Erin Miller

One of my greatest friends, Caitlyn, just flew out from Colorado to spend her Spring break in Italy. We met in Rome, and then traveled to Naples and Capri before returning to Perugia. We spent the first night visiting the Trevi Fountain. The fountain lights are beautiful but the place was packed with tourists, even during the off-season. We threw coins over our shoulders into the fountain and made our wishes. Hopefully the fact that the coins were American quarters (and truly not worth any European money)doesn’t mean that our wishes won’t work. At the fountain we spoke to two Italians who were about to finish University. But they said that “Italy ci chiama” (Italy called) and they have to serve in the military for a period of time once they graduate. They seemed less than thrilled with the arrangement. Italy recently held its regional elections. Because it’s Italy, and slightly illogical from time to time, it doesn’t hold its regional and national elections during the same year, so the national elections won’t take place until the spring of 2006. Anyway, the regional elections showed a strong and surprising move to the left, away from Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party. Word
on the street is that Berlusconi will pull all Italian troops out of Iraq
prior to the national elections in a year if he has any desire to maintain his
position as prime minister. Thus, most Italians expect their troops home
within a year.
After our night in Rome, Caitlyn and I traveled to Napoli (Naples). Naples is
the third largest and most densely populated Italian city, and you can feel it,
it’s a true “casino” (Italians use the term to mean crazy place). Cars and
people are everywhere. We escaped the city and traveled to Pompeii our first
day. We ate pizza in Napoli for dinner. Napoli is the birthplace of pizza.
Several of the pizzerias are marked as “vero pizza napolitano” (true Napolian
pizza) it indicates that the pizza was prepared and cooked according to
traditional standards. We ate at the same pizzeria that President Bill Clinton
visited, and it was GOOD. Our second day we traveled to the island of Capri.
We managed to meet up with a middle-aged Italian couple who showed us how to hop the closed gates to get down to the beeches. They showed us the path which led to a beech that costs 2500 Euros a day to sit on. (So, that’s what the
Mafia does with its money…) We sat on the rocks across from the beech, drank
a Pina Colada and ate a wonderful lunch in the sun.
We spent our remaining three days in Perugia drinking beers on the sun-
drenched steps of our Duomo and visiting a few of the famous sights. We saw
the Museum of the City Walls (cooler than it sounds), the old papal fort, a
3000 year old Etruscan well, and a painting by Raphael. I struggled to fit all
of the culinary delicacies of the region into the available meals, with all of
the pizza, pasta, cheese, bread, oil, wine, gelato, and chocolate filled
crepes.