Napoli: Garbage Mountain and Unlucky Mt. Vesuvius

After visiting Rome, we trained down to Pizza City or Napoli (Naples to North Americans); known for its pizza, high crime rate and ongoing garbage strikes. Naples and surrounding areas have suffered garbage crises for years, the result of corruption, poor management and infiltration by the local mob (The Comorra). The European Commission warned Italy in November that it risked big fines if it fails to implement a the waste management plan, drawn up after the country was found to be in breach of EU legislation in March. On November 18, Italy passed a decree aimed at speeding up construction of new processing plants and garbage incinerators and earmarked an extra 150 million euros (204 million dollars) of funds for the Campania region with promises to clean up the streets by Christmas. Even after garbage trucks took to the streets and worked all night to make only a dent in the heeps, the problem will continue into the new year.


After hiking over garbage mountian in Naples, we felt warmed up and ready to tackle Mt. Vesuvius. To visit the still active volcano, we had many options, only we didn't want to take any of the offered tours. We had heard that it was possible to hike to the summit from the base of Mt. Vesuvius, after taking a local bus (only one or two buses run this route daily) through the village town below (there are only two public buses that run during the day in the off season). But we somehow managed to miss the later part about the bus and found ourselves hiking from the port, through the local villages and traffic for about a hour trying to find the mountain base. Thoroughly limbered up from our casual pre-moutain jaunt, we worked our way up the narrow roadways comfortably until the clouds rolled in. Then came the thunder, the lightening and golf ball-sized rain drops. Fully drenched and hours from our destination point, we we considered sticking the odd thumb out, but the thumb Gods had already heard us. A car with a family of three stopped and let us slop our wet selves into their back seat. Not only did they drive us about a kilometer up the mountain, they also extended an invitation for coffee with their friends. Sounding more like a cult gathering than a friendly cuppa joe, we decided we'd stick to our hike.


We weren't alone for very long once on foot again. A pair of stray dogs decided they'd come along for the hike. Not knowing exactly where the mountain summit was or if it was open due to the time of year, we hoped that by some stroke of luck the dogs would know where they were going. It wasn't until we finally found a fork in the road that the dogs decided to finish their guided tour. Relying on our general sense of direction, we headed the way that said "Gondola" in Italian, we found ourselves at a coffee shop where one of the suggested guided bus tour buses had stopped. The bus driver told us we had passed the entrance way back at the fork (thanks a lot stray dogs) and that the summit was closed due to the weather conditions. Fantastic! We just hiked five hours in Italian monsoons for nothing but a much needed beer, snickers and some good old excercise. The bus driver insisted that we join his tour, free of charge, back to Naples. The rain subsided on our ride back down the mountain and made for some great photo ops.

We would make a second attempt to see the summit of Mt. Vesuvius, but again, due to bad weather guided buses weren't even making the lengthy climb. If you're thinking about checking out Mt. Vesuvius, definitely call the information office first before booking any bus or any five hour hikes.

Interesting Info:
Mt. Vesuvius is a 17,000 year old volcano that is still active today. It is the only active volcano on the European mainland. It has erupted 50 times and the last eruption happened in 1944.

The Limey

Walk the Plank and Mind your Pigeons - Venice

 A visit to northern Italy would leave us singing the lines to Tragically Hip's "New Orleans is Sinking", only this time it would be Venice.

It's a fact, Venice has been slowly sinking over the past hundreds of years. The mean level of the land has lowered while the sea levels have risen. Being built on a salt marshland doesn't help much either. In has not been made certain or not whether or not the city is still currently declining, but there are still high waters (acqua alta). To help the problem the city lays out planks for visitors to keep their feet dry. That, or you can opt for buying a pair of their interestingly constructed zip-tie bag boots.

Local businesses stay fully operable during these times; buying your gelato is still possible, it just might take you a few treads to get there so you might want to brush up on your treading water skills. Patio tables and chairs may still be sitting in feets of water, but your server will still be right at your service equipped with menus and sporting thigh high fisherman's boots, even possibliy a life jacket or dingy. It's a shame the water wasn't at a safe diving level because it would have been an all too perfect time to practice some swan diving.

Flooding regularly occurs between November and March. It has become such a problem that in many old houses the former staircases used by people to unload goods are now flooded, rendering the former ground floor uninhabitable. But don't fret, there are less than 20 plumbers in the city of Venice.

St. Mark’s Square is full of tourists…and pigeons. There are an estimated 100,000 birds and roughly 60,000 human residents in Venice. This is the only place in Venice where you are allowed to feed these flying rodents. Doing so otherwise could be asking authorities to issue you a large fine. This is illegal under a decree that the Comune di Venezia issued late in 1997.

"The direct administration of food to feral pigeons 'Columba livia forma domestica' is prohibited throughout the City Council area. ... Contravention of the regulations contained in this ordinance involves an administrative sanction of 1,000,000 lire [€516.45]."

The City of Venice issues a select few with licences to sell the seeds, and these licences are handed down from one generation to the next within the same family. Locals tell tales of pigeons swooping out of the air aggressively and colliding with human heads, leaving victimes bloodies and wounded. Pigeon roosts are also harming the buildings and monuments.  To avoid city pigeons going Alfred Hitchcock on the people, Venice's mayor is looking into a similar move made by London in order to rid its city of the winged vermon. Mayor Ken Livingstone attempted to starve out thousands of tame pigeons in the Trafalgar Square area in 2000-2001, but when the rate of pigeon deaths wasn't high even to his liking, Livingstone ordered falconers to patrol the Square and use hawks to attack any pigeon that tried to feed.
Any thoughts or comments? Mayor Cacciari can be contacted at the following:

Comune di Venezia
Ca Farsetti
San Marco 4136
Venezia
Italy
sindaco@comune.venezia.it, portale@comune.venezia.it

Florence - Bed Bugs, Funny Italian Line-ups and Gelato

Florence (Firenze) gets an estimated 1.3 million tourists each year and is known as being one of the most sought after destination places for travel. I guess we shouldn't be at all surprised then with the number of visitors each year that we would happen upon our first case of bed bugs here. We would have expected this from the garbage heap that was Napoli, but not from Florence, the city of glitz and glam.  Apprently even New York has seen the creepy crawlers make their way into some five star hotel beds. From pine beetles to bed bugs, have we missed the unsuspecting blitzkrieg of insects.

Checking into our hostel (7 Santi) and bedding down, I happened to look down and see a tiny, red bug mozy across my crisp, white bed sheet. Then another, and another. Hmmm. I've never experienced bed bugs before, that I've noticed, and my first reaction was the squish the suckers, but Morgan rushed over with a piece of paper and tried to scoop one up to show the front desk. They quicky handed us a key to room 54, only two doors over from the bugs. And not far enough.

Good thing we'd picked up some Om Naturale Bug Be Gone (made in BC) from a Farmer's Market in Kelowna before our trip. The girl insisted it was a must for our stint in India, but Florence, Italy? It seemed all too funny spraying down the beds in the city that was home to the David and charges 10 euros to visit a garden. Even showering down couldn't cure us of the constant feeling of microscopic bugs invading our skin. It's a disgusting feeling and it took us forever to get comfortable enough to sleep without constantly inspecting our sheets every few seconds. Before we fell asleep I told Morgan I hoped to wake up alive and relatively uneaten. Morning came and we quickly examined ourselves for bites. Safe! Not quite. We found one lone bug crawling out of Morgan's sheets. Swearing we would check out of 7 Santi if we found another bug, we again told the front desk about our discovery. We asked the lady if anyone else had mentioned bugs, but she said no. She simply said that they had called the guys to come and get the bugs, but no one had come yet. So just to confirm, no one said anything about bugs? As weirded out and completely jaded as we were about the place, we decided to stick around and see what was behind door number 21.

Check out if your next trip will see bed bugs. This site has been in opreation stince 2006 and is a collection of several accomations that have had bed bug sightings in North America and the United Kingdom. http://www.bedbugregistry.com/

We hung around Florence for the day. Thankfully the weather held up and we took a tour to the Piazzle di Michaelangelo where you have a great view of the city. The

A quick stop over into the central train station to check out our closest escape route (Venice), we were lucky enough to witness some good old Italian culture at work. And in our minds, this little transaction more than made up for our bought of bugs.
The ticket line for local, international and eurail trains was all melded into one with only two attendants working and about 15 people in line. I guess one of the ladies being helped had been overstayed her welcome and was being heckled by the elderly folk at the front of the line. The disapproving bunch were obviously looking to catch a train that was about to leave a platform and was trying to hurry the lady up. A coupld of the gentlemen even went up to the woman and began yelling at her and the attendant. And if  you know anything about Italian's and their way of talking, the whole body gets into it. It's actually proably where the term body language actually derives from. Anyway, the group in line were even clapping the woman on. She would occasionally turn around and yell something to them in return, but it only egged the haters on. It's no wonder Italians run red lights as they do, they are quite humourously the most impatient people we've encountered. I should really look into whether my Jack Rebny is any strain of Italiano.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDQQfBrSUs0&feature=related

The line began to move and that's about the time when a lady infront of us stumbled backwards and fell over into a sign while standing in line. At first we were sure she'd fainted, but her prompt relocation to the upwards postion suggested she had just miss stepped. All the while, we're still in tears laughing so hard, with our whole Italian bodies.

PS - In 2010, Florence held it's first Gelato Festival. I've heard stories of people rearranging their travel itineraries to fit this delicious event in. Check out the website for more info http://www.firenzegelatofestival.it/site/home.asp

The Limey

The 19 Hour Couch Cruise - Spain to Italy

"So, you've decided to become a bum" - John Travolta as Vincent, Pulp Fiction.

To get to Italy from Spain, we decided to try out the ferry option offered by the Eurail pass. Getting to the Barcelona port, we ended up walking around in cirlces for an hour being pointed in several different directions trying to find the right ticketing office (Gremodli Lines). We finally found it and bought tickets to make the 19 hour boat ride across the Mediterranean. It would have cost us either 47 euros for a "reclining" train seat or 27 euros on a ferry (that's with a 20% discount, one of the many  bonuses offerred with the Eurail). Really though, the boat isn't much of a ferry at all. Actually, I had totally imagined ourselves bedding down with some local farm life fighting over hay space. Unfortunatly, there wasn't any farm-like quality about the ship. There weren't even rows of seats that you could pass out under like the ferry boats running imbetween Vancouver and Vancouver Island. Instead, more like a hotel lobby, you have ultra-sheek couches randomly arranged throughout the lobby ways.

It was here that we officially bummed out for the first time on our trip. We attached our packs together (good luck trying to lift both those suckers up together), made clothes pillows and wrapped our eyes with head wraps. Of the few couches we'd spotted, we obviously picked the one right next to the boat's arcade room, home to the world's loudest game ever. Every few minutes the game's computer voice would sound "Virtual Tennis, 3" followed by some whooshing sounds most probably a combination of dashing serves and aces. Not even the earplugs could block out C3PO's earsplitting jinggle. I wondered if Nadal would have anything to do with the cruise's top arcade game being ultimate tennis. I suddenly decided I hated tennis.

We woke up to one of the boat's staff telling us that we couldn't sleep there. That's 9 hours after we'd splayed out our best on the red Ikea shapes. All that changed was us parrallel to perpendicular. Still on the couch. For the rest of the day we'd have the ship's guests and passengers walk past asking if we'd had a good sleep. It was "Virtually" awesome guys, common. I know you all walked past us before you all snuggled into your premium cabins.

A practice fire alarm would sound and we'd be privy to hear the beforehand security warning reminding passengers that there was no smoking during a fire. A following announcement would call for a staff member's attention and went something like this: "Charlie Dima, Charlie Dima, Charlie Dima, Charlie Dima, Charlie Dima, Charlie Dima. Attention. Please report to Port 9, port side, port side, port side, port side. Attention please, for what?... Please report to Port 9, port side." Gotta love the Spanish.­­

There's a non-profit group called CouchSurfing devoted to creating memorable experiences for travellers by connecting them with local people. "CouchSurfing members share hospitality with one another. These exchanges are a uniquely rich form of cultural interaction. Hosts have the opportunity to meet people from all over the world without leaving home. "Surfers," or travelers, are able to participate in the local life of the places they visit. We also give more people the chance to become travelers, because "surfing" lowers the financial cost of exploration." Unfortunately there are no cruise ship options. See more about about how you can participate on there website.
http://www.couchsurfing.org/about.html

The Limey

Milan Futbol Massacre

Oct 20th, 2010.  We'd been in Milan for two days at this point, and had staked out our favourite pizza joints, and the very affordable, easily navigated, transit system.  We were meeting
Lindsay's cousin from Reading, Perry, and going to a Tottenham Spurs game as we couldn't afford to see them IN England.
Perry had been on the same beautiful train ride from Zurich that we'd taken a couple days before, but unfortunately the weather was a little more spuratic for Perry than for us.  We quickly sorted him into his hotel and went about getting a few drinks in us and a good serving of pizza, while catching up.  The stadium was alcohol free, at least for the visiting fans. I could feel the anticipation rising amongst ourselves, and in the city in general, as the throng of Tottenham suporters swelled into Milan.  We could hear groups chanting and singing from blocks away as AC Milan fans gave us their blessing to beat their intercity rivals.
We took the Metro to the closest station to the stadium and were ushered, based on our appearance/lack of fashion in Milanites opinion, into awaiting, free buses by obviously armed police.  The busses were again full to the brim with singing Tottenham suporters.  My personal favorites, having nothing to do of course with them being the only legible ones, where "Spurs go marching in" to the tune of "Saints go marching in" and "VaVa-VaVa-VaVa-VaVa-Van der Varrt" sung to KC and the Sunshine Band's "Baby Give it Up".  The latter honoring, my new favorite futboler, Dutch national Rafael Van der Varrt, unavailable this game due to a red card in the previous game. I bought his jersey in Amsterdam and proudly wore the carrot orange jersey for days.  We were hearded through a few security gates, frisked, and marched up our choice of only one ramp.


Gametime, up-upstairs, fenced and netted off of the rest of the stadium was approximately 5000-6000 Tottenham fans.  By halftime, Spurs were down a man and we'd shamefully watched the Inter Milan fans light flares and cheer along to the stadium announcer, lame! Four times to our zero, no less, some fans where considering leaving in time to take the last flight back to England, only to be told they can't leave the stadium.  Good thing for them cause in the latter part of the second half, Welsh-born Gareth Bale streaked down the left side and scored.  Perry had predicted before the game that Bale should have a good one, a prediction forgotten at 4-0, but revived at 4-1.  The Tottenham fans erupted!!  Perry quickly pointed out the Tottenham fans throughout the rest of the stadium.  There must've been a couple thousand more!!  The chanting, which never stopped, but toned down a bit, was back at pre-game enthusiasm: "Second halfs one nil!! The second halfs one nil!!"  It was all better now.  This goal, and opportunity to go berserk, made it all worthwhile.  Understandably, travelling all that way to sit on your hands for a couple hours would be, like travelling to watch a Leafs game I guess.  As the game wound down, only a couple minutes left, the fans started moving towards the exit, not to leave, but to linger closer to the exit, when Bale struck again.  Pandemonium ensued in the aisles and in the stands when Bale struck a third time on a beautiful give-n-go. The fans nirvana slipped to hope and angst over, "where was this an hour ago!".  "The second halfs three nil, the second halfs three nil!"
As extra time slipped away and the amazing Champions League comeback ebbed, I started to realize that we weren't going anywhere.  I could see from our third teir aisle view that the rest of the stadium was empty.  30 minutes later the groundskeeper was out, the stadium undecorated in lieu of an AC Milan game no doubt, and the reserve players back out stretching on the field!  It was surreal to me that we were held like cattle for that long due to the fear of English futbol hooliganism.  This was by far the most threated I'd felt, lookin' over at Perry, a seasoned pro as a travelling fan, he looked, "business as usual."  By the time we got out of the stadium it was near and hour after the game had ended, with the free busses unable to close their doors due to Tottenham fans cramming in, we went for a libertaing walk back to the station.

My second game was full of a lot of excitement and firsts for this NHL/NFL veteran, and it was again a great experience!  Thanks to Perry for helping us out with the tickets and playing futbol tour guide for us again.

The Yank