I'm actually still in Italy for another week, but since we have such a long trip and I tend to write a lot I figured I would post my trip report in sections. So here is Ischia. Warning: I was an English major, I tend to ramble and this is very stream of consciousness as I'm also keeping it as my own travel journal. :)
Wednesday 8/4
We took the 2:20pm flight out of Seattle on Lufthansa, and we felt like we needed to ge tto the airport really early due to Covid and uncertainty on what the check-in process would look like… turns out we arrived before check-in even opened so we waited at the counter for awhile, and then all we needed to do was show our vaccination cards. Still glad we got there early so we didn’t end up at the back of the line, but we were maybe a little overzealous especially since we weren’t even checking a bag.
Thursday 8/5
We landed in Frankfurt around 9am on Thursday. The flight was fine although neither Nick or I slept a wink. In addition to just generally not being able to sleep on flights, this one was quite noisy--lots of people awake watching shows, playing music out loud to try and soothe babies, babies crying, etc. There was sort of a weird vibe about it, hard to explain. I wasn’t feeling great, but was keeping it together until about midway through our 5 hour layover. We spent the time in the Lufthansa lounge, and at one point I went to the bathroom and started to feel dizzy and lightheaded. I think this was a byproduct of exhaustion and dehydration, but it spiked my anxiety, my heartrate was rising, it was a pretty awful feeling. I tried to keep it together as much as I could because Nick’s anxiety can sometimes feed off of mine, but there was a moment where I really thought I might need medical care in Germany and wouldn’t be getting on the plane to Naples. I couldn’t eat, I was so anxious and nauseous even though we had barely eaten a thing in 24 hours (the food on Lufthansa was pretty awful).
Needless to say, we did get on the plane to Naples and I managed to rest my eyes a bit before we landed. Seamless entering into Italy since we were already stamped into the EU, there were no additional checks. We hopped in a cab outside the airport and headed to our accommodation, B&B MediNaples down by the port. That cab ride was… interesting to say the least. I have enver experienced driving like that before even in Mexico. But, we made it, and we promptly crashed for about an hour. I know you’re “not supposed” to do that to beat jetlag but we were dead on our feet and I was still feeling awful. We set an alarm and dragged ourselves out of bed to go to dinner at La Lazzarra. It was such a cute place and we ordered some amazing pizza, but unfortunately my nausea returned and I wasn’t able to eat much--I’m pretty sure the restaurant staff thought we were nuts when they saw how much food we left uneaten, but I just couldn’t do it. We headed back and completely crashed, I think we slept for 10+ hours and it was some of the deepest sleep I’ve ever recorded on my watch.