Escape from the City...

We encountered only a small snafu on our trek from Italy to Croatia: we got on the wrong bus (3 times) between the Ancona train station and the ferry terminal (stazione marittima as we learned after a few failed attempts at direction). The ominously black sky opened up on us as we disembarked the second wrong bus....and the torrent was pretty bad. We were soaked through to the bone, and still had to find our way to the ferry. A kind Italian man who spoke not a word of english - which nicely complemented our lack of Italian - asked us why we were standing at that particualr bus stop, it was nowhere near the terminal. Then he helped us find the right bus and we managed to forge our way through the downpour to the terminal (Sarah had to go barefoot because flipflops and rain don´t really work).

The ferry was way more ghetto than our first experience in Tunis, but it got us to Split, Croatia the next morning, a little worse for the wear and very tired, where we promptly sought our hostel and had quite the surprise upon being led up a staircase to a very drunk woman´s private guesthouse (note: this is 7:30 am) before we realized that we were on the wrong side of the courtyard. The hostel was next door! We took a nice nap before we hit the town.

Split is a lovely town paved in white marble (which I quickly learned is the case for much of Croatia´s old towns) which can be quite blinding in the sunlight. The town was built within the walls of the former seaside palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the Middle Ages. Way cool.

The next morning we took a hydrofoil to Hvar Island where Sarah & I met up with 3 girls from San Luis Obispo that we went to Jr High & High School with...we arrived early and ran into them in the town square just as they were renting a little motorized skiff to tootle around the islands. We spent the afternoon attempting to navigate via the postcard of the harbor that the boat guy had given us. Thank God Sarah knew how to deal with a boat, or else we would have crashed into some of the swanky yachts docked in the classy resort town harbor. Our only incidents here were that we dropped the little anchor a little too far off the coast of the island we hoped to sunbathe on, and found it stuck under a rock.....The next 30 minutes passed with numerous attepmts swimming down to try and release it, but found it was far deeper down than we had thought. After all rubbing our patron saint of travels: Sarah´s Nefertti pin, Michelle dove from the boat down at least 30 meters and released the anchor!!! Glorious day! Topped it off with an evening a cappella concert of Croat men singing in the Franciscan Monastery.

We found Hvar a really nice town - really really swanky with lots of civil servants vaccuuming the streets for trash which was depositied in trash cans that lowered beneath the sidewalk...woah. But this was also early in the season and we saw everyone fixing up their beach bars etc. for the crowds to roll in in the next few weeks. We found a nice quiet beach with empty reclining chairs and took a dip or two in the ocean. The construction is crazy, and we were both glad to have seen Hvar before it became the craze of the Adriatic and completely unaffordable/devoid of local flavor. We also had a run-in with a Borat impersonator...AWESOME!

An early morning ferry took us to Dubrovnik (it ended up being an 8 hour ferry - OI VEH!) where we have been for the past 2 nights. It is an amazing town with an unbelievable history as a powerful merchant town rivaling Venice in the middle ages (then known as Ragusa). Unfortunately, in 1991-2 the Stari Grad (old town - which is so beautifully situated on the water with an entire city wall intact which we walked around at sunset...breathtaking!) was bombed to shreds when the Serbian-Montenegro remains of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) attacked the city. Now it has mostly been repaired and returned as the tourism capital of Croatia, teeming with cruise-shippers, although we did find a nice local swimming hole on a rather tranquil bit of ocean cove where all the locals sit drinking beer and playing cards in their speedos between dips in the salty ocean.

Today we are off to Montenegro - the world´s newest country - which is just down the coast. Pretty sweet!

Our tour of Sicily took us to Catania and Taormina on the Eastern side of the island, before heading up to Sorrento (Pompei & Herculaneum) and then Rome.

Catania was an accident, as our train didn't continue to Taormina as we had thought (found this out on the train, of course) but we ended up in a great hostel and saw a tour of the city via a taxi from the train station.

Taormina is an incredibly adorable town on the top of a hill - winding streets, a myriad of gelato shops, pricey shopping and a Greek ampitheatre. It was a beautiful place, but our "hostel" was so far out of the way down and up winding streets, we were happy to be there only one night. The beach Isola Bella is down the hill, accessible via sky gondola, and was the first time since Tunisia that we could relax on the pebbly beach.

An overnight train (where we scored sleeper beds even when we only paid for seats!!) took us to Napoli, where we promptly got on another train for Sorrento. Don't really want to spend much time in Naples, please forgive me. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the preserved cities of Herculaneum and Pompei. The former is much smaller and less known, but they actually allow you to walk right into the homes and businesses, see the frescoes up close, and wander the streets rather leisurely. We did a little eavesdropping with a Senior tour or two (when between Sarah's little German and my French we understood a bit...)

Now we are in Rome, and leaving today for Croatia. We've certainly managed to meet some fellow backpackers and in fact spent a few days heading in the same direction.

Rome is so busy, but so beautiful! After the ruins we saw in Tunisia and Sicily, I'm really glad to see the true opulence of the heart of the empire. And also checked another country off the list - passed into the walls of the Vatican, even if only for a few snapshots. We're going to have to chow on some more gelato and pizza before we leave...not sure what kind of delights the Balkans will offer for vegetarians...

Sorry that internet is rather sparse on this voyage so far...

Our Tunisia travels have summed up quite nicely after our visit to the amazing Colliseum at El Jem - its a Roman colliseum rising out of the desert between the oceanside resort town of Sousse and the commercial port of Sfax. It was extra cool because we could climb the stairs and see everything from the highest perspective, looking out across the flat and very hot horizon.

In Sfax we stayed right in the heart of the medina walled city; I felt a bit like Aladdin with the souk below my window where vendors sold just about everything beneath striped sheets hung between buildings to shade the walkway.

We took a bus to Douz "the Gateway of the Sahara" and spent a few days with a Bedouin hotelier named Kamel who took us off-roading in his associate"s Tacoma and arranged for us a day long Camel trek complete with traditional Bedouin meal and bread baked in the sand. Super awesome, except those camels burp really loud and have flatulant problems. Our dromadaire guide Bechir was very cool and taught us how to write our names in Arabic. (PS we will be finding Sahara desert sand in everything for the rest of the trip Im sure)



But the nasty heat made us decide to detour from Tunisia and head early to Palermo and Sicily instead of going to Naples later this week. We have had some really crazy overnight transport stories (met an awesome Santa Claus-esque Frenchman on the ferry from Tunis to Palermo, Jean-Louis, who test drives cars for Citroen - just made a solo super trek through North Africa over the last 2 months!).

We have been soaking up Agrigento (SPECTACULAR Roman temple ruins), Catania and now Taormina, and also soaking up some splendid gelato and pizza...but its true that this is the motherland of the Guido- met some on the Train yesterday, for sure!

I can scarcely think of any better welcome to a North African Muslim country after 15 hours of transit than to arrive sans baggages aka Alitalia didnt board my backpack on my flight from New York and though we arrived on the 17th in Tunis, I didnt get my bag until this morning (3 days in the same clothes - way to travel light) - right before we decided to move on to the seaside town of Sousse...

Tunis was a very bustling capital city full of both obnoxious men and very kind and jovial types like the reception people at Hotel Marhaba - a lovely little pension that our Rough Guide marked as safe for women travellers. We had a little double room for only 15 dinar (1 Dt is roughly 90 cents or so) It was a delightful little place in the very heart of the souk (bazaar market), only a few blocks from the train depot, fresh market and next door to an amazingly cheap little restaurant where you could eat an entire meal of way too much couscous for 3.5 dinar. yummmmmers

The metro was an experience, we also saw the Musée Bardo and ruins of Carthage. This trip is going to be a whirlwind of the Roman territories.

So much more to describe and this is such a slow internet connection with a french/arabic keyboard which makes typing very tricky (always typing z instead of w or a...)

Today we arrived in Sousse which is incredibly lovely and still standing are the ancient walls of the city and the mosque just down the road from our next cheap and amazing hotel, and delicious pita sandwiches...(more to come later with a better computer connection )

suffice it to say that sunbathing on a beach in Tunisia = treacherous on a Saturday with throngs of 12 year old boys subtly (rather, very obviously) trying to edge closer and closer...We were saved by some older guys who were clearly also enjoying the view but much more tactful and told the little pests to scram...hahaha

Off to climb the Sousse Ribat tower and catch the sunset atop our roof terrace (AWESOME)

tomorrow to El Jem and onward to Sfax

ps they have Coca Light here : )

Miraculously, I got packed and moved yesterday with a little friendly help from my two Romanian movers sent by the moving company for FREE! But by the time I began to assemble my backpack I of course realized a few things I wanted were now across the river in a climate-controlled cubicle. So I continued the exercise in sleep deprivation by running around Manhattan with my roommate looking for a drugstore open at 12:30am (which proved to be a particularly amusing late night enterprise) in hopes of finding socks (which proved fruitless, but we did elicit some zealous encouragement from the graveyard shift hardhat types working on the street). This morning I'll make one last foray into the wilds of Kmart before we hop the subway to the airport. So that's about it....ciao until I can track down some Tunisian internet providers.