We flew from Athens to Naples on Friday and ended up spending 3 hours searching for our hotel. We caught the bus to the central square and we were told by our travel agent that the hotel was 50m from there. We had a good look around and on our voucher it had a picture of a castle… we couldn’t see any castles! So we got directions then we walked and walked with our suitcases over the cobbled stone paths for a few kms until we got to what was in the picture. We took one look at the castle and realised it was a tourist attraction not a hotel. We decided we needed to get back to where we originally got off the bus. So we squished on a bus with our suitcases and had a little drama and after that everyone was willing to help us so we finally got given the right directions and thank god they didn’t look at the picture and direct us back to the castle. We ended up walking about 15km with our suitcases that day.

The next day we didn’t exactly have to see Naples again because we had seen everything while we were lost so we continued to Pompeii by train where we met an Aussie family who told us that the Pompeii ruins were actually open even though they had that they were closed on the website due to the May day holiday. It was good that they were open because we wouldn’t have had anything to do.

Pompeii is really nice even though it was more ruins and we ate the best Italian pizza for dinner. I could eat it (even though I’m allergic to wheat) because the wheat over here doesn’t seem to be as bad as it is in Australia.

We left Pompeii after we walked back to the train station with our suitcases and Kelsey’s suitcase couldn’t handle the cobbled paths any longer and the wheel broke off. We had a quick visit to Sorrento on our way back to Naples and then caught another train to Rome. By this stage it was night time and we were all worn out so we went straight to bed. Independent travel really is tiring and all you seem to do is walk but it does have a lot of benefits and I think if I was to do it again it would be better to have a few more days in each place.

I saw Rome in 1 day – Vatican City, Trevi Fountain, the Colloseum and had a good walk around the city. The Sistine Chapel was really great, it would be one of the highlights of the trip for me. We said goodbye to Katrina, Kevin and Kelsey because we were doing Italy faster than them and we won’t see them again until we are back in Australia.

The countryside around Florence is beautiful. Florence and Venice are really nice cities and have very unique shops. Florence is still Mums favourite place. We got out of the train station in Venice, took one look and our jaws just dropped haha. It was nothing like I expected and mum thought we were staying on mainland so “We’ll just catch a taxi” wasn’t going to happen because there are no cars or roads. We had to get a boat to the right area and we still had no idea where we were staying so we looked around and found a guy who was a porter taxi so he took our luggage while we walked behind, first time I’ve gotten a taxi and still had to walk haha. Good thing because we would never have found it by ourselves. Most Italian hotels don’t have lifts either so we had to lug the suitcases up 4 flights of stairs.

I remembered the travel agent mentioning about how we had to get back on at a different train station for  our trip to Vienna so I thought it would be good to check it out before we leave. I had a look on the map and Villach station didn’t exist so we asked at the hotel and we were told it was in Austria. Haha our travel agent made a mistake with it but when he gave me tickets I bought up that I was surprised that the train ride was a lot shorter because when I checked it out it was 7 hours and it was only 4 hours on the ticket but I never thought to look into it more. When we found out we had no way of getting to Vienna we went back to the train station and had to get tickets to Villach. Most Italians don’t speak english very well and our ticket was in Italian so we were very unsure whether we were catching a bus or train because it had both on the ticket and we were in seat numbers 73 which didnt make sense for a bus yet the man pointed us to the bus stop so we asked 6 more people and they were all very unhelpful but we decided the bus stop was the best bet. Next morning we got to the bus stop and waited then when a bus came we asked  if we were in the right place and he told us it was a train ticket. It was 9.10 and the ticket was for 9.20 so we had a mad rush back to the train station which was about 1km away and had to get over a lot of steps. Got back there and they didn’t have any trains to Villach so we asked again and we were pointed back to the bus stop and it was 9.16 so we rushed back across the stairs and I just left mum behind and ran really fast and when I got there I found an intercity bus that was just leaving and it turned out to be the one we had the ticket for so we made it and it was such a relief. By the way it was a double-decker bus so seats with high numbers did make sense after all. In Villach we got onto our connecting train and enjoyed our 1st class seats. Austria is incredibly beautiful. At Vienna we got off and by this stage it was 6pm so we got food, asked for directions to our hotel and were told to catch another train and then we missed the right station because all the stations had similar spelling. Got off at the next station then had to walk back a little way then we found an english sign with the right directions to our hotel so we eventually made it then they told us there was a dilema with their hotel and said they were upgrading us to a 5 star hotel and paying for the best room, a taxi, food and drinks for us. After the day we had it was so fantastic and very relaxing. We are both glad to be finished with travelling independently for a few weeks. Tonight we start our tour and spend another 2 nights in Vienna.

I have uploaded some photos on Facebook for anyone interested.