Italy really is a beautiful country. I’ve spent the past several days seeing some of Rome’s and Cinque Terre’s most amazing sights, eating delicious food, and drinking cheap (but good) house wine; at the moment, I’m rolling through the Italian countryside, enjoying the view of the ocean and the handsome guy across the aisle… maybe I’m getting distracted. The point is, this country is turning out to be all I expected it to be, and more.

But before I get to Italy, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tidy up the loose ends I left in Greece. When I last wrote, I was ferrying back to Athens from the Greek Isles in one of the colossal ferries/floating malls that troll the Aegean. Unlike some of the earlier ferries I’d taken, this one was a slow, mammoth of a boat big enough to house a multi-level parking garage, a shopping mall, a food court, and an endless stretch of seats. A good opportunity to do a little writing =).

I got back to Athens, took the metro toward downtown, and went out for dinner. After uploading the new post and photos, it was off to bed. And by 8am the next morning I was rolling away on a cushy tour bus toward Meteora and northern Greece. Our tour guide was a tall, muscle-y woman named Sarah who felt it was her responsibility to talk to us at almost every single moment. It was charming for the first 15 minutes, but quickly got tiresome. Granted, this was a conventional tour, where its commonplace to get lots of info thrown at you constantly. I’ve just gotten accustomed to touring around unassisted, and this information overload (everything from “this is Phebes, it has 30,000 inhabitants; this is Marathon, it has…” to “let me tell you the story of each of the Greek Gods”) was just too much for me in my sleep-deprived state. I listened for a while, but then started blasting some Britney Spears through my headphones to drown it all out. I was happy enough to just watch the Greek countryside roll by.

I did learn a couple things from the tour guide, which were also readily apparent from the view out the window. Greece is 72% mountains; the rest are plains and the sea. We spent a good amount of time winding up and down the sides of mountains, only to finally level out on some expansive land-locked fields for about 15 minutes of straight, flat driving. The plains themselves looked an awful lot like central California; flat expanses of various crops or fruit trees, dotted and striped with highways, farm houses, gas stations, and 10-wheel trucks.

While we were stopped at a gas station, a handful of tourists started snapping away pictures of the flat expanse. Another American and I looked at each other and shrugged. “Looks like home”, I said. We both had a good laugh.

What definitely didn’t look like home, however, were the two featured stops of the tour. By lunch time we’d reached Delphi (pronounced “del-FEE”, as Sarah was sure to tell us about 27 times), a site that the ancient Greeks believed to be the center of the universe. We got a first-hand look at the ruins of the great temple that once stood at the very center of it all, the stadium, and the gymnasium high up on the hill. According to legend, Delphi also housed an Oracle who could predict the future. According to Sarah, the Oracle was a woman (well, a series of women over the years) who got high on geothermal fumes and bay leaves, blathered, and had special interpreters to translate her words into prophecies. No single Oracle lived very long; a life of being constantly high takes its toll.

After our walk through Delphi, I took a time out to change tour buses; Sarah’s bus was only a one-day tour to Delphi, and those of us on the two-day tour to Meteora had to transfer. The handful of us loaded up onto the new bus, and set off without time for a proper lunch. I got a bit antsy/hungry, but survived on almond bars until we reached a food stop around 4pm.

That night at the hotel in Kalampaka (the closest town to Meteora), I got to know a family of fellow Americans on the same tour. The parents, Anna and Pete, have moved around quite a bit but currently live in Tennessee; along with them were their two school-age kids, Rebecca and Gavin, and Pete’s father Earl. We had a great time chatting over the complementary buffet dinner, and trading stories about everywhere from Greece to Tennessee and India. Anna and Pete asked if I wanted to get a drink with them after dinner, but given that my stomach was still recovering from the food poisoning, I passed. We were in for yet another early wake-up the next morning, so I went straight to bed.

The group reconvened at breakfast, loaded up the bus, and headed for Meteora. I’d been looking forward to this for quite a while; Meteora consists of a series of monasteries and nunneries, perched on top of colossal rock pillars jutting straight out of the ground. Apparently, thousands of years ago when the central plains of Greece were lakes, the water eroded these soft rocks into their current forms. More recently, monks decided that for whatever reason (most likely to get some privacy, I’d imagine) this was a good place to settle. Of course, now that Meteora is a major tourist attraction, the monks and nuns don’t get much in the way of privacy after all.

The sight of these quaint little monasteries, perched precariously on towers of rock, made the long bus ride to northern Greece worthwhile. After a few “Kodak moment” photo pit-stops, we had a chance to tour around one of the monasteries and one of the nunneries. We had about an hour at each place to enjoy the ornate (albeit more recently re-painted) churches, and the sigh-provoking views.

By noon, it was time to start the long return journey to Athens. We had a brief stop for lunch at a greasy road-side buffet, but otherwise drove continuously through the afternoon. Once I was back in Athens, I found my way back to the same old hotel (now my third separate stay there), grabbed dinner, and slept.

The pace of the trip wasn’t allowing for much sleep, and I was really starting to feel it. By noon the next day, I’d already flown to Rome and was sitting on a coach bus headed for town. Exhausted, I checked in and started sleepily wandering around in search of lunch. Italy, unlike Greece, was a new challenge when it comes to food. Given my intolerance to gluten (a.k.a. bread, pasta, pizza) and dairy (a.k.a. everything else Italian), my options on most menus are limited. My first attempt at lunch was at a café near the metro station, where the older Italian cashier spoke no English and I struggled to communicate my allergies. I eventually ordered a chicken dish, which the waiter told me moments after my first bite, had flour-based gravy. Oops. He took it back and offered me a Carpaccio instead – a bad idea for my still-recovering gut. I ended up eating a little plate of spinach, and getting some of my money back. I wandered off again, still hungry.

I did eventually find a restaurant that understood my problem, and had a perfectly safe chicken dish for me to eat. But by the time I’d finished lunch, it was already 4pm; I opted to spend the rest of the day in a supermarket, searching for gluten-free products (I bought some rice crackers and peanut butter), and at a local internet café browsing the web for gluten-free options in Rome.

I have to preface what happened next with a little back story. About a week earlier, I’d gotten an email from a friend of mine, Haruki Oh. Haruki and I met last fall, when we were both TAs for an Introduction to Databases class at Stanford. Way back then, I’d told Haruki about my summer internship at Google in Sydney – how much I loved it, and how highly I recommended it. Haruki took the recommendation to heart, and made a similar arrangement with Google to work in Krakow, Poland during this summer. When he wrote to me, he told me that he had a few free weeks before his work started, and was wondering if he might tag along with me in Italy and Switzerland. Absolutely! His plans weren’t immediately certain – there were various complications with his Polish work visa – but when I was in Kalampaka, I got an email confirming that, indeed, in only two days time he’d be flying into Rome. And sure enough, on the evening of my first night there, Haruki and I met up at his hotel (conveniently down the street from mine). How great to see him! It was the first time I’d seen someone from back home (excluding via Skype) in over two months.

We opted not to meet up again until noon the next day; this gave me a good 13 hours of time in bed, which I desperately needed. When we did finally meet up, the two of us set out for a restaurant I’d researched online the previous day: one that’s known for having a number of gluten-free options. And sure enough, within an hour, Haruki and I were sitting in a charming street-side café eating pasta.

This was the start of perhaps my favorite day thus-far on my entire world-wide trip. There I was, eating gluten-free penne and a delicious antipasto spread (olives, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, tuna-stuffed tomatoes…), and having a great chat with a familiar face from back home. Unlike myself, Haruki lives to eat (whereas I usually eat to live); his love for food and wine has rubbed off on me, and starting with that meal, the two of us have been eating well and with plenty. I heard all about his woes with his Polish visa over lunch, and I filled him in on some of my stories from the past two months of travel. We took our time with lunch, and enjoyed the moment. It felt like I’d taken a vacation from my vacation!

After lunch, we started walking toward central Rome and saw some sights literally took my breath away. Our first stop was the Trevi Fountain, which we came across purely by chance. What a great surprise to stumble upon one of the most famous and magnificent fountains in existence! Afterward, we popped into a church that happened to be on our way to the Pantheon. This somewhat random church (the Chisea di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola) was captivating. It was my first time inside an Italian church, and I was more than impressed. The colors of the frescoes were so vibrant, and so beautiful. That, combined with the classic sculpting of the columns and the figures, left me speechless. I’d seen similar churches in pictures, but there’s no substitute for actually walking into one and staring slack-jawed at the ceiling.

After only another few minutes of walking, we arrived at the Pantheon; being yet another one of the structures I’d studied in my History of Architecture class, I was thrilled to actually see it in real life.

What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was how special the experience inside the Pantheon would be. It was a crisp sunny day and the light streaming through the giant oculus was like a beam coming down from heaven. There was a choir performing inside, and the sounds and sights combined to make one of those truly memorable moments. I can still hear the song they were singing in my head, even now. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face; I could have sat there for hours. I was in love with just being there.

To be honest, after I saw the Pantheon, I felt like I’d seen enough for the day. It wasn’t long after lunch, but I was happy and satisfied enough to last me the rest of my time in Rome. Haruki and I wandered around for a little while longer, stopping for some gelato (the fruit flavors were dairy-free – lucky me!) and resting outside the French embassy. We temporarily parted ways – Haruki went shopping for a few things, while I went and got a haircut – and reconvened later for dinner. I capped off the day with some delicious swordfish and a glass of surprisingly-good house wine. In all, I went from being exhausted and frustrated the previous day to well-rested, well-fed, and all-around thrilled to be here and now in Italy. Yahoo!

The next two days had a hard act to follow, but Haruki and I continued to have a great time. The next morning we met up and took the metro toward the Vatican; after a quick lunch, we met up with a tour group and started a three-hour tour of the Vatican museums. Our tour guide, Jeannette, was a fun and entertaining Art History master’s student, originally from Orlando (hence her perfect English). When it comes to impressive statues and monuments, the Vatican takes the cake. Or really, as I later discovered, it steals the cake – many of the items in the Vatican City were stolen from other historical sites (but depending on who you ask, they were “given” to the Pope). Either way, the Vatican has become home to a good chunk of Rome’s historical treasures, including everything from statues that once lined the Coliseum, to porfera bathtubs and sarcophagi. Porfera, an incredibly hard purple marble only found in a few sites in Egypt, is one of the world’s most valuable materials. One porfera column – of which the Vatican has many – is apparently valued at 120 million Euros. Yow.

After our tour of the museums – which included the Sistine Chapel, a sight worth seeing – Haruki and I did a little self-guided walk through St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s definitely a different kind of impressive, unlike church we saw the previous day. The artwork and sculpture is certainly amazing, but what’s more amazing is the sheer size and scale of the Basilica. It’s really more daunting than anything else. When you’re walking through its immense corridors, you get the sense that yes, this really is the very center of Catholicism, in all its might. It’s one big, powerful, statement. After seeing the Basilica from the inside, we opted to do the several-hundred step climb to the top of the dome; the views from the top, as you can imagine, were priceless. Once we were back on the ground, we took a walk around St. Peter’s Square and then bid adieu to the Vatican.

By the time we re-entered Italy, it was already getting on toward dinner time. We took a quick detour to an old Italian castle on the river-front, where I promptly whacked my head against a stone archway while reading a map on my iPod. Doh! After a few minutes to recollect myself, we continued on toward a restaurant near the metro station. I ordered a grilled bass, which the waitress filleted right in front of me and then drizzled with olive oil. It was one of the most buttery, delicious fish dishes I’ve ever had. Have I mentioned that the food in Italy is consistently fantastic? It is. We paired the dinner with a bottle of wine, split between me and Haruki, which (combined with the bass) left me happy and tipsy. We managed to find our way back to the metro nonetheless, and I got back to my hotel with enough time to watch a movie on my laptop (“Baby Mama”, by Tina Fey) before bed.

Haruki and I got a slightly earlier start the next day, starting off our morning with a trip to Rome’s Termini train station so we could buy our train tickets/reservations for the upcoming days. We then had a quick lunch at the station, and took the metro to the Coliseum.

Although our original plan was to just self-guide ourselves through the Coliseum, the gigantic line wrapping out the door got us thinking otherwise. We ended up paying the extra fee to join a guided tour, which began five minutes later and went straight inside without a wait. After the difficult-to-follow tour (the guide’s English wasn’t the best, and the large group and hot sun didn’t help), we wandered around and enjoyed just how big, monumental, and old the place really is. About an hour later, we began a different tour of the Palatine (a portion of ancient Rome), which happened to be included with our tour of the Coliseum! This tour was much easier to follow – better English, more shade, easier to concentrate – and covered the section of ancient Rome that was once home to its emperors and the most rich and famous. From the impressive ruins lying about in this current-day park, you can tell the people living here 2000 years ago had money.

Once we were done with the tours, Haruki and I went to see a few of the things we’d missed over the last few days. We visited Il Vittorio, the monstrous marble building commemorating the unification of Italy into a single country, and the Bocca della Verita, a manhole cover carved with a man’s face and mouth. According to legend, if you put your hand in the mouth and tell a lie, it will bite your hand off. Apparently priests used to put scorpions inside the mouth hole, to keep the legend alive…

Hunger started to catch up with us, so we took the metro out to the Piazza della Repubblica and ate dinner. After another bottle of wine, we managed to find the bus stop and rode on home.

After three fantastic full days in Rome, our time was up. We packed up and rolled to Termini station the next morning, ate a quick lunch, and caught the train to La Spezia. By 4:30pm, we’d arrived in the picturesque Monterosso al Mare on the Italian Riviera, one of the five towns of the Cinque Terre.

Although the weather in Cinque Terre has been a bit cloudy and cool, it hasn’t detracted from the charm and tranquil of the little towns. None of the five towns are very big – in fact, Monterosso is the largest and still only has one drivable road. The rest, much like the Greek Isles, is a twisting maze of cobbled alleyways lined with shops and restaurants. My room here is literally a closet: it’s barely big enough for a bed, my bags, and the sink in the corner. I share a bathroom with the one other single room (closet) sitting in the courtyard behind this woman’s house. It all fits with the overall flavor of the region: homey, semi-rural, and adorable.

Once we’d settled in, Haruki and I met up on the main road of town and sought out dinner. Some advance research led us to the one restaurant in town that had a gluten-free menu, much to my delight. I ordered pasta, we shared a bottle of local wine, and had an all-around great evening. I even got drunk and adventurous enough to try some shellfish – normally a no-no for me, given that I keep somewhat kosher – but I figured that in this setting, right by the sea, this was the time and place to try it. Sound at all like my reasoning for going skydiving in New Zealand? During the meal I tried shrimp, squid, and something else I can’t remember… it had tentacles, but wasn’t an octopus. Shrimp was surprisingly good, but I could have done without the other two… their taste didn’t make up for their texture, as far as I’m concerned.

Today, Haruki and I had our one full day to enjoy what Cinque Terre has to offer. It was still a bit too cloudy to justify a beach day, so we decided to do a bit of the hike between the towns. In order from south to north, they are: Riomaggiore, Manarolo, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. Starting late in the morning, we took the train to Corniglia and ate lunch. Unlike the other four towns, Corniglia is high up on a cliff; the wind-battered walls made it look like something out of a storybook about an old Italian farming villa. I kept hoping to see an old lady hanging her laundry off some high-up balcony, but alas, the town was a bit too touristy for that to be a reality. With a fresh Mediterranean salad in my belly, we set off by foot toward Vernazza; the hike took a little over an hour. Vernazza is perhaps the most classically beautiful of the towns, with a sea-side castle and a prominent yellow/beige church tower. Haruki and I got gelato, and I was thrilled to discover that this particular place had a dairy-free dark chocolate flavor – needless to say, I ordered a double serving. We finished up the day with the more mountainous trek back to Monterosso, which left us a bit tired but satisfied. The views throughout both of these hikes were beautiful, and actually reminded me quite a bit of the California coast. Like Greece, the Mediterranean climate is very similar to northern California; there were a few moments on the trail where I forgot where I really was.

Back in Monterosso, Haruki and I parted ways for a few hours and then rejoined for dinner. Now I’m back in my little room, typing up this note and throwing pictures up on Facebook as quickly as my weak wifi connection will permit. Tomorrow we’ll pack up once again and head for Florence, with a pit-stop in Pisa to see its famous leaning tower.

So, to wrap up, I’m having a fantastic time. Food, wine, fun, what could be better? =)

I’ll close with my usual list:

• At long last, I’ve re-entered the world of drinkable tap water. Oddly enough, however, most Italians prefer the taste of bottled water (especially sparkling) and drink it almost exclusively. This leads to the unfortunate misconception among tourists that the tap water actually isn’t safe, since the locals avoid it!
• Greece and Italy come with very different personalities. The Greeks are a bit more laid-back, but aren’t afraid to yell if it becomes necessary (as I learned first-hand). Italians, on the other hand, will yell and accost you right from the get-go; but when they do, it’s almost always more light-hearted. When the Greeks yell, they’re a bit peeved; when the Italians yell, they’re being friendly. Italian guys really like to jockey with each other, with lots of playful shoves. Their persona is bigger and louder, full of bravado and happiness. Life is good, and they know it.
• Food prices in Italy are the highest I’ve seen during two months of travel. A lunch for under $15 US is hard to come by; for dinner, expect at least $25. Given the way Haruki and I have been eating and drinking, however, the total almost always comes out to more than that. But to be honest, the price tag is softened by the great taste and the good fun we’re having. It’s worth it.
• Everyone in Italy knows about Celiac disease (a.k.a. gluten intolerance). It’s considered a first-class medical condition, probably since their diet revolves so heavily around wheat, and all children are tested for Celiac at an early age. As a result, I’ve learned that by telling any waiter “Io sono Celiaco” (I am a Celiac), I immediately get the message across. Add in an “e non mangio latticine” (and I don’t eat dairy), and I’m set.
• Although you don’t see gluten-free products in Italian supermarkets, you do find them in the Pharmacies. Since it’s regarded as a true medical condition, most pharmacies have a selection of gluten-free breads, bars, and cookies. I even found one pharmacy in central Rome that sells little gluten-free dairy-free chocolate pies! I bought a pack of six.

Ciao!
-Izaak