The Mediterranean

Today was looking to be nothing special. We had a long train ride to Salerno, and that was basically the only plan. After a few big days, I used the journey to catch up on some entries for the journal and get some much-needed rest. The train ride itself was actually pretty cool, taking us through the Italian hills and along the coast. It was a nice change of pace after spending so many days constantly moving around and exploring.

When we arrived at our hotel, we encountered our first real language barrier of the trip. The building manager didn’t speak any English, but between our limited Italian, his limited English, and a healthy reliance on Google Translate, we somehow managed to have a reasonable conversation and get ourselves checked in. After settling in, we headed along the coast towards the beach for our first swim in quite a long time. The beach itself was a little dirty and quite rocky, but we enjoyed the swim nonetheless. The Mediterranean water was incredibly clear, and there were so many fish swimming around that it made the whole experience feel quite different from swimming back home.

Afterwards, we decided that being on the coast meant we absolutely had to get a proper seafood feed. We found some seafood pasta, which did not disappoint, before going for a quick stroll along the main esplanade.

And that was pretty much the whole day. Nothing particularly exciting, but after the chaos of the previous few days, a quiet day of travelling, swimming, eating and resting was probably exactly what we needed.Read more