Hello again! Now that I have written all my posts about my cruise vacation visiting Croatia, Turkey, and Greece, it is time for me to talk about the week before the cruise trip, with my time in Italy. I have had great difficulty on how I will be structuring these Italy blog posts. I will have dedicated posts on certain places (such as the Amalfi Coast, Capri, etc.) as well as certain attractions (such as the Colosseum, Vatican City, etc.). The problem I am having is how I want to talk about my general thoughts about the country. Should I have a dedicated post just for this? Should I sprinkle these thoughts within all the other Italy posts? There is no true answer for me.
I will use this post to talk about my first day in Italy, which was quite travel heavy. This will be a preview post to the rest of the Italy blog posts, and maybe I can discuss things such as the public transit system and general safety in the country.
Our flight from hell left Toronto and landed in Leonardo da Vinci airport just outside of Rome. After retrieving our luggage, we had to take the airport shuttle (called the Leonardo Express) to Rome Termini train station, which is the central and biggest train station in the country. This shuttle runs approximately every 15 mins and is probably the easiest way to get to the center of Rome from the airport. The train itself had plenty of room for our luggage and was a quick 30 to 40-minute ride to Rome Termini.
We reached Rome Termini and we had a couple of hours to kill before we had to get out next train to Naples, so we used this time to get something to eat and relax a little bit. Rome Termini felt like quite a large train station (with my only comparison being Toronto's Union Station), and it was quite busy as well. I had to keep my guard up around my luggage and valuables as petty crimes are common here.
Considering my whole Italy trip, I felt completely safe walking around most cities (even at night), but I felt considerably less safe in public transit areas such as train and metro stations. I always had to keep my head on a swivel and be suspicious of everyone around me as pickpocketing and other petty crimes are as common as eating a bowl of pasta in this country. Obviously, exercise caution wherever you go.
For most of our transit between cities, we used the Italo high-speed trains. Italo is a private train company rivaling Trenitalia, which is the national train service provider in Italy. Our fares were in Prima class (first class) with amenities such as drink/snack service at your seat. The high-speed trains could reach as fast as 300 km/h. From using Italy's public train service, I was thoroughly impressed with the timeliness of the departures/arrivals of our trains, as well as the cleanliness of each train. Italo/Trenitalia felt like much better train providers than using GO Transit or VIA Rail in Canada.
Our Italo train went from Rome to Naples in basically no time flat (about an hour) because our train was flying down the Italian countryside at an unbelievable speed. The Italian countryside was beautiful with rolling hills, farms, and vineyards dotting the way to the south of Italy. We arrived in Naples where a taxi was waiting for us to take us to our hotel in Sorrento. I wish I had more time to check out Naples, but my itinerary did not allow for it.
Much of our drive to Sorrento was scenic, as we had the Gulf of Naples on the right side of us. Our taxi driver even let us stop off on the side so we can take pictures of the landscape. It was this moment where I realized that I was in Europe for the first time; somewhere I have once only dreamed of going, and now here I was. There was also the usual highway driving and driving through long tunnels carved through the hills.
We reached the town of Sorrento where we will stay for the next few nights. I will dedicate a specific post to Sorrento in general where I talk about the food and general vibe of the town. This was how most of the first day of Italy went for me, and there will be much more to talk about in the upcoming Italy blog posts.
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