Italy: Part I

Our first day of the Italy trip was mainly spent travelling (yay). I joined everyone (McPake, Samuel and Meryn) on the bus to Heathrow airport at 01:45 in the morning. That's quarter to 2 in the morning. A time that should be reserved for sleeping or partying, not getting buses.

Not much happened on the bus journey since most people were using it to catch up on sleep. It was funny to discover we were driving behind my Mum and Anthony when we joined the motorway, although Ant was texting me to tell me that she was majorly stressing out about it, bless her! Other than the poor man next to me waking up to find me awkwardly smiling at him and McPake accidentally hitting a woman in the face, nothing else really happened during the journey.

We met Ainsley at Heathrow, very surprised to find he'd managed to not only get there on time but to actually get there at all (he was missed two train while being at the train station). Thanks to only having two check-in desks open and having to wait for a priority flight to be checked in, it felt like forever before we were able to go through to our gate. I don't think us + very little sleep + waiting = anything positive.

Landing in Milan

Our first flight took us to Milan. I think we were all very nervous about this part. We have little to no knowledge of Italian and so we were desperately hoping this part of our journey (without Anna!) would go smoothly because none of knew what we would do if we had to actually communicate with anyone.

Luckily it did go smoothly and we landed safely in Bari to be greeted by Anna and her family. Despite the fact that we don't speak Italian and her family don't speak English, we had a very warm welcome and instantly warmed to her family, especially her Dad (who later became affectionately known as Gigi). They gave us snacks of bread, ham and cheese (delicious!!!) while we piled in to the cars and began our journey to Anna's apartment.

Acting British in the airport (he definitely isn't embarrassing)

Gigi showed us some of the local sights, although the language barrier meant that something as simple as pointing at the football stadium took a few minutes to explain as we all tried to find a word that everyone understood. Anna was in the car with her uncle and the boys so it was just me and Meryn in her parents car with nobody around to act as translator. It didn't go too badly though and I think we managed to understand everything that we were being told, although that could just be me being very optimistic.

When we arrived at the apartment, the boys were shown around the basement flat they would be living in while Anna's mum showed us around their apartment. Meryn and I dropped our stuff off in the room we would be sleeping in and then became trapped in there. We were too nervous to go in to the living room without Anna (she was with the boys) and so we tried (unsuccessfully) to leave three times before Anna saved us.

Not-lame Italian seflies

A photo taken during captivity

After showering (to calm down after our temporary imprisonment), I sat in the living room and had a conversation with Anna's sister, Dominica and discovered just how different the night life was in Italy. I especially couldn't wrap my head around the idea that people mingled on the streets with their drinks; even the idea that glass bottles were allowed outside was pretty mind boggling. I don't think I believed her until I saw it myself, I just put it down to me misunderstanding what she had said.

We fell in love with the view from the balcony and took the most British-tourist photo of McPake ever.

We had our first taste of Italian coffee that afternoon, in a modern looking coffee shop a few minutes walk from Anna's building. We met Anna's cousin and we were also able to have a quick walk around Barletta, the city that we would be staying in over the two weeks. I don't know about anyone else but I instantly fell in love, between the cobbled roads, the Assassin's Creed style church and the huge variety of coffee shops and pubs, I was in heaven.

My first coffee in Italy!

The rest of our evening consisted of a very big meal (pasta and tomato sauce, beef and tomato sauce, bread, focaccia, eggy potato) and an evening walk around the city. We had a few drinks at a local bar and walked down to the sea front. I couldn't believe how many people were out and about, both drinking and walking around. We probably would have stayed out a bit longer but our travelling caught up with us and we dragged ourselves home to catch up on some much needed sleep.


Our second day started nice and slowly. Anna, Meryn and I sat down to a breakfast of biscuits and cappuccino's while the sunshine poured in through the balcony doors. That's one of the things I miss the most about our trip to Italy, having breakfast with those two every morning. There was something so calming and enjoyable about a good cup of coffee with two girls I was quickly becoming better friends with.

The boys got up about an hour after we did so while we waited for them to get ready we went for a walk. It soon became clear that, unbeknown to me or Meryn, we were famous in Italy. The amount of people that stared; stopped and stared; or whispered after us was unbelievable. I genuinely did feel as though we were famous! I don't think we realised how quickly the locals would be able to tell that we were British. I'm not sure what gave us away, whether it was the fact we were speaking English or that I was in a dress while everyone else was dressed as though it was winter.

IT'S SO PINK

We met the boys and wandered around the castle grounds before going back to the apartment for lunch.  We had spaghetti in jalapeño sauce and we tried horse sausage. Poor Meryn ended up choking on the spaghetti, an incident that definitely was not caused by me making her laugh. That definitely did not happen.

Not at all embarrassing

After visiting Anna's favourite place in her city, Il Bracho (I'll tell you all about that in another post!), we walked to her father's office to visit him. It turns out it is a family business and we met what felt like the whole of Anna's family (it wasn't even close). We had so much fun, especially because at one point everyone was grouped around one of the office computers watching the Harlem Shake video the boys made. Little did we know that this would be the beginning of Anna's family's weird and wonderful fascination with McPake.

We were mobbed on the way back to the apartment by Anna's cousin and all of her friends. The cool thing was that they had a fairly good knowledge of English (compared with our Italian, they put us completely to shame) and we were able to have a lengthy conversation about school and gaming.

We ate when we got back around 10:30 and the meal finished with watching more videos of McPake. Samuel played on the family's guitar while Anna's dad told us all about the history of the Easter Friday parade that was taking place the following day. It was such a sweet evening.

We started our third day by having breakfast in a little coffee shop around the corner from Anna's apartment. We also watched the Easter Friday procession but I'm going to leave that for a separate post. We spent our evening with Anna's friends, who were absolutely hilarious. Luckily for us, they all spoke fantastic English so we were able to have actual conversations with them without Anna needing to translate everything. There was one disaster when I accidentally mixed up the meanings of a garden hoe and a garden hose and taught them the wrong meaning of the word. Embarrassed doesn't cover how I felt when my mistake was pointed out!

We walked to a local Irish bar for pizza and I am not exaggerating when I say that that pizza was the most delicious thing I have ever tasted, ever. McPake and I finished ours before everyone else had even got half way through theirs. We were absolutely gutted that we didn't manage to go back before the end of our trip.

Ordering the pizza was mortifyingly complicated though. The waiter and I got through 4 languages before I managed to tell him that I was English and couldn't speak Italian. My stress levels were not helped when I managed to punch my pint glass and cover the table and McPake's lap in Coke. I'm actually surprised I managed to enjoy my pizza/evening when I seemed to be determined to sabotage myself.

We ended our evening by going for drinks and talking with two groups of Anna's friends on one of the streets by the pubs. Poor Anna had to translate the conversation back and forth. She became so muddled that she kept speaking in the wrong language to the wrong people. It was impressive watching her switch between the two languages though, I was so jealous!

The fourth day of our trip was spent walking and relaxing on the beach. It was nice to spend time just the six of us. McPake kept us entertained by pretending to be a meteorite in a hole (a video that was later shown to Anna's entire family) and we passed away the time by sharing stories of childhood trips to the beach. It was very surreal, sitting on a beach in Italy with 5 of my closest friends. I remember not quite being able to believe that it was actually happening, that I was that lucky.

He's being a meteorite here..

Anna and her family went to church in the evening so Meryn and I had the apartment to ourselves. This did not go well as we managed to majorly freak ourselves out. Well, maybe I majorly freaked myself out and Meryn moderately freaked out. I even called the boys at one point and asked them to come and sit with us. We think we were haunted by a ghost cat but the boys were just shocked that I'd sounded so scared at what turned out to be creaky floorboards (aka ghost cat).

After meeting Anna outside the church (which was not as easy as it sounds because we went to the wrong church at first and things got quite tense) we made our way to one of the bars. It was so funny to watch Anna get drunk as she doesn't usually drink a lot in Swansea. She was adamant that she wasn't drunk (it didn't help that she kept accidentally speaking Italian to us), I couldn't stop laughing!

The whole group was given free shots from the barman for being English. I opted out of having the shot and judging by the faces of everyone after, I made a very good choice. They looked like they instantly regretted drinking it. Not pretty!

I have no idea how it happened but we also ended up behind the bar having a picture with Luigi the barman! It was so cool being behind the bar, I almost missed the photo being taken because I was busy looking at everything (I do realise that I used to work behind a bar but I must have momentarily forgotten that). Definitely the best part of the night!

We eventually arrived back at the apartment around 04:50am. Even at that time, streets and pavements were full of cars and people. Even the coffee shop around the corner was fill to bursting with people. I was almost in tears I was so tired yet everyone else was acting as though it was 11pm at night. I just couldn't believe it. I was so happy to crawl into bed that night, I almost didn't have time to discuss how much fun we were having with Meryn. We were falling for Italy fast.