Part Nine- Trapani

The train ride from Catania to Palermo was so beautiful and we even got a bit of a nap in before we got on a bus in Palermo to Trapani. In total the trip across the short island took eight hours and by the time we got there I was pretty frazzled and exhausted. A nice girl let us borrow her phone so that we could call the lady we were renting the apartment from and when we got there all my frustrations melted away!

 It was an incredible little apartment and they had been so nice to stock it with milk, cereal, fresh fruit, and juice. It was right next to this adorable little restaurant and directly across from this tiny but amazing cathedral. So when we walked out the door all you could see is this enormous gothic stone building.

The view from the door of our apartment

The next morning we went to the medieval town of Erice. It's crazy because there are not really any drivable roads up there any more so to get there we had to take a tram way up onto the mountain to get to it.

The town was so beautiful and had kind of an eerie quiet feel to it. Besides the tourists of course!
It was around this point in the trip when Lewis said something to the effect of, "You can only have so much awesomeness in one trip. If each experience keeps topping the one before you kind of get numb to the awesomeness." By the time we got to Sicily, we were pretty numb and exhausted. So when we got back from Erice we took it easy. At sunset we walked over to the west side of the island to watch the amazing sunset!

On our last full day in Trapani we took a bus to the northwestern tip of the island called San Vito Lo Capo. We played in the water, ate Gelato, and went on an unnecessarily long hike only to run out of time and have to turn around before we reached our destination.

The next day was another little miracle! We got up early hoping to catch the bus to some ruins that were supposed to rival those in Greece but found out that we wouldn't get back in time to make our flight to Frankfurt. A lady we had talked to the day before told us that before we left we Had to take a boat over to the island of Favignana, so we decided to spend our last few hours there. We got to the dock just after they announced that they had reached their limit for how many people they could take across, and that we would have to wait two hours for the next boat. If we had waited two hours we would not have been able to go to the island and make our flight. I was pretty disappointed and ready to give up but Lewis started asking around to see if anyone else could take us. He found a guy who had a small boat and would take people over to the island for half what the big ferry cost! We totally smoked them getting to the island and were able to rent a scooter to drive around the island.
The water was so beautiful and clear! We found the first beach and decided that the other beaches couldn't be more beautiful than this one so we decided to spend most of our time there. I set down our towels and turned around and was shocked to see a bunch of naked people hanging out right in front of us! Needless to say, we maneuvered so that we didn't have a bunch of nudity marring our view!

Even though the pictures look warm, it was still only the first week in June and I wasn't in the mood to shiver the whole rest of the day so I didn't jump in the water. Lewis was braver than I, and swam for a while before being stung by a jellyfish. After he pointed it out I could see from the beach hundreds of little clear jellyfish floating in the water. He got out after that and we continued on to the next beach which was even more beautiful than the first!

Jellyfish sting, the picture didn't do it justice! 

At the next stop there were these big rocky cliffs descending into deep blue water. Jellyfish or not, Lewis was going to jump in!

After that we realized we were running out of time and that we needed to hurry back to the dock. Somehow we got turned around and ended up in a dead end and had to back track most of the island! We made it though thank goodness! Sitting on the ferry back I noticed that I was really hot and that my arms and face were kind of sticky. I found a mirror and realized that I was turning bright red! I had started to put sunscreen on one of my legs but then got distracted and didn't finish the job. So my right leg was fine, but the rest of my body was toasted. It was a painful jog back to the apartment to pack up and run with all of our stuff over to the train station. Everything worked out fine and soon we were on our way to Germany to see Spencer and Jenny! 

Part Eight- Catania

We shared the overnight train from Rome to Sicily with a team of rugby players who were very nice, but a little bit stinky! As we were falling asleep we started watching the Italian Job on Lewis' phone :) When we woke up in the morning the view was incredible! So tropical and the water was light blue and crystal clear! Immediately upon getting there we found this great little food place and I found the most amazing pastry I have ever had in my whole life. It was about 60% Nuttela and it was so warm and gooey! Our host was very nice and we immediately set out to rent a scooter. We were a little frustrated about siesta (which people took very seriously) but when everybody came back from their afternoon nap we got our scooter and took off up the coast.

We stopped in small city at a fruit stand and I asked for as many cherries as two euros would buy. She handed me a huge bag! We ended up at this beautiful castle kind of out on it's own in the water.

Hot chocolate that Lewis got for me :) 

We wandered around the city until dark and then headed back. When I took a shower I didn't have very good conditioner so when I started to try to comb through my hair I just gave up and started to cry. With all of the salt air and wind from the scooter my hair had turned into one huge knot and I was too tired to try to pick through it. Lewis came over and brushed my hair and got all of the knots out. It took a while, but I love him so much for that moment!
The next day we were talking to our host about places to eat and Valerija (the lady we were staying with) told us that she knew a restaurant that served great horse meat. We respectfully declined and went back to eat at the first place we found the day before. We went to an open air market and bought some more fruit and looked at all the amazing food they had! They had live clams that were squirting and tons of live snails. We also spent some time in the main square in Catania and at the beach where we pestered poor little beach beetles with sand mazes.

Our friend at our favorite Sicilian restaurant! 

We were waiting at the train station for the train that would take us to Trapani and Lewis jokingly said, "Here it comes!" It was this one car train. Seriously, just one car. It looked so silly we didn't think it was ours but sure enough it was! It was so funny, there was kind of a plastic partition separating the last two seats in the train and it was labeled 1st class. :)

That train ride was so beautiful! There were miles and miles of orchards and farms. We stopped in Palermo and got on a bus that took us into Trapani.

Part Seven- Rome

We were super excited for our train ride from Venice to Rome because it was a high speed train that went up to 150 miles an hour! We got there just after dark but were not worried because our AirBnb place was supposed to be really close to the train station.
Rome didn't make a great first impression. Even though our apartment was only a few blocks away from the station we were walking through a pretty crappy part of town. On the website it was described as "culturally vibrant." What he meant was Indian ghetto, and I'm not trying to be offensive, that is actually what it is called.
There was a layer of trash over everything. There were super drunk people stumbling around and we could see people climbing in and out of the dumpsters and there was fecal matter all over the sidewalk. We quickly made our way to the apartment and were welcomed by Shapan. He was very friendly but had us immediately start filling out this form asking all sorts of personal information like mother's maiden name, passport number, passport issue date... etc. Lewis put down false information on it to avoid an argument. Shapan also claimed we owed him a fee for something or other.. that continued to be a trend for the rest of our stay. That night we ate at a little Italian restaurant around the corner and had some amazing pizza.
The next morning we headed out to see all of the sights. We were lucky enough to be walking distance to pretty much everything!

We found this cat hanging out on one of the statues in a small park near our apartment

Trevi Fountain

Around midday we found this awesome park to hang out for a while. After a while Lewis pointed out that there was a flock of parrots flying around in the trees!

Staring contest

Definitely not expecting to see this in Rome! 

We caught the subway back to the apartment and took a siesta. We got all cleaned up again and went out to eat at this buffet with a lot of interesting food... We made friends with a couple of German girls who were Not very impressed with the food. We then took the subway to the Colosseum and walked around the ruins there. The Colosseum was easily one of the most impressive things I've seen, it almost takes your breath away just to look at it.

We met a cute couple from Sicily that were so excited and gave us tips on stuff to do there. It was getting chilly so we got a cup of hot chocolate on our way back to Trevi Fountain. Apparently in Italy hot chocolate and hot cocoa are two very different things. Hot chocolate is quite literally, hot chocolate. It was about the consistency of molasses. We had decided to go back to Trevi Fountain at night because when we went during the day is was ridiculously crowded and we figured that at night some of the crowds would have dispersed. In reality they had probably gotten worse! 

We had a good time people watching and then headed back to the apartment. As we were going down to the subway Lewis offered to help someone carry their stroller down the stairs. As we talked with this family we realized they were LDS members from Utah! We had a great time chatting with them and even made some plans to hang out the next day, but they fell through. 

The next day had some bitter and some sweet. Shapan wanted us to pay him a "city tax." Lewis talked to him about how the AirBnb policy says clearly that when we pay on the website we are paid in full, and that we are not obligated to pay anything else upon arrival. He offed him a deal to pay the tax and a little more if we could keep our bags there for a few extra hours while we went to the Vatican. Shapan got very upset and told us to take our bags and leave. We took our bags to the train station and paid for a locker that cost even less that what Shapan wanted to keep our bags there. I was a little upset by this exchange but I think it is just part of the culture there to try to milk everything for all it's worth. We took our laundry to a place that someone recommended to us because we could get our clothes cleaned for 5 euros. When we got there the guy said he would take really good care of our clothes for 10 euros. Lewis talked to him and he finally agreed to do it for 5. Then when we went to pick up our clothes Lewis talked to kind of an older gentleman coming out of there who told him "This place is great! I come here all the time and get my clothes cleaned for 15 euros a load!" We realized the laundromat guy just charges whatever he thinks his customers can afford! 

We went back to the Colosseum and stopped at this amazing church. I stopped outside and sat in a corner writing in my journal for a little while and realized that when the tourists were shuffling past,  three people stopped to take pictures of me. Random.

Kind of creepy for a church...

We walked to the Parthenon, and then over to the Vatican. The lines were ridiculous so we just hung out in the courtyard for a while and then hiked to this park with a great view of Rome. 

The fountain Bella ran through so that she could dramatically throw herself into Edward's arms... I looked in all of the shadowy corners and did not see one vampire

The "sidewalk" up to the park. I thought we were going to get run over!

When we got back to the train station we watched the new episode of Psych on our phone :) And then got on our overnight train to Sicily!