In May 2025, Cal and Kate had a vacation to Italy in the books. They took a lot of pictures and Callahan even kept a journal to share with me, documenting their adventures. You can read his recap below ...
Italy Trip, Rome/Positano/Naples
May 4 & 5 (Monday & Tuesday)
We flew out at 9pm from SLC to Amsterdam, connecting flight from Amsterdam to Rome. First flight was 9.5 hours, and the second flight was 2 hours with a 2 hour layover in between. We arrived in Rome around 7pm on Monday night so it was seemed almost like 24 hours of travel, but it was only around 14 hours because Rome is 8 hours ahead. After we took a taxi from the airport to our Air BnB, we wandered the streets a bit and got dinner. I got fettuccine Alfredo that was pretty good and Kate got a pesto pasta.
May 6 (Wednesday)
We didn’t have anything set in stone this day because we wanted to walk around the city and get ourselves more acquainted. We started at Trevi Fountain, got some croissants and OJ right by it. This was around 8:30am, and it was already pretty busy. But we did walk by it again around noon and it was even more crowded. After Trevi, we walked to the Pantheon and stopped by a church along the way. The church buildings don’t do anything for me, but in a construction sense it is pretty amazing the detail in the paintings and the architecture in general. The church buildings generally spook me out more though. After that, we went to the Spanish Steps.
We went back to the AirBnB for a bit to chill, and take a nap. Then we went back out to a lot of the same sites to see them at night. We went to Osteria Da Fortunata for dinner, this was probably the best overall dinner of the trip. I got Fettuccine Ragu and Kate got the carbonara. Both dishes were very good, but for dessert we got a slice of cheesecake and it was so, so, so good! We went and got some gelato from Giolitti (my favorite gelato place that we tried) then walked back to Trevi Fountain to see it a night. It was very busy once again and they do small “light shows” every 15 minutes or so. We stayed and watch one light show, then went back to our AirBnB
May 7 (Thursday)
Before we started our tour for the Colosseum, Kate and I were walking around and a photographer asked if we wanted to do a free photoshoot (we could buy the pictures later if we wanted to) so we did that for 20 minutes before our tour.
Our tour guide had a pretty thick Irish accent which made it difficult to understand a lot of what he was saying. I think Kate was able to understand more, but I think I understood 50% or less of all the words out of his mouth lol. The Colosseum was pretty cool, it would’ve been a better experience if I understood the tour guide. Got gelato this night from Gold Ice, still very good but I thought Giolitti was slightly better. Most times I’m getting some sort of Carmel flavor for my gelato. (Later in the trip I got more fruity ones)
May 8 (Friday)
We did a cooking class in Rome where we made 2 different pastas and tiramisu. There were 10 total people in the class, all spoke English but none of them were from the US. In pairs of two, we all made some dough for the pasta, just had to measure our flour and water and mix it together. All that dough got mixed together in the end and Chef Max cooked the pasta as we started to make the tiramisu. The ravioli was really good, and the spaghetti was dished up with a pesto sauce that we helped make as well.
Dinner at Roma Sparita, really good pasta in a parmesan bowl. We only got 1 and shared it, but we should each got our own because it was that good. We branched out and tried the grilled lamb chops as our 2nd dish to share, and that was a mistake. The lamb had no flavor and was charred along the whole exterior.
May 9 (Saturday)
We checked out of our AirBnB in Rome and took a train to Naples. Kate booked this train a while ago, and it was a nice, comfortable ride. We had reserved seats, the seats were bigger than your standard airplane seats. Private car from Naples to Positano, our driver played “Ghetto” by Akon and then “No One” by Alicia Keys right after. Seems like a good start to this part of our trip. I’m glad I didn’t have to do any driving in Italy. These drivers are crazy. In busy areas it would be really difficult because there are so many pedestrians and motorcyclists, and they all kind do whatever they want and just trust that the cars won’t hit them lol. There were multiple moments on our car ride to Positano where Kate and I would look at each other after our driver did something sketchy.
The town is very walkable, road are very narrow and seems like the roads can get backed up easily because of pedestrians. Walking from our AirBnB, down to the beach was pretty easy and only took us about 10 minutes. It’s all downhill and/or down stairs. The walk back up to the AirBnB is slightly more difficult, but it just helped us get our steps in.
Positano and Naples are famous for their lemons and limoncello (alcohol). I don’t care too much to try the limoncello, but I am going to try the lemon sorbet dessert that they serve in a scooped out lemon. You can buy them at basically anywhere that serves food or snacks, and they are really good.
May 10 (Sunday)
We rented an umbrella and two loungers out by the beach of Positano and spent most of our day out there. They were rented for the whole day so we started by laying out in the sun for a few hours, we got in the water for a little bit once I was too hot. It was only high 60’s, low 70s our whole trip, but it felt very hot when the sun was out. The water in Positano was very cold so we weren’t in it long. I always forget how salty the ocean is, so once I put my head underwater I was ready to get out. Getting all that salt in your eyes and mouth is no fun.
We got lunch at a restaurant names Lulu’s and got some fish and chips. Everything in Positano is really expensive, but the fish and chips were only 14 Euros and they were pretty good. At this point we were pretty much over pasta and pizza. We ate our lunch by the beach and laid out in the sun some more. Kate really loves to lay out in the sun while on vacation which is fine with me. I thought I was going to get pretty sunburnt, but I think I put just enough sunscreen on.
We went to dinner at Restaurant Bruno and had an overpriced meal. (Everything in Positano is expensive unfortunately) For most dinners we have been sharing 3 different dishes, usually one appetizer and 2 other dishes. For the appetizer we got a chicken Caesar salad and for our other dishes we got gnocchi, then we got “Meat rolls, filled with cheese and an onion sauce.” The gnocchi was good, and the meat was fine but it didn’t have much flavor and 75% of the plate were onions. There were only 4 “rolls” of meat.
May 11 (Monday)
Got on a ferry at 9:30 to go to Capri. Ferry ride was about an hour, much smaller than the ferries we would ride in Seattle. We did a kayak tour of some caves along the island, at 11am. We were very late to our tour because the ferry arrived slightly late and we were waiting for a few other ferries to leave before we could dock.
Once we got off the boat we started walking to our kayak tour, which was on the other side of the island, lol. So our whole walk was up a bunch of stairs or walking up an incline, until we got close to the top, then we started going downhill and down a bunch of stairs to the beachfront on the other side of the island. It was quite a walk, and since we were already running late we were kinda stressed. I didn’t wear my Fitbit this day because I thought I’d forget to take it off when we did the kayak tour, but I’m wishing I wore it just to know the distance we walked.
We got to our tour about 25 minutes late, but it was no issue because only 2 other people signed up for the tour at this time. We knew the weather wasn’t going to be great, it showed clouds basically all day, but we were not expecting rain. We got out on the water in our kayak and the water wasn’t too cold so it seemed like it was going to be a good time. We saw 2 caves before it started raining. The ride back to the shore felt like forever because it was raining pretty good and we were freezing lol. Once we got back to the shore we dried off, but were still pretty cold. We did not prepare very well for the possibility of rain. We didn’t have any other plans in Capri and both of us were ready to go back to our AirBnB in Positano.
I’m writing my recap for this as we are on the ferry back to Positano and Kate is asleep next to me. I didn’t expect her to sleep on the way back because it’s kinda hard to sleep on a boat in my opinion. (And I’m a very good sleeper lol)
The NBA Playoffs have been going on the whole time we’ve been in Italy. The NBA makes it very difficult to watch games internationally. Even though I pay for YouTube TV, I can’t watch it when out of the US, which I didn’t know until I tried to watch games in Italy.
I found a bar in Positano that was streaming the Denver/OKC Game 4 and I stayed there the whole time to watch it lol. Italy is 8 hours ahead of SLC, so the game was going on at 1:30PM in Denver (and SLC) but it was 9:30pm for me. I was so happy when I stumbled upon that bar and was able to watch the full game.
May 12 (Tuesday)
Today we left Positano via our private driver at noon. We checked out of our AirBnB at 10 and spent our last two hours in Positano by the beach soaking up the sun. Our drive back to Naples was around an hour and a half. Hard to sleep in the car when driving out of Positano because the roads are so windy.
Naples was the city I was least impressed by, at least when comparing it to Rome and Positano. It just seemed gross, loud and busy all the time. Our AirBnB in Naples was pretty nice though. This was our first AirBnB to have Netflix which we were excited about. We weren’t able to relax and watch much tv at our last two AirBnBs.
Our first meal in Naples was a pizzeria that was very close by. Most of the pizza tasted the same to me and I wasn’t super happy with it. All of it was good, I was just expecting it to be better to be honest. After we ate, we explored the city a little bit, got some small desserts if we saw something that looked good. Kate got a cup that had sweet bread and chocolate in it, hoping to fill her chocolate craving but it did not, the top of the bread must’ve been soaked in some sort of liquor, so the whole thing was disgusting. I took one bite and was repulsed lol. We also sampled the famous “limoncello” alcohol this same night, and seriously just one sip of it made my stomach turn.
... an assortment of the edibles ;)
May 13 (Wednesday)
Today we took a train from Naples to Pompeii for a guided tour that started at noon. We got to the train station around 10am to get a ticket and make sure we knew where we were going. This train was much more crowded and less comfortable than the train we took from Rome to Naples. The train had far fewer seats, no reserved seating and was much more like a Subway. Kate and I had to stand for our whole ride, which was about 30-40 minutes.
We got to Pompeii a bit early so we ate at a restaurant right outside the train station. We both got a form of chicken sandwich (at this point I wanted something that wasn’t pizza or pasta) I thought it was pretty good.
Our tour guide for Pompeii was MUCH better than the one we had for the Colosseum in Rome. She still had a good Italian accent, but it was easier to understand than our previous guides Irish accent. Our guide’s name was Rosanna and she was very friendly and kept getting stopped or interrupted by other guides during our tour. It seemed like she knew people everywhere we stopped lol. She was very good at enunciating which made her easier to understand.
Once our tour was over, we wandered around Pompeii a little longer by ourselves, but at that point I was ready to get off my feet. We got back on the train and headed back to our AirBnB once again. Not much to say about this train ride, it was similar to the ride there. Train loaded with people, most of them are standing, lots of them have luggage with them. This train seemed to “stop and go” more than the last which frustrated a lot of the passengers.
Our final dinner was pizza, once again. I wanted to get something else, but didn’t have much luck looking at menu’s of restaurants that were close to our AirBnB. Kate was pretty happy with the pizza so I didn’t have an issue going one last time.
Then it was back to the AirBnB to pack up because our flight was at 6am the next morning. We had a taxi booked for 4am to take us to the airport for our long travel day home.
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