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Italy was one of the coun­tries that was first on my pri­or­ity list even before con­sid­er­ing com­ing to Europe for an exchange. Being half Ital­ian on my Mom’s side, I was raised with a big Ital­ian fam­ily whom I see at most cousins’ birth­days and major hol­i­days, and since its my Mom who is Ital­ian, I get all the great food that comes with the nation­al­ity. So I was raised in a very Ital­ian set­ting, def­i­nitely more so then my Iran­ian half (although I would love to go to Iran one day), so Italy has always been on the top of my to-go list. When I arrived in Italy with Tighe, he stayed with us for a cou­ple of nights; he headed back to Prague to catch a flight to New York, where as I stayed in Italy and started my one month long Ital­ian adven­ture. I lived with fam­ily in Mola di Bari, which is just south of Bari, headed to Rome to meet up with Hor­atiu, lived in Bari for another week and took a break from Italy to see Greece for ten days. On our return from Greece, I lived in Bis­ceglie for six days or so, and from there I went on my back­pack­ing adven­ture through Naples, Flo­rence, Pisa, Rim­ini, and finally Venice.

Last of Tighe in Mola di Bari

Mola di Bari

Mola di Bari is a small city in south­ern Italy located on the Adri­atic Sea, just south of Bari, and it is where my Nonna (grand­mother) was born and raised. She moved to Canada after meet­ing my Nonno for a short period of time, and moved away from Mola only to return a few times in her life. My Nonna’s cook­ing was for me always num­ber one, but due to Alzheimers, it just hasn’t been the same. Incred­i­bly, the fam­ily I went to stay with in Italy made all the var­i­ous dishes my Nonna made the exact same way — bra­ci­ole (horse meat), focacci (bread, herbs, and toma­toes), meat­balls, and most impor­tantly the pasta. They fed me like a king every day that I spent in Mola, and I was not dis­ap­pointed, it was almost equiv­a­lent to my Nonna’s cook­ing, and thus, it was some of the best eat­ing I have ever done in my entire life.

As you can see, I’m really enjoy­ing myself

And this right here is why

Besides the wine drink­ing, the olive eat­ing, the fresh toma­toes and the deli­cious main courses, there was plenty of fun to be had in Mola as well. Wait­ing for Tighe and I at the ferry was my Mom’s cousin Franca and her son Luigi. Luigi is about my age and was the only one in my fam­ily who could speak decent Eng­lish, so he was the one who I spent most of my time with in Mola. Dur­ing the day, Luigi would take us around, bring us to a beach, drive to a nearby town, grab ice creams, and hang out with friends. I was in Mola for a grand total of twelve days, four with Tighe and eight with Hor­atiu, and on almost every sin­gle one of those days, we went to the beach and had an ice cream. Life in Italy, I found, was much sim­pler than in North America.

Mola’s beach — As you can see the chunks of sand are very large

In the evening after eat­ing a din­ner that would fill me to the brim, we would head out with Luigi and his friends. The night would start off with a giro (which was basi­cally dri­ving around the main city cen­ter in mul­ti­ple loops just for fun), and we would park and either hang out at the square, the cas­tle, or one of the two pop­u­lar bars, mostly Bux, the Amer­i­can bar. Most of his friends spoke very lit­tle Eng­lish, I got lucky to hap­pen to have my cousin as one of the best Eng­lish speak­ers in town, but I could still get by with the com­bi­na­tion of my bro­ken Ital­ian and their bro­ken Eng­lish. My cousin intro­duced me to a lot of friends, and brought me to a cou­ple of Ital­ian par­ties, and I had a great time over­all. There are a lot of peo­ple I would like to visit again in Mola, and a lot of peo­ple that I hope come to Van­cou­ver as soon as possible.

Left to Right: Isabela, Me, Tiziana, Vito, Anto­nio (or Pop­eye, as we called him)

Left to Right: Pop­eye, Luigi (my cousin), Hor­atiu, Tony, Tiziana, and Me

Mola was great to me; amaz­ing food, I had really fun nights out with my cousin whom I had just met upon arriv­ing to Italy, ice cream, the beach, the peo­ple, the cul­ture. Italy so far had been every­thing I was expect­ing and more, and I’m glad I went to dis­cover my roots. I plan on com­ing back and mak­ing sure I know enough Ital­ian at least enough to talk to every­one with­out requir­ing a trans­la­tor. Oh, and did I hap­pen to men­tion this is the city that has the high­est per­cent­age of gor­geous women, over­tak­ing Sara­jevo for the lead? Yeah, its true, you can con­firm with Tighe or Horatiu.

Storm in Mola

Rome

At one point in time dur­ing my stay in Mola, I took four days to go to Rome. Horatiu’s flight from Ger­many was land­ing there, so we took the oppor­tu­nity to visit one of the most leg­endary cities in the world. Rome was noth­ing short of spec­tac­u­lar — the Colos­seum, the Mediter­ranean look, the Vat­i­can, the food, the peo­ple; every­thing about that city makes me con­fi­dent that I will be back as soon as humanly possible.

Before I talk about how spec­tac­u­lar Rome is, I’d like to talk about the not so good part of my stay. We stayed in M&Js place, and I would absolutely NEVER rec­om­mend this hos­tel, even to the peo­ple I’m not par­tic­u­larly fond of. The hos­tel was rid­dled with bed bugs, had incom­pe­tent clean­ers, pay per hour inter­net, no A/C, ridicu­lously ter­ri­ble show­ers both in terms of the actual shower and the dif­fi­cult lay­out of the bath­room, and one of the worst staffers I’ve ever met in my life. Upon arriv­ing to Rome, I had real­ized that I for­got my shoes, as I just came in my san­dals, and since my san­dals were giv­ing me very large blis­ters on the bot­tom of my feet, I decided to buy a pair of shoes. Well, it turns out the shoes I bought gave me blis­ters that were ten times more painful, so when it came to the end of the day when I was going to return the shoes, I came back to find out that the clean­ers had thrown out my Nike bag, which con­tained the box and receipt. Idiots. Oh, and for all of you stay­ing in hos­tels, before you pick a bed, check the seems of the mat­tresses, if you find bed bugs, find a new place to sleep. When stay­ing in this hos­tel, I had at least fifty bites, all of which are sig­nif­i­cantly worse then the mos­quito kind.

Just one of the many bed bug trails on my body

Rome is one of the most gor­geous places I have ever been to. The streets are filled with hang­ing plants, lots of clothes hang­ing out, and the smell of freshly made pasta makes you won­der why any­one would con­sider leav­ing this place. The col­ors are also have a very Mediter­ranean set­ting, which is a nice change from the color scheme of the East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries. There is also no short­age of his­tory in this city, we were able to see the Colos­seum, the Vat­i­can, the Sis­tine Chapel, the Span­ish Step, and more that I can’t think of off the top of my head. I’m not much of a his­tory buff, but these things were pretty cool, and we even hap­pened to get our own free tour guide in the Sis­tine Chapel due to the fact that we met some ran­dom Amer­i­can girl who couldn’t stop talk­ing about Michelan­gelo. We even got to see a mass with the pope, which was really cool.

The Pope in all his glory — rid­ing around in his Pope-mobile

On our sec­ond night in Rome, we were hun­gry and decided to head off to get some food. We found a small restau­rant that was open late, so we thought we’d give it a shot. It turns out that ravi­oli was some­thing I could have made bet­ter in Prague, and Horas meat­balls were rid­dled with bones. We were not impressed, but, know­ing that Rome is sup­pose to be known for spec­tac­u­lar food, we decided to do some research and find a great restau­rant with rea­son­able prices. We found a review in the New York Times called “Da I 2 Cic­cioni”, which started you off with a plate of bread, beans, toma­toes, and a bot­tle of wine. After­words, we were served the first main course, a plate of pasta, which was then fol­lowed by the sec­ond main course, salad and chicken, and finally some bis­cuit. Oh, and the wine was home­made, and almost lim­it­less. All of this for about twenty-five Euros, which is a good price con­sid­er­ing the amount of food, and the expen­sive­ness of Rome itself.

Fan­tas­tic food

I had no idea what to expect out of the nightlife in Rome, but I was pleas­antly sur­prised. In our search, we found a ton of out­door bars were there are many peo­ple who sit and chill on a cou­ple drinks. After­words, we found an Irish bar, headed inside and ended up meet­ing a ton of stu­dents, both Ital­ian and Amer­i­can on exchange. We also hap­pened to meet a cou­ple of older guys from Lon­don who we chilled with, and they also bought us a cou­ple of beers. It was a fun night. One of the things I regret was not going on the Pub Crawl. I didn’t go because of how hard the one in Ams­ter­dam sucked, but after trav­el­ing for weeks, one of the things every­one tells me who has been to Rome was that the Pub Crawl was some­thing not to be missed. Dis­ap­point­ing, but Rome was one of my favorite Euro­pean cities, I’ll do the crawl the next time I’m here, which is hope­fully very soon.

Rome in all its glory