My Travel Adventures

On the last day of our trip, we began as early as always. Leaving our hotel at around half past seven and having found some breakfast on the way, we arrived near the gates of the Cimitero Monumentale a little after eight. We found the cemetery as monumental as its name promised. Its main building was flanked by two towers on the left and two more on the right, all of them adding colour to the white marble with dark lines and alternating patterns along the arches. We walked down the main path until the ossuary and admired the towering and ornate tombs along the way.

I booked the earliest slot for the Galleria dell’Accademia so that we could take the train to Milan as soon as possible. We ate breakfast at a local café, where I tried a custard-filled pastry and drank a glass of orange juice. The Galleria dell’Accademia opened at 8:15 sharp. One of its most famous works, the Rape of the Sabines by Giambologna, stood just behind the entrance, while Michelangelo’s David greeted us from beneath a glass dome. To approach him, we walked through a long corridor past some of Michelangelo’s unfinished works, and only by the time we stood in front of him did his monumental size become apparent. The entire hall, we read, was built specifically to house this statue, which had stood on the Piazza della Signoria until the nineteenth century.

I planned today’s itinerary around my teleworking obligations: I had to attend an online session at 10 o’clock, with my working day beginning at nine. That being the case, Aron and I still had some time in the morning to spend walking around Florence. We decided to cross the river and hike up the southern hill, where the Piazzale Michelangelo offered us a lovely view of the city, especially Florence’s massive dome.

Today was another early day, as we wanted to reach Pisa before crowds of other tourists descended upon the city. We woke up at seven o’clock, bought a quick breakfast, and caught the 7:54 train in the direction of Viareggio. I spent the whole ride reading about the city’s history. Pisa was an important city in the Middle Ages, competing with the neighbouring Florence and other trading powers like Venice and Genoa. In the war between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, however, Pisa’s alliance with the emperor cost it dearly. As the Holy Roman Empire lost influence in Italy, Pisa’s competitors gained the upper hand, and the city’s glory days ended by the close of the thirteenth century.  

Today was a less manic day than the standard for this trip. We packed all our bags and headed to the train station, where Aron had previously noticed a bag depository. We left his large camping bag there so that he would not have to lug it around all day, and we stuffed my plastic bags full of dirty and clean clothes inside it. My choice of breakfast foods was nonstandard: having noticed a few novelty gelato flavours, I decided to try out a scoop of mungo pine and another scoop of Sorrento lemon. The first genuinely tasted like pine needles (I don’t know what else I was expecting), while the second was very flavourful. Aron and I also tried martozzi, a kind of sliced bun brimming with cream.

We began our day by buying breakfast at a nearby pastry shop, which we ate on the way to our first destination. We were not in a particular hurry, but I forgot to tell Aron this and so he ordered take-away for both of us.

Over the past two days, we finished our itinerary for Naples earlier than I expected, leaving us with a free morning before our trip to Rome. We decided to spend it at the Royal Palace of Caserta. Founded in 1752 by Charles VII of Naples, it was only completed in 1845, having briefly fallen into the hands of the Parthenopean Republic, the House of Bonaparte, and the House of Murat during the Napoleonic Wars. Like other royal palaces throughout Europe, Caserta was inspired by the sprawling complex of Versailles, whose sheer size allowed the monarch to permanently surround himself with his court and government.

We woke up at 6:45 this morning to accommodate our very busy itinerary. The first item on our list: acquiring breakfast. At the café just around the corner from our hotel, I acquired a pistachio sfogliatella cone and a Neapolitan Napoleon cake, while Aron bought the same cake but a normal sfogliatella. Instead of sitting and eating, however, we took the metro to the Municipio Station. We made it to Molo Beverello with just enough time to buy tickets for the 8:05 ferry to the island of Capri.

My friend Aron and I left for Naples on a Friday evening. While I was at work, Aron completed his touristic itinerary for Geneva with a five hour long visit of the CERN. He had arrived from the States on Monday and had since managed to explore much of Paris and French Switzerland. Leaving the office early, I met him at the café below the mission and we headed over to the airport for our 17:20 flight.