where is memmi?

Days 19, 20: Bologna Unlike with Napoli, I had zero expectations for Bologna. I knew that I wanted to stop somewhere between Napoli and Milano, so I pretty much threw a dart on the map and it landed on Bologna. Now the bad thing about travelling like this is that you have no way to know in advance whether you're going to like some place or not, and I very much wished I had spent these days in Napoli. Bologna is pretty and all, but there's not that much to see - and honestly, I'm not an endurance athlete so walking around for hours every day for weeks was starting to take its toll - so I mostly sat around licking gelato on one piazza. No regrets though, and it was so hot, hotter than in the south,  that that was the most enjoyable activity anyway. Well, never regret seeing extra places :)

Days 17, 18: Napoli To say I had high expectations for Napoli is a violent understatement. I expected her to be The Thing. Everywhere I had told people I was coming here, they - people from France, Genova, Sardinia, Sicilia - told me it's amazing. Meraviglia. La città più bella del mondo. Tutto che c'è è a Napoli.  And Napoli delivered. If it was difficult to put in words my feelings towards Palermo, it's impossible to do so with Napoli. I am in awe.

Currently sipping coffee and charging my phone in a cafe, mostly waiting for time to pass by so I can get to my ferry. I'm exhausted - last night was chaotic trying to find a place to sleep while in the harbour at 11pm and then at 2am trying to find a way to get to Napoli the following day. Again, things would have been a lot more difficult without other people's help. Turns out the most important phrase of all is "I don't know what I would have done without you." Yet to prove myself, I want to mention that I got the help I needed because I reached out to the right people at the right time and came up with solutions myself. See, Mom and Dad? I'm out here. I'm doing ok. And I'm clever enough. I'm going to miss this a lot. It feels good to pass by places and cities knowing I'll soon be somewhere else again. Not worrying about anything that might be going on at home, because I'm too far to help anyway. I haven't seen myself in a mirror...

Day 16: ??? This is not quite what I meant when I thought I'd love to spend longer in Palermo. Due to unfortunate circumstances (read: ones that I'm too embarrassed to admit publicly, but including and not limited to preferring wine to sleep) I missed my bus to Napoli. So. Yeah. We'll see. I'm pretty upset, to be honest, because this cuts my stay in Napoli to only two days and I have SO been looking forward to it. Then again, this gives me 1) more time to splurge on Sicilian delicacies, and 2) a good excuse to return to the south as soon as I can because I barely saw Napoli! So. Could be worse.

Days 13, 14, 15: Palermo (For some reason this is all bolded and I can't undo it) It's been hard trying to gather my thoughts and write about Palermo, because to write you need to detach a little and the city is so immersive. I love southern Italy and the second I arrived here I loved it even more than I ever thought I would. (Bye, y'all!) Palermo is a loud, noisy city. Every morning you wake up to the sound of huge church bells, or kids playing and shouting outside, or the huge sea birds crowing, or all of them at once. In the wide streets with people going from one shop to another or looking at sights or chatting you hear laughter, cars honking at each other or at women or just for the fun of it I assume, the neighs from the horse carriages running by. In the smaller streets and alleyways full of street vendors cars, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians all in the same single lane attempt to move to their own directions resulting in a mix of screams, honks and c...

Day 12: Cagliari Super tired. Checked out the beach near the city and met some cool people. Took the ferry, had fun. There's so much in my mind about Sardinia and Italy and the sea and everything, but I'm way too fucking tired to type on this phone. I'll write a longer and more thoughtful post about those topics later. ♡

Day 11: Cagliari Today I decided to stop doing loser stuff like socialising and did some proper touristing with a camera in my hand. Cagliari, as it turns out, is the capital of Sardinia and so the first bigger city on this part of the trip. Tunisia is closer than Rome, but Cagliari is still the most Italian place I've seen on the island so far: piazzas with people sitting outside cafes, little alleyways with shops, parks, big churches etc. In a way Cagliari really reminded me of Rome, even though with one huge difference for the better - Rome is located between mountains so the heat and smog is terrible, but the sea breeze made Cagliari pleasantly "cool" and fresh at +31 c. Anyway, I checked out the old cathedral (with a Roman exterior and a baroque interior - always shocks me), the archaeological museum (which was incredible) and the botanic gardens (palm trees!). Very beautiful places, I'd post some pictures but I'm currently on the ferry and the internet ...

Day 9 and 10: Oristano People have always been my number one interest, and especially humans as social, interactive animals. I love arts, culture, language: all the ways humans communicate with each other fascinate me. When you're travelling you connect with people in different ways than you do at home.The other tourists I"ve met I've made genuine friends with in a short amount of time, two more or less lost people in an all new place sharing experiences and stories is a setting where small talk is passed quickly. The generosity and helpfulness of locals here in Sardinia on the other hand is unbelievable: the general friendliness of everyone you chat with, be it an ice cream vemdor or a silver-haired old man in a park, and the astonishing way in which people will go out if their way to help a traveller. These last few days especially I owe a huge debt of gratitude to many people I have been lucky to meet. The British guy I had lunch with - twice - who let me ride ...

Day 8: Porto Torres + Stintino Where Olbia was kind of lame, Porto Torres is actually extremely charming. Lots of little streets and piazzas with cafès, a cute little marketplace and a church. It's also located right by the sea, and at night when you sleep with the windows open in the heat you can hear thelarge sea birds crowing. Honestly, they made the weirdest sounds, like I never thought a bird could make, they sounded almost like slowed-down human screams in a rollercoaster  Bizarre. Regardless of how charming this town is, it's not big, so after walking around it thrice in an hour I decided to take the only bus of the day to Stintino, which is a town/area located in the northwestern cape point of Sardinia and known for its crystal clear waters and gorgeous beaches. And the advertisements weren't lying, the place was absolutely stunning, and it was easy to spend the five hours before the only return bus of the day arrived. Now I know it's a stereo...

Day 7: travelling Today I moved horizontally across northern Sardinia, from Olbia to Porto Torres. The train took a couple hours. Rural Sardinia is really charming. Houses had pigs and chickens in their backyards, foresty areas had herds of sheep wandering around, and on large fields cows were grazing on the dry, yellow grass. Hard to say but it looked like it hadn't rained for days.  Rough. I'm really liking Sardinia. It's very cosy for someone coming from the Finnish quasi-countryside, even though I do generally like cities more, because I love people. But there's the thing - here it's super easy to make connections with people and babble about this and that with them, something that rarely happens in big cities. Or it might just be Italian culture. Looking forward to finding that out once I get to the big cities of northern Italy...

Day 6: Olbia + Porto Rotondo Just  a brief update before I head to bed - I barely slept at all on the ferry (I wasn't as well equipped as the people with blow up mattresses and pillows and everything, sleeping in the corridors and closed bars and clubs of the boat. It was both a really peaceful and an eerie sight). Today I arrived to Olbia, which is a harbour town in northeastern Sardinia. As it turns out, there was little to see or do as even the only bigger grocery store of the town was closed (during opening hours, with a scribbled "store is close" note on the door) so I decided to spontaneously grab a bus passing by that was heading north to Porto Rotondo. In that bus I also met a really cool American woman, just two years older than me, who was also solo travelling through Italy. Crazy coincidence, right? We both wanted to go swimming so we decided to link up and find the beach together so we could watch each others' stuff on the beach while the other is ...

Day 5: Genova I was too lazy to come up with places to see in Genova, so I just spent most of today wandering around the city without a goal. I like to think of it as city hiking - steadily walking for 4-6 hours enjoying watching the streets, parks, sights and people. It also gives you a nice overview of the city. Based on this brief overview, Genova was a pretty relaxing city. Traffic wasn't insane, the old town was charming, and the harbour beautiful. Kind of wanted to check out the maritime museum, but after 6 hours on my feet already I decided to skip it and head towards the ferry terminal. I'm currently in the ferry towards Sardegna! The ship isn't very big, but otherwise very much like any cruise ship with shops and restaurants. Except you could buy cheaper tickets without getting a cabin, so there are lots of seats and benches around for us cheapskates to spend our night. ;)

Day 4: travelling Currently on a tiny bed in a tiny motel room basking in front of a fan moving the hot air around in an attempt to make the room cooler.  I'm really damn hungry but there's no wayI'm going to try and find my way through that labyrinth of an entrance, search for a store, and come back - at 23, when the alleys of a foreign city were scary enough at 22 when I was coming here. Today was mostly about naneuvering from Nice to Genova. Who knew a 2-hour bus ride would practically be 4 hours? The drive itself was amazing, though - meandering roads through hills by the Mediterranean coastline, little villages lighting up in the distance at dusk... Anyway, the motel is kind of shady. Took me forever to find it because the bus dropped me off in the middle of nowhere and the entrance was actually a restaurant and I had to call them before the owner came out to the piazza to escort me in... and to my room. Apparently this restaurant slash hotel is in some old palac...

Day 3: Nice There's a really wonderful little village on a steep hill near Nice. Inside the castle from the 16th century were little cafès and art galleries, and atop the hill was an old church and my personal favourite, an "exotic garden" which featured amazing cacti and succulents so large and extraordibary I never knew plants like them existed. There were cacti as big as trees. The next stop from there was Nice, which was the kind of city you could spend weeks exploring and not get tired. Beach boulevards, museums, parks, small alleyways... very pictoresque yet lively with street artists and tons of people going about. And not just regulat people, by the way - today was the third time I saw soldiers in full army gear carrying full on assault rifles and patrolling around the streets. It's quite a striking and thought-provoking sight. The traffic in Nice is pretty amusing. Cars come and go pretty spontaneously, lanes seemed to be recommendations,...

Day 2: Monaco Monaco is incredibly lush. Humans and plants seem to live in perfect harmony - I've never seen anything like it before. Plants grow on the street, on walls, on rooftops and pots as well as on the rocky hills and green valleys. Palm trees are everywhere and I've never seen succulents and cacti this large. There's a fig tree in front of the door dropping dozens of small purple fruit on the steps. The water is clear and turquoise. Finnish gardens are cold and barren for most of the year but if the Middle East is anything like this it's clear why gardens were such holy stuff in the Bible.

Day 1: Helsinki  Inside the plane is hot and cramped.  People move their bags, adjust their legs, stretch their backs, plug their ears and get back to their phones. Some look out the windows to the clouds looking like banks of snow, some put on an eye mask and start napping. It's 9 in the morning with the unobstructed sun shining in hot and bright, a Bugs Bunny short is playing on the screens, and the cabin crew starts selling drinks and snacks. Your childhood summer Monday morning. Not sure what this country is that we're flying over right now, but it's very pretty. From air the world looks so nice, raw and authentic: no country borders like in Google maps. I wonder how astronauts feel about this, still above planes. I've had the privilege to fly enough in my life that one could assume the wonder of it has waned off for me. Yet it hasn't. I still feel very space age when the plane takes off despite the fact they've been around and common for decades l...