Italy

Italy: Genova, the Coast, Rome at Night, Milan

Italy begins for me after a long travel day. Trains stacked on trains. Borders passing quietly through windows. By the time we arrive, it is late, and exhaustion makes everything feel sharper.

We arrive in Milan at night and stay in the biggest hostel I have ever seen. One room holds more than thirty people. My bunk is so high that if I sit up too fast, I hit my head on the ceiling. It is chaotic and loud and exactly what broke travelers end up with. In the morning, we walk into the city and emerge from the metro directly into the Duomo. Pigeons everywhere. Stone everywhere. The cathedral feels like something grown instead of built.

Milan is brief. Just enough to orient ourselves. Just enough to understand that Italy already feels different.

From there, we head to Genoa, and this is where Italy really begins.

We are staying with Caia and her family. A real Italian family. A real home. Not a hostel. Not a hotel. Her mom picks us up in a tiny car, speaking no English, smiling the whole time, and somehow communicating everything we need to know without words. Within hours, we are eating pasta that redefines what pasta even is. Walnut pesto. Bowtie noodles. Food that tastes like it belongs exactly where it is.

Genoa feels lived in. Narrow streets. Laundry hanging overhead. Small bakeries that sell pizza instead of pastries. Life happening at ground level. One day, we drive to the coast and eat seafood pasta with white wine at a casual seaside restaurant. It is my first time drinking wine like that, slowly, in the place it belongs, and it changes something in my brain forever.

We bike. We walk. We eat. We stay out late. One night turns into a party with homemade sangria and beer pong, Italian style. Aiden learns how to roll his first cigarette. Someone laughs too hard. Someone plays music. It is messy and perfect.

We hike the Cinque Terre coastline on a brutally hot day. Five miles between villages, cliffs dropping into water so blue it does not feel real. At one point, I slip and fall ten feet into bushes below the trail. I come up laughing and bleeding and fully alive. The villages feel unreal. Pastel buildings stacked over small harbors. Fishing boats floating quietly. It is postcard Italy, but it is also sweaty and loud and real.

Manarola becomes one of those places I know will live in my memory forever. We swim. We lay in the sun. Aiden gets the worst sunburn of his life from his backpack straps. We eat slowly. No one rushes.

Eventually, we move south.

Rome hits differently.

We arrive late and hungry and sit on the curb sharing a massive pizza directly in front of the glowing arches of the Colosseum. It is my first Italian meal completely on my own, and I am eating it in front of one of the most famous structures on Earth. It feels surreal and grounding at the same time.

Rome is alive in a way no other city is. Not because it is loud, but because history refuses to stay buried. Every corner reminds you that power once lived here. That decisions made centuries ago still shape the present.

We walk everywhere. Trevi Fountain. Spanish Steps. Pantheon. Roman Forum. Free water fountains flowing cold and clean from sculpted stone. Rome takes care of you if you pay attention.

We go inside the Colosseum one day without a tour and walk behind a guided group, absorbing knowledge for free. Broke traveler behavior. It works.

One night ends with running through the streets after a bar mishap and laughing harder than we should. Rome allows that too.

The Vatican becomes its own day. Its own weight. Its own silence. I leave full and quiet.

Italy ends slowly. Train windows. Hills. Light shifting across stone. I realize that Italy is not loud in memory. It is textured. It stays with you in tastes, colors, and moments you replay without trying.

Italy teaches me how to slow down without stopping.