Sunday, March 1, 2015

Fleeing the storm, arriving in pizza heaven

So Santorini/ the Greek islands was one big storm-induced mess. At some point we decided to cut our losses, forgo our flights from Crete to Rome and book a new flight from Athens to Rome. George helped us get our ferry all squared away and we took an overnight ferry back to the mainland. Between sleeping pills and my eye mask, I manged to ignore the four burly Greek men sitting three inches from me while I slept. Clayton was less lucky. We rolled in at 5 am, walked around Athens until we found somewhere to print our tickets in order to avoid an insane RyanAir charge, and then headed to the airport. Our flight wasn't until like 9 in the pm, but we had already seen Athens.

I worked for 8 hours. Clayton probably wanted to die. Athens only gives you an hour of wifi. AN HOUR.

When we arrived at the airport in Rome, we looked at the location of our hostel. It was right behind the airport, so we decided to walk.

WRONG ANSWER.

The only way to get around the airport was to walk on the FREAKING HIGHWAY at ELEVEN O'CLOCK at night. Which we did not realize until we were on the freeway. (Don't ask questions. Just accept it.) At first it was kind of funny. After AN HOUR it was less funny. With no buildings, wifi, or taxis in sight, we didn't have many other options. A bed has never felt so sweet after the 29 hours of travel we'd just experienced.

The next morning we decided to head to Naples/ Pompeii, because why not. Turned out to be the right answer! We had such a blast. I'll throw those highlights in different posts, because that makes more sense, yeah?

High quality freeway pics.
Just to prove it happened.


This doesn't show it well, but that wall was probably 20 feet above that road.
We had to climb a fence to get on this wall, but as you can see, there's no where to walk on the road. 
In conclusion, this was not a pedestrian and/or stupid American friendly part of town.