kids play soccer (why aren't they on my team?) and then headed back over to place our pizza orders. As we were walking in a pack of boys (probably around age 12) walked in. When the owner realized we weren't sure if we were staying or taking it out he went over and told all the boys to be quiet. Amazing right? Apparently a soccer match was about to begin so they were excited about that. The owner wasn't thrilled since he couldn't hear the phone, let alone take orders. He was really nice (English speaking) and the pizza was some of the better tasting ones I've had recently. Um yeah, since Joe arrived I've had my fair share (or more) of pizza. And since it was on the menu I had to order it- pizza con Nutella! It wasn't wrapped like last time, but more like Woodstock's dessert but just as yummy. To think, Joe was just asking what someone does with a 5lb container of Nutella.

My night ended when I came home from taking Joe back, had Signore in my arms only to hear fireworks starting and seeing flashes of light practically coming from my living room. I'm not sure why I wasn't thinking "oh event in the piazza, of course there will be fireworks...this is Italy after all", but I wasn't. Signore wasn't either based on his flying out of my arms and hiding until they were over. When I was on my balcony the fireworks were practically over my house- it was amazing. Way better than the 4th of July celebration ones and probably a longer show too. I recorded some of them because I just love them. I guess it goes back to all of those foggy 4th of Julys growing up in Monterey. At any rate I'm looking into where I can purchase some of these beautiful things and just how often rules are enforced. I'm thinking not all that much as pretty much every night I either hear or see some.

Running on Fumes

You know how sometimes when you wake up in the morning you catch yourself mapping out your day? Well somewhere in between finding the snooze on my alarm and realizing that Signore (Still Needs A Name) doesn't have a snooze button I realized that today's list was a tad longer than normal. Granted I'm juggling the new commute, kitten ownership, and still figuring the house out but my mornings (well, late night for some of you) are just the warm up for what seems like an ultra marathon...the kind where you have to keep running them on back to back days.

Needless to say that today was no different, but the fact that I don't go into work tomorrow & Signore Giuseppe (formerly known as Ed in Monterey) arrived I somehow made it through the normal gym, work, class, and traffic. Well, more on the driving later.

I'm happy to report that I have another friend to hang out with now, although I'm not sure if he's going to be my friend next week after he helps out with the move in tomorrow and the fact that I registered him for a total of running 22K (it could have been 27) this weekend. I'm also happy to report that the "new back route" from Capo to Lago Patria wasn't nearly as stressful as I thought it would be & I found my first two destinations without a problem. Dinner was yummy and it was almost like we were back in my Bullard office wasting time taking a break. Turns out he knows my N7 coworker so my Navy circle just merged again (2nd time this week).

Feeling guilty that I'd left Signore alone for way over 12 hours and the fact that I was getting sleepy after our Italian dinner (aka not eating until after 8) I headed home.

Or so I thought.

Despite clearing the first hurdle in avoiding the scary back road that apparently I should not be driving at night since it's so dark  & narrow I missed my turn to head in the direction I needed to. I was headed towards the Navy Lodge. Go figure. Apparently after 90 days your internal compass realigns? Since this is Italy and it's NEVER as easy as getting off at the next exit and turning around, I let the GPS recalculate. I had a feeling that I was going to end up on the road I was trying to avoid and after getting there via a different route than before (I saw some town I don't think I've driven through before) I ended up on said road. I guess it's all my late night driving on HWY68, Reservation Road, and Carmel Valley Road but this road doesn't really bother me. Granted, it's barely a 2 lane road and the shoulders are overgrown with bamboo and/or mini trash heaps and it's pretty dark...and bumpy, but I find it sort of entertaining to see just how I'll get to my house. *Parent Unit- if you're already worried about me driving on this road, please skip to next paragraph* I think the part that puts me on edge is I always seem to find myself in uncharted territory with my gas gauge is below 1/4 tank and my cell phone has 1 bar left in the battery.

Once I was more or less somewhere I knew, I was good.

Again, so I thought. Finally reaching my driveway at 11pm I clicked the clicker to open the gate. And then tried again. And again. Despite multiple attempts I couldn't get the gate to open, so I had to park  in the piazza and walk around. Luckily there is a pedestrian door in the gate so I could get in and try to figure the issue out. Well I guess between my heels up the stairs, the wind slamming the door shut, my phone ringing really loud or maybe it was just a crying kitty when he saw me walk back out the door, my neighbor (the old man) came out. I was able to show him that the clicker wasn't working. He grabbed another one but then slammed mine on the tile which apparently solved the problem. After motioning it me to drive the car around he walked down the stairs to make sure it stayed open.

Um yeah, my car doesn't/can't make that turn so after having him hold up traffic so I could do a 30 pt turn into the driveway I was finally done with today's marathon. Actually I'm pretty sure that I was told to ring their door bell if I have any other issues. I just feel bad making all that noise and having  "technical difficulties" at 11pm. Shoot. I just want to be sleeping. Oh well, just another reason I really need to start working on the Italian. I think there is hope for me...class #3 today for sure was an improvement although I'm not sure that we can have a conversation about how my name is Katie, I'm from Monterey, I'm American, and I am an accountant. Bambino steps- I know but having a grasp on basic Italian by December is looking like a no-go.

*Sigh*

Time for my beauty sleep. Although I'm not getting up at 0400 (that's in 3 hours- are you kidding me?) I still need to get up by 0700 so I can try to get my 9 hour window down to 2-3 for my HHG delivery and maybe even get a sunrise walk in around MdP since I can. Also, I was told about a fresh pasta place today that I just may need to check out. Hey, despite being told that I'm "going native" tonight I know I have a long way to go but it's good to know that after a mere 100-something days progress can be identified.

1 week ago I was at MRY awaiting my plane...

...well, maybe I was still running around the house and my parents were forcing encouraging me to eat some of the tofu dishes they picked up from our favorite Chinese place before dashing off to catch a flight. Funny how it seems like so long ago and a world away but at the same time it's one of those memories that seems so recent.

At any rate, I'll focus tomorrow's post on what I've learned in this past week since technically I arrived Saturday night. Tonight I want to talk about my first Friday in Naples!

This morning I started orientation. I have also decided that this whole experience shadows Cal Poly's WOW (Week of Welcome for you non CalPoly folks). Rather than being a wowie though I'm a newbie, but just like WOW there are a whole lot of other people going through this process with you. My hotel room feels like a dorm room. I have to walk over to the food court (or the restaurant or market) to get meals. I rely on others for rides and/or the shuttle. The forms for processing the various things are just as long. Today I applied for my Italian SSN equivalent, filled out the paperwork for my driver's license, and filled out a housing request. Exciting? Maybe not, but you didn't have to sit through all the lectures so consider yourself lucky. Oh and should you write me a letter PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not write Italy in the address...it screws everything up.

The fun stuff- I finally went exploring! After a short bus trip over to Capo I finally saw Jessica! Yay. After a quick discussion, we decided to head to Casertavecchia as it had been recommended to her. Keep in mind this was 5 o'clock on an Italian holiday (or perhaps a day of rest after the real holiday) so we didn't know what we'd find up there but did know we wouldn't find a place to serve us dinner for several hours so we put ourselves at the mercy of the GPS and headed north. Well, I think it was north.

After some creative driving by both Jessica and other Italians, several narrow roads, and lots of mountain driving complete with switchbacks, we realized we'd climbed rather high. How high? High enough to get this view:

The picture doesn't even give you the first idea of how amazing it really was. Trust me. We pulled over on the side of the road, then crossed it to take these pictures. Crazy? Maybe but we're trend setters- another car did the same thing!

We finally made it down a road and parked the car and got out to find this castle. Jessica was cracking up about my shoes, but seriously....I'm in Italy so I need to be sporting the shoes. Cobble stone paths? No big deal for my Nine West peep toed shoes. I figure after being one of my few pairs with me at this point they will be retired by the end of the summer, so they may as well sight see while they can. On top of the hill we found a chapel and so many amazing windows. Yep, my official windows of Italy folder has been started in iPhoto. We walked around the streets, up and down for a while. Soon I was able to figure out where we were by the cats in one street, dogs in the other, and old men sitting along one. So my landmarks moved some but we had no issues navigating. Finally after 7 we both needed something to eat, but nowhere was open. Nowhere but the dessert bar. Coffee and pastry before dinner? Yes please.

After being caffeinated and feeling accomplished that we interacted with the cafe owners without any English (well, we used it but they didn't- yay for Italian phrase books), Jessica took on her biggest task of the day up to this point- turning her mini SUV (think CRVish size) in the right direction back down the hill. Added challenge? It was a manual. A little patience was all it took but within minutes we were headed back down the hill as the sky turned pink from the sun beginning to sink into the clouds.

Next stop- Pozzuoli! Sound familiar? Yep. I did talk about it earlier this week from when I first looked at apartments. We took a new route to the town, through Naples. Did you know there are high rise buildings here? There are! I've seen them with my own 2 eyes. The tunnels through the hills were rather entertaining getting there too. At about the same time, Jess and I looked at each other and said how it looked like a video game...Mario Kart to be exact. You know that level right where I think it's called Tokyo something? Bombs, motorcycles, crazy driving in a tunnel? No bombs and traffic wasn't too bad by there were a few bikes with helmet-less drivers flying by.

Pozzuoli looked a lot different at night. After parking the car and paying a few Euros to a young kid to "watch it" we headed down the pathway to hear "scusi" and turn back around. Somehow side lights were on but we couldn't figure out how they turned off. Again after a few minutes of car charades, we decided to leave it, although AAA couldn't have jumped the car if the battery was dead and come to think of it I canceled my roadside membership earlier this week.

The downtown area wasn't too crowded yet but way more people that downtown Monterey! Best part? I didn't go to high school with any of these people and I definitely didn't see anyone I recognized from work. So, so, so many new people. Dinner was yummy- pizza Friday of course! We also braved a caprese salad that had fabulous mozzarella and provolone cheese. Also, I tried a fresh green olive and discovered that I like them that way!  Yummy fresh food shared with a friend is always the best. We had some great table conversation too. I think the illustrations below are from my favorite topic...any idea what we were talking about?

After dinner we walked around a little more and I was in shock of just how many more had flocked to the downtown area for dinner. It was now 11pm and people were still just showing up. For supposedly being the place for younger, single, Americans I sure saw a lot of early 20 Italians. I also saw some beautiful shoes and one pair of hideous plaid pants on a guy. Our last planned stop for the evening was gelato. I figured it only appropriate that the first flavor tried was coffee. So happy on my choice. We took our gelato filled cones and sat out on benches by the water and watched more cars pour in and park. I think we saw one car get "tapped" over 4 times while a Smart car backed out and another much larger car moved in. It was very entertaining watching the cars being parked but also nerve wracking. Oh well, I'm going to tackle one thing at a time and since Ravi won't be here for weeks, driving will be addressed at that time.

Finally we headed back to the car. The same kid (I really wish I remembered his name) I think was explaining to us how the lights that were now off were used to find things on the ground? The world may never know what he was really saying...well any Italian speaker would but we won't. He started to talk to us and when he found out Jessica was from New York started asking about sharks and dolphins. More charades and trying to guess what he was saying in Italian. It was fun and he was really interested about if we'd ever seen sharks.

Were our adventures done yet? No. Why would we call it a night at midnight? Our last adventure involves the GPS unit, me not knowing an address, and lots of closed gas stations. The objective was to get back to the support site and sometime in that process top off the rental car's gasoline. Long story short (because I'm getting sleepy) we picked the town name near where I'm staying but kept letting it "recalculate" every time we'd try to get gasoline at a closed place. Gas stations are off to the side of the roads here...kinda of like rest stops back at home...where you exit then just get back on but without ever being able to actually get off the freeway.

Turns out that the gas stations on the side of the road we were one were closed, but the ones on the other side appeared to be open. Some how during the course of this (well, maybe the way we were being routed) things started to look anything but familiar. We weren't too concerned since we were purposely ignoring some directions in hope of finding a gasoline place. When Ms. TomTom said we were at the destination and we were in the middle of town/a place I'd never been before I really wanted to know where "my home" was. After a loop I started to look for my contact info to see if we could get a real location of the base. Realizing it probably wasn't the best idea to pull over, Jessica started to follow the signs for "US Navy." I still wish I recorded some of this adventure but I have a feeling I'll be doing the same thing when I'm behind the wheel so there will be other chances. All of a sudden I saw some of my land marks (the more permanent kinds- towers) so I knew she had found it. So happy to see it right around 1am!

In summary: Visitor #1*, Jessica, proved to be an excellent travel buddy and a great person to start doing some of this exploring with. I knew it was going to be a great visit but you never know just exactly how it's going to go...but that's what makes it fun. Thanks for a great time out and about (and lots of around too!) today. Can't wait to see you next time when I'll be speaking the Italian (well, trying to) and driving to the sketch looking karaoke place with torch and blue neon lights.