This may sound a bit daft from someone who’s recently turned 23, but I have just returned from my first holiday abroad without my parents. Up until my mid teens I was very fortunate to have been taken all over the world on family holidays. We visited lots of interesting places including Sydney, San Francisco, Toronto, Spain, France and Belgium. However, when I went off to University my priorities changed and I become more interested in coming back to Orkney to spend my holidays seeing family, friends and working at Radio Orkney than I was on jetting off somewhere exotic. As a result I don’t think I’ve been abroad since I was about 17.
After quite a bit of cajoling and persuasion from my girlfriend, I decided to bite the bullet and change this. A good friend of mine from work was also keen to go away with his girlfriend so we thought it would be fun for the four of us to go together. Having agreed that we all enjoy Italian food, we settled on Naples as our destination and booked flights and 4 nights in a hotel, online.
I was pretty anxious during the run up to our departure. I’m an inherent worrier at the best of times, but going abroad with all the potential problems you might face stressed me out. Happily, we arrived at the hotel in glorious sunshine after an entertaining taxi journey from the airport. The hotel staff were very friendly and the room was lovely.
Before we left, I’d noticed a news story on the BBC website about how Naples is currently struggling with a backlog of uncollected rubbish piled high all over the city. During the taxi ride we saw quite a few giant heaps of trash on pavements and street corners so I asked the driver what he made of it. In a strong Italian accent he said; “It’s very bad. The president is doing nothing about it. The rubbish is better than Berlusconi!”
On the second day we decided to take an open top bus tour of the city, and along the sea front past the various marinas. This was great as the bus provided a lofty vantage point for us to view our new surroundings. I must admit I often take the mickey when I see tourists in London going about on similar bus tours, but it’s actually a great way to get your bearings in a new place, and have all the main attractions brought to your attention. I think its easy to be amused, if not annoyed by tourists getting in the way when you are a local going about your business, so it was quite enlightening to have the boot on the other foot so to speak.
The following day saw us take a very run down and heavily graffiti adorned train to a town at the base of the volcano, Mount Vesuvius. From there we haggled down the price of a coach journey, which carried us up 800m of very narrow and windy road to just below the summit. This journey made a couple of my companions feel a bit queasy, but I loved watching the coach drivers negotiate round impossible bends as well as other coaches. We then walked the last 200m to the crater summit where our efforts were rewarded with a breathtaking view. Having caught our breaths and filled our pockets with pumice stone we began the decent where yet another mozzarella and tomato pizza was devoured with gusto.
The highlight of the holiday for all of us was a boat trip around the island of Capri. It’s a stunning outcrop of steep cliffs and trees jutting out of beautiful pale blue sea. It amused me that the thing I enjoyed most was a trip on a boat not too dissimilar to many that take tourists around Orkney.
We were sad to leave, but as the saying goes, there’s no place like home. Whether that’s London or Orkney, it’s always nice to get back. It’s just a shame there was no space in my case for the Italian weather, but that’s budget airlines for you.
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