Simply Italy

After a delayed plane, full of annoying teenagers on a school trip, and a long luggage wait, Shereen and I got on the bus to take us from the airport to the centre of Rome. We arrived very quickly but had to take a metro to get to the regional train, and once we got to the regional train station we found out that the trains come once every half hour and we had just missed it. So after a grueling day of travel we checked in to our hotel in Rome where we were to meet up with our Contiki group the next evening.

We were very hungry so we just went close by for dinner, and while we were in the restaurant the girl sitting at the table behind us asked us if we were Australian. We said yes and asked her if she was here for the Contiki, and when she said she was we invited her to eat with us. We finished our meal together and Shereen and I were encouraged by our first interaction with someone else from the group. We had said to this girl that we were worried about the kind of people we were going to meet because we weren't the biggest party people, but she said she had done Contiki before and it wasn't as bad as people said.

The next day threw us a bit, because after having a pleasant day at the Villa Bourghese and surrounding park, we attended the welcome meeting for the tour. A couple of girls were sitting at the back of the group, completely drunk with plastic cups of wine in hand, whooping at every sentence our guide got out, all at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The group included the girl Shereen and I had had dinner with the night before, and Shereen and I really began to wonder if this was going to be our thing.

There was no planned dinner that night so Shereen and I just went out for dinner by ourselves.

The next day we hopped on the bus for our first journey together. We had a full bus. 51 tour members, our leader Vinny and Lino our driver. It was a bit of a reality check as to what bus travel was really like, after we had been spoiled on our Topdeck tour by only having 24 people which allowed us to spread out a bit.

Our first group activity was a guided tour of the ancient ruins of Pompeii. I was really excited for this, but my excitement turned to worry as it started pouring with rain and lightning started striking as we pulled up in the bus.

I was really cold as I had only worn shorts that day, but I did luckily bring my raincoat. The rain slowed to a drizzle as we set of into the ruins, and luckily the weather only got better for the hour and a half that we spent there. It was incredible to see how well everything was preserved including amazing stucco friezes and the casts of bodies buried buy the ash from Vesuvius.

Our tour guide was very good but he would walk off quickly and I ended up getting lost, as I was looking for Shereen who had gone on ahead without me realizing, so I got left behind. Luckily there were a couple of other people who had also gotten separated and we managed to find our way back to the group.

That evening we arrived in the town of Sorrento on the Amalfi coast. We settled into our rooms and had time to get changed and admire the view before heading to what Vinny enthusiastically promised to be a PIZZA PARTY!

Before dinner we were taken to a beautiful restaurant overlooking the sea where we were given free Prosecco and appetizers. When we got to the restaurant the tables were set up in groups of 10. Shereen and I didn't really know where to sit but we decided to get as far away as possible from the drunk girls from the night before. The people on the table we ended up choosing apparently had the same idea, as the first thing they said when they all sat down was "good work getting a table away from those annoying Australians". Before things got too awkward I leant down the table and said politely "um, actually, we are Australian". They started to back track but Shereen and I assured them we understood where they were coming from, we promised we were definitely the best Australians they were going to meet on the trip and that we weren't "naughty, naughty" as Vinny had labelled the other girls (which they loved).

On our table we had 2 married couples: Jess and Brian, and Megan and Jake; another American guy called Todd, a South African girl called Leisle another American girl called Christine. We had a great time that night, we really liked the American couples and Leisle, and most of the pizza was really delicious. We were invited back into the kitchen to see the pizza being made, which got a bit messy as you can see...

We all received shots of limoncello with dessert which nobody really took to except Jake.

All in all, it was a pretty good first day. Read about our day trip to the island of Capri in my next post. Xx