Backpacking in Italy the Plane

Backpacking in Italy

The plane arrived in Rome at eleven at night. Without a clue where they were staying, Toby and Dylan figured out how to take a bus into town and got off where the Lonely Planet said there was a hostel. The brothers lugged their backpacks up the narrow stairwell and were dismayed when the receptionist, an attractive Italian female, said they were full. Exhausted, neither Toby nor Dylan had enough energy to lift up their packs let alone descend the steps into the chaos that was Rome.

You need a place to stay?" An Aussie voice broke the disenchanted silence. "Hi, I'm Brian, pleased to meet you. Where you from?"

His thick accent disarmed the two American brothers, who meekly mentioned their being from Seattle while shaking Brian's extended hand.

I know about this new hostel, it's on the other side of town. it's fairly hard to find if you don't have a map but I'll tell you what. I'm headed over there right now to meet this girl I know who's staying there. We're also going out for drinks now if you feel like coming. Hopefully they have a few dorm beds. Since it's new I don't think it's crowded and it hasn't been mentioned yet in the guidebooks."

Toby was the first to smile and say "Sure!" The recent high school graduates got up, set their lumpy packs back on their shoulders, and hobbled down the stairs. Toby made sure to make eye contact with the pretty Italian girl at the front desk and was pleased that she smiled back at him. Buona Notte! she called after him.

The three guys decided to share a taxi since between them the fare would not be much more than hopping on public transport. With their bags off, Toby and Dylan relaxed a bit and chatted with the Aussie guy in the cab. Brian had been all over the world: to India, Pakistan, Thailand, South Africa, Chile, Japan, and even Cuba. The American kids, suddenly feeling young, listened with awe to the stories Brian told. Their first backpacking trip was off to a good start. That night they drank until dawn with their new friends from the hostel including Brian, and spent the next four days in one of the most incredible cities they would ever lay eyes on. From the Roman Forum to the Spanish Steps, from the Vatican to the Pantheon, Toby and Dylan saw all the sites and each day after a two hour nap they hit the nightspots and went dancing with other people staying at their hostel.

On day five, the brothers hopped aboard a train headed northeast to Venice. The long, grueling ride involved several cans of beer and cheap sandwiches to keep their stomachs happy and their brains occupied in between borrowing each others' iPods to trade tunes. When they finally arrived at Santa Lucia station, they disembarked and saw a site that would forever stay stenciled on their eyes: Venice. The canals glimmered. As soon as they stepped outside of the station they noticed the complete lack of automobiles. There were no streets, and barely any sidewalks to speak of. Venice was literally a city of canals and it was far more mind-blowing a sight to behold than any photographs could have suggested. After the noise level of Rome, the silence of the Venetian canals was welcome.

Just as before, though, the two inexperienced travelers hadn't booked a hostel in advance. They headed straight for a tourism office that phoned a couple of cheap hotels for them to check availability. "You're lucky you're here in the off-season," the woman said without a smile in a thick Italian accent. "There is a room, for eighty euros. But it is on the Lido."

The what?" Toby asked.

Isn't there anything cheaper?" asked Dylan, who suddenly shed his usual shyness after hearing the price of a single room.

The tourism office worker rolled her eyes and found no humor in the ignorant American boys. She instead drew out a map of Venice without saying a word and with a highlighter marked where they were a few footsteps from Santa Lucia train station and then on the other side of the large sheet of paper circled the Lido too. The island might as well have been Crete for all Dylan knew. The map was a maze of brown and blue, Venice's waterways standing out as the salient feature of the region's aqueous terrain. The long, thin strip of land that was the Lido reminded the two teens of Long Island. They went there last summer with their parents. Lido would remind them nothing of New York except for the food: the brothers feasted on typical tourist-friendly Italian grub in a pizzeria next door to their hotel. Never mind that everything was overpriced in Venice; the place was magical and the boys could almost feel themselves maturing as they wandered the streets of Venice getting lost, only to find their way back to a water taxi station and do it all over again the next day. With the throngs of tourists from all over the world as well as a flock of a hundred pigeons, Toby and Dylan shared Venice's Piazza San Marco and gawked at the city's timeless splendor.