Italy 2019 Blog

Capri

Intro:

TBC: Welcome everybody this is ThatBeachChic. I'm your host Nia. I wanted to do something special for this particular post that I'm making on Italy and my trip there. But I couldn't do it without a key player, my ride or die, my wingman, my partner in crime, my best friend Demi. Demi, welcome to the show.

(APPLAUSE)

Demi: Good to be here. I’m the first guest star.

TBC: Yes, you're our first guest star first episode. I don't know if I’ll make this into a podcast. I doubt it but I just wanted to do something different like a an interview. But instead of just making an article which you know nowadays people don't really read all that much. People will mostly listen to stuff. So I thought it would be better for people who are interested in my travels and in my website so they can listen to and and article or a travel series maybe I'll make this into a travel series you know what I mean travel series. We’ll see what happens. But anyways thank you for joining us today Demi.

Demi: Glad to be here.

TBC: So she works in the health field. Shout out to all of our health care agents.

Demi: Girl this intro is a whole 3 minutes long!

TBC: yeah that's what it yeah we're going to cut it up.

Demi: We haven’t even talked about Italy!

TBC: We’re going to get there, we're going to get there. This is like the practice promo. This is going to be the blooper HAHA!

Demi: Audience just know when you're going anywhere with Nia, it’s going to be a journey.

TBC: HAHA! Shut up! I tend to be longwinded that's all.

Demi: I'm talking Scenic route!

How We Chose Capri:

TBC: I’m keeping that so yeah so that's our intro welcome to the show um today we're going to be talking about our trip to Italy we went to Italy in May of 2019 right? And it was an amazing experience! We were only there for 3 days but a week’s worth of things happened to us in those 3 days. But we had an adventure and it was great. We had fun. We enjoyed ourselves. We learned a lot of different lessons a lot of survival. I don't recommend watching Taken 1, 2, and 3 before you go, like I did but you know what? It might help you survive. So yeah so let's get into it, Demi. First thing let's talk about how we picked where we went.

Demi: I think I did I just watch a lot of YouTube and I like to watch a lot of Vlogs, Travel Vlogs. So I kept seeing Capri like pop up a lot and it's very small. So the way we came about going to like Italy was just different Vlogs and I remember we already booked our ticket to London or we were like looking into going anyway. And then we saw how cheap it was to go from like London to Italy. It was like less than $100. So we're like, oh we have to go! We're like where are we going to go? And I remember just seeing like a bunch of Vlogs on YouTube of like Italy and Capri in particular. It was like such a beautiful island. I was like yeah let's go there.

I was the person who kind of picked like excursions to do. You were like the logistics, like how are we going to get to places and how are we going to like get from point A to point B? I think that's like how our our flow is when we travel, which is nice. So you need the adventurer to come up with all the cool ideas to do different things and different activities and that's me. And then you need the person who's going to navigate you to get there and that’s Nia.

TBC: That’s me yeah!

Important Papers and Safety!

Demi: I will say like anytime you travel it is very important that you have multiple documents of like important stuff: health insurance passport, photo copies and you put them in different places. Because you just don't know. Like in the event that if you lose something. That passport came in handy when we needed for that last minute hotel stay.

TBC: Which we will talk about. That was the best, most memorable part of the trip. We’ll get there guys!

Demi: That's how we came about like just picking the location. It was just like very spur the moment. We were actually going to Europe for something completely different in a different part. And we were like we've always wanted to go to Italy and we finally had the opportunity. We chose like further south because of the time of year. It was still kind of early so the weather was going to be a hit and miss with like how warm it was going to be. The further south you go the better the chances it was better weather. It wasn't too bad actually. We had like a light jacket on the whole the whole time like a trench coat.

TBC: It was definitely like Sweater Weather but it warmed up. I want to say during the day it probably warmed up to like the mid to late ‘70s (F) and then like 60 maybe. I remember wearing a t-shirt at certain points.

Demi: That was like when the sun when the sun came out. It was like rainy.

TBC: It rained every day almost. So going back to those documents. I have like laid out some of our documents that we brought here. I'll put a picture of it. We definitely took pictures of like our passport. Then I put my health insurance, my license, etc. That's what we made a copy of and then what we also did and this is like for our parents back home, and our family.

Demi: We had a fold and one side was all of Nia’s information. On the other side was my information. We had like a whole document with like just like our name, date of birth, home address, our companies where we work, medical information. We just had a print out with all that just in case you end up dead and you got to like call in like 'Yeah she's missing. So just put her like on a leave of absence.’ Haha! We also had like our flight information. It’s just, in the world that we live in, we have to be extra safe. It may seem like oh that's just too much but you just don’t know. In the event that something were to happen to one of us and we needed to call a relative or someone to help us, we have people who know what we were planning on doing and where we were supposed to go, what flights we were going to be taking, so they can keep track of us as well. It’s just a dangerous world. I don't think it's such a thing as being too safe.

TBC: We printed out everything; like our contact information. We did a chart of what flights, our flight numbers, the times of the flight, where they were landing, our layovers, each day almost of what we were going to do so like our families knew where we were.

How To Find Best Prices

Demi: I think as far as like picking where we stayed and stuff, I use like booking.com and kayak.com for the best types of deals. I was actually just teaching my mom how to do this because she's going somewhere and she was looking like directly on the airline’s website. But when you utilize like those travel websites for flights and and hotels what they do is they're trying to find you the cheapest way to fulfill your your trip. So like kayak.com they are trying to find the cheapest flight to get you from point A to point B. So they might mix up a bunch of different tickets from different airlines to get you there so that you’re not spending $2,000. Because I think we only spent it was like about $500 round trip to get to London and then it was only $87 to get from London to Italy. We were like uh yes we’re going!

TBC: I think the hotel in Italy was the most expensive part of that whole trip because we stayed within that $700.

Demi: It was a luxury hotel and I think celebrities had stayed there before. But still $700 actually for that hotel it was pretty good. It was pretty good. It was very cheap. You're staying on the island and we had an ocean view. Oh my goodness the hotel itself was gorgeous! Like the bathroom! Do you remember what the bathroom?

TBC: I took a video of it!

Demi: It was made out of like this beautiful like hand painted tile throughout the whole thing. The floor, the walls. It was just beautiful and it was huge! And we had our own little balcony. It was very very high end. For that time of year, that was a good price. I've been back on the website recently and I was just like woo!

TBC: I know I was like what if we went back again and it's like I don't think that's going to happen.

Demi: So just looking on like those websites is how we booked this hotel.

Credit Card Tips When Booking

Demi: I will say from experience I actually did used to work in bank fraud and stuff. I did have an issue with booking the hotel because at the time the bank that I had it's an international transaction. So when the hotel was trying to run the charge, the bank was like whoa! This looks like fraud because this is coming from another country let’s block it! So it was a big issue about the hotel kept getting like blocked on your card. Yeah you have to call.

TBC: So that's a good point to bring out to the audience that you have to call your bank. I have the Capital One Venture Card and they don’t have the block or anything like that. They will keep track of like weird transactions but if you make a foreign purchase they won't block it.

Demi: I was already waiting for my travel credit card. So I was using a regular credit card for that and it's my daily my day-to-day use of a credit card, so if I'm like getting gas or going to you know do a quick purchase somewhere versus oh she's trying to book a trip this is highly unusual activity on her cards that's why I kept getting blocked. Either communicate with your bank if your bank has that, if you’re trying to make a purchase because it was going to be an issue with our reservation, like I'm not holding this because the charge is not going through. Thankfully my travel card came in the mail like a few days later and I was like I you know I'm getting a new credit card that will go through and they’re like okay we'll hold it. And it was really nice because I actually called the hotel. I called Italy the hotel and they…

TBC: She spoke to this mysterious guy. Guys he does not exist I did not meet him he was not at the hotel. HAHA!

Demi: Pepe told me he exists!

TBC: Pepe, oh God bless Pepe! He was so nice.

Speak the Language

Demi: He was so nice. So it's nice because especially when you’re going to a tourist area. A lot of the locals that actually work in those areas will speak English. So when you're calling and you have questions they will be able to be communicate clearly with you, which is really nice. But when I asked, because I asked in Italian if they spoke English, and he answered me back in Italian. So I guess my Italian accent was on point. HAHA! That’s something really nice and it comes in handy because if you're lost especially if you’re lost in an area that's less tourist like the less likely you're going to run into someone who understands English. So it is good to know a little bit of a few words in the local language if you're lost. Like common things, you know hospital or hotel or like you know just common areas of where you're going. They can probably help communicate with you but when you're in a high tourist area you'll be fine.

Lost in London

TBC: Yeah I agree. Okay so we booked the trip, we got our tickets. Let’s talk about like how we got there. We flew out from the states and we made it to… oh no no no… we flew out from London. Then we flew out to Milan. It was our first layover.

Demi: I think that was like a 2 hour flight just to get to Milan. Oh my goodness! We didn't tell them what happened when we were in Heathrow. Heathrow is a very huge airport in London.

TBC: Oh my goodness! See this is what she gets for not listening to me!

Demi: And so Heathrow is huge. It's one of the biggest airports in the world actually.

TBC: They actually do have um it's like a train that takes you from one end to the other.

Demi: Yeah but they actually have like hotels and stuff that are connected to the to the airport. So the night before we're flying out to London, we were staying at a hotel at this point because we had an early flight. And I just remember we walk into the I think it was like Best Western or something like that.

TBC: So it's attached to the airport and we're thinking it was Holiday Inn.

Demi: Yeah it was like Holiday Inn and here's the funny part it was like so
beautiful because it's like this luxury hotel looking entrance and I was like
Nia you really did a great job picking this. And she's looking around she's like…

TBC: I don't think this is the right one.

Demi: I was like it's the Holiday Inn. I was like shut up girl and so we’re talking to the receptionist and they're like no we don't have a reservation for you and we're like

TBC: Insert Panic Attack.

Demi: Yeah and we were like but we have a reservation. And we like showed them the reservation. They're like no this one is like the next one down you need to get on this bus and get off at this stop. So we get on the bus.

TBC: The lady told us some sort of stop to get off at.

Demi/TBC: IT NEVER SHOWED UP.

Demi: So at some point it was we were on this bus for like 45 minutes…

...

TBC: Thanks for listening to Part 1 of my trip to Italy in 2019 with my best
friend Demi. Please look out for Part 2 coming out soon!

Italy

Never a dull moment