It’s Wednesday and I am taking part in Classy in Philadelphia’s Where in the World Wednesday series!
The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world…it doesn’t have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.
Three and a half years ago I took my first trip to Mainland Europe (I had been to Ireland before). My brother was backpacking his way across Europe for 9 weeks, much like my latest adventure, and he was in Italy when I came over to visit him. It was my first time staying in hostels, first time doing any sort of budget travel.
We started the trip in Sorrento, a gorgeous seaside town near Naples. I highly recommend visiting it. Located about 4 hours south of there was this place called Paestum. It has the oldest Greek ruins in Italy and we had to take the perilous bus ride out there. We went along the Amalfi Coast and while it was raining, I absolutely loved it. It was so beautiful. We had to make several bus transfers and on the last leg we met a Canadian couple who also were staying in Sorrento and ended up traveling around with us the rest of the day.
Paestum was awesome:
On the way back we ran into a bit of traffic and missed our connecting bus in Salerno. The bus we missed was the last bus to Sorrento. So there we were, 3 hours away from where we were staying and being faced with the reality that we may be sleeping in a church or on a street somewhere. Instead, we started hitch hiking.
Initially we had problems. We just couldn’t get anyone to stop for the four of us. So me and the girl, whose name escapes me right now, stood out by the road while her husband and my brother hid in a doorway. Immediately a man stops for us and before we got in, our sidekicks jumped in. Obviously he was hoping he was going to get lucky with two lonely girls but was not happy at all when he realized we weren’t alone. He drove us to Positano but refused to speak to us, even to my Italian-speaking brother.
In Positano we were faced with the reality that a) it was raining and b) there were no cars going by. We stood out in the rain for an hour and a half, taking turns dancing in the middle of the road. That picture up there is from my turn out in the road.
Here’s her husband and my brother:
My brother had to buy food since we hadn’t eaten dinner and he needed to eat every hour.
We eventually got a ride from an off-duty limo driver who was very chatty. We encountered one problem with him though: he hated Americans. Luckily, when asked where we were from, the Canadians answered first. He growled about how glad he was we weren’t Americans and all of a sudden me and my brother are all oh yeah we’re from Toronto…. I had to listen to him bash Americans for an hour and a half the whole way back. But we made it and to top off the night, we had hot chocolate.
Except its European hot chocolate which meant MELTED CHOCOLATE. So thick.
Looking back at the pictures from this trip I cannot get over how YOUNG both my brother and I look. I barely even recognize myself. Is that bad? I now also really want to go back to Italy. I had so much fun! I’m sure these aren’t the last pictures you’ll see from that trip…
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Where in the World Wednesdays: Preikestolen “Pulpit’s Rock”, Norway
[...] awesome weekly series. I’ve been a little slow to participate, but you can see the two posts I did ...
I LOVE ITALY!!!!
i really need to plan a trip back. these pictures make my heart ache.
ME TOO! I was planning on going back in march for like a month and I’m really sad I’m not going
Ah, I love it. I stayed in Sorrento for a weekend and I traveled to Positano. It was amazing, although it is SO hilly. It took forever to walk down to the beach and we were all dizzy when we got to the bottom.
Make sure you add your link to my comments so others can check yours out. Oh, and have you entered my giveaway yet?!
I wish I could have spent more time there but unfortunately it was just a drive through
Next time!
I would LOVE to go to Italy one day!
I can’t wait to visit Italy one day…it looks stunning.
It’s official, I am having TOTAL Italy envy today – why have I never made it there? My mum and my sister both went there with their schools, albeit 40 years or so apart, how come I missed out???
Well you need to remedy this ASAP! Italy is fabulous, you would love it!
Ooooh, I’m going to have to do an Italy post next week. I had already planned to do France today!
Also, people sometimes assume that I am Canadian because of my “accent.” Haha!
I find the Michigan accent is very close to the Canadian accent. They even use Eh here!
Oh amazing! I have been all over Europe but not Italy-how did that happen?! Now I really want that hot chocolate.
The hot chocolate is to die for. It’s like you melted a delish bar of european chocolate in a cup.