Italy 2018

This year too we went to Italy. Yes, third year in a row!
How can anyone say NO to a beautiful country, with great history and even great (vegetarian) food?

Our elder daughter had just finished her graduation and she had a little time before she had to join for her Masters. (We had thought she would only be able to stay for 1 month, but she ended up being here for 6 months. That is the story of Indian colleges and final marksheets which every frustrated Indian would know.) And she graciously agreed to take care of her little sister.

Thus my husband and I decided we would go for a holiday. The only question was where?
I suggested Greece, but in the end we decided to go and see the southern part of Italy.
We had finished Rome and Florence on our first trip. Venice, Parma, Bologna and Verona last year. Sicily had been on my mind since I read Godfather and Eat,Pray,Love. And Harish wanted to take me to Naples - the land of Pizza!

So, South of Italy, it was!!

Sicily had only one problem. Transportation. The public transport system is almost non existent. We have to drive from one place to next and my husband and I contemplated for a day or two on this and decided we will give it a shot.

So, as usual I planned the itinerary, hotel booking and route mapping. Harish booked the car, took an international license and gave me his credit card details!
And I had a huge surprise. Vodafone - my service provider had a great plan for Italy. If I payed ₹5000, I got unlimited data on my phone for 28 days!!AMAZING PLAN!

We left Cochin on 6th July 2018.
For the past 2 years, my husband and I were spending our wedding anniversary outside India; but this year we were going after our anniversary.

We landed in Dubai and reached Rome that same night. While we had wanted to fly straight to Palermo in Sicily; Vagabonda, the resident expert of Sicily on "Trip Advisor" suggested not to do that as any delay in our long distance flight might upset all the plans.

And it was proved right as our flight from Dubai was delayed due to sand storm and rain!

We had decided to stay overnight at a place very near Rome Fiumicino airport.
The airport taxi costs a bomb to transfer people from the airport to the hotel situated 5 kms away. So, we decided on a bus used by many hotels to ferry guests to and from the airport. This bus picked us from the airport (€6 per person) and after dropping off different guests at different places; dropped us off at Amelindo Fiumicino Airport Residence. Since we were checking in late and leaving very early, the woman at the counter left us some rusk, jam, butter, juice, milk powder, coffee powder, cheese and fruit in our room! Our room was the size of a small family apartment.
We were hungry. But we did not want to eat bread and fruit. We wanted pasta and pizza!

We went to a restaurant 400 metres away called Ristorante Ristorigano. It felt more than 400 mts, trust me! It was so late in the night, especially with the time difference and I was very sleepy.
A family was having a get together there and all the laughing and shouting woke me up a bit. And the pizza made me wide awake. What a lovely pizza we had, after long.

The next morning, we reached Fiumicino airport, again using the bus transfer service (€6 per person) and got to know that our luggage was not paid for. It was an economy flight from Rome to Palermo and my husband had thought he had done the procedure while in India itself. And because we were doing it at the last moment, we had to pay a whopping €100 for our suitcases. :(

We did not allow our spirits to get dampened and we boarded the flight.
Our journey was to begin!