Pizza, Pasta & Pompeii

Ian Sharp
Nov 13, 2025
8 min read

Italia has been high on the list for the Sharps. We consider ourselves lovers of Italian-ness by nature: pizza, pasta, espresso, talking loudly with our hands…. We have immersed ourselves in many different facets of Italy over the past 2+ weeks - uncovering the beauty and the quirks of living in Italy.

Scuola di cucina

Milano Duomo

Finlay is introduced to cappuccino

Milano

We started off in Milan - a modern, vibrant city in Italy’s north. We opted to stay in a not-at-all touristy suburb to immerse ourselves in Italian life. Thanks to the very modern metro system, we had easy access to all urban explorations. We saw the Duomo di Milano, (a massive gothic cathedral that started construction in the 14th century), Castello Sforzerco (a medieval castle/fort that dominates the northern part of the city) and adjoining Parco Sempione. We sampled lots of local restaurants and explored the neighbourhood around us. Ian found a gluten-free cafe that he is convinced is a likely cover for the mafia given the Italians’ penchant for all things pizza and pasta. We also visited the Science and Technology museum to see their extensive exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci (did you know he invented the helicopter long before building one was ever possible??).

We realized right away the food in Italy is worth the trip - and we have enjoyed exploring the regional variations ever since. Jasper and Erin took a pasta and gelato making class - and hope to bring their newfound skills back home (they have already made fresh pasta again since by themselves and it was great!).

We hit on a major goal of Finlay’s - to attend a top tier football (read soccer) match. We saw Inter Milan play Fiorentino - and let us tell you - the Italian football experience was NEXT level. The game started at 8:45pm (!!!), with 75,000 fans literally making this huge stadium vibrate with their well practiced chants. To say nothing for the skills displayed on the field (considerable!), we got a taste of the true religion of Italy, and thankfully watched the home team win 3-0. The boys even got their first taste of “street meat” after the game - in Italy food trucks serve paninis and beer (roadie pops for the adults)!

Our last night in Milan coincided with Halloween - which isn't really a ‘thing’ here. We were however able to find enough candy to make our own fun; making brains, blood and guts for dinner (read spaghetti and meatballs) and introducing the boys to the halloween classic Beetlejuice which Erin and Ian had seen many years ago but forgot how quirky the original is. The kids loved it!

Science & Technology Museum

'Street Meat' after football

Milano v Fiorentino

We woke up for Game 6 of the World Series (at 2:30am in Italy!!!). Which caused us to be slightly sluggish for our train the following day, so all had a snooze on the way to help recover. We then repeated the process the following night to cheer on the Blue Jays in Game 7 from Rome - it's tough being a baseball fan in Europe! - thank you to the Blue Jays for a season that was so fun to watch (even in the middle of the night).

Roma

We arrived in Rome, staying in the narrow, restaurant-filled streets of the Trastevere neighbourhood. We can’t believe this is ‘off season’ as the city was still teeming with tourists, although the sites proved to us why so many choose to visit this incredible city. Our first day we took a walking tour that provided us with a helpful narrative for the rest of our visit: Rome has never stopped - it is a living city where every era of history can be seen from most street corners - it has lived through all of them so never stands still. The city itself is the greatest museum of all with the fountains and ancient architecture (ruins) co-existing with markets, shops, offices and homes for the people who live there. We finished our first day with an amazing Italian meal on the streets a few blocks from where we were staying where we met the first of two couples from Alberta during our Italy stint, which may not sound like a lot, but is weird it happened twice in the 2 weeks we’ve been in Italy.

We spent a day at Vatican City learning that ‘organized religion’ is not very organized - at least not in terms of how they direct visitors! (For those wondering, Vatican City is the world’s smallest country which has now been documented in the boys’ research). We toured St. Peter’s Basilica which is the largest church in the world by interior space. This building is amazing! With artwork, and architecture that showcases the renaissance era including the basilica dome that dominates the skyline of Rome. After finding our way to where we were supposed to be-despite the contradicting and confusing instructions. We, along with many other thousands of people, explored the paintings, artwork and relics. The highlight was a marble statue carved by Michelangelo when he was just 24 years old that was amazing in detail. We finished by climbing the 462 stairs (Finlay counted them) up St. Peter’s Basilica dome to enjoy the panoramic view of Rome from the top. We visited the Vatican Museums. This place is HUGE, rivalling the Louvre in France for its size, exhibits and collections. We found the marble statues, the Map Room, and the Sistine Chapel to all live up to the hype. Thankfully they have an awesome kids’ audio tour that engaged the boys in fascinating stories throughout the maze of corridors, hallways and exhibits. Highly recommended!

We celebrated Ian’s birthday with a trip to Gladiator school that involved one of the more confusing bus rides ever! The bus pulled an unscheduled U-turn on its route making the tourists on the bus all start to question google maps. While we compared notes and expressed our confusion to the bus driver he just brushed us off like this was normal operating procedure. The Sharps decided to go with the flow since none of the locals seemed concerned in the slightest. We eventually re-intercepted our route and made it to the gladiator school just in time after a bit of head scratching. All part of the adventure! We had a lovely dinner out, although Ian had a bit of a heart attack when someone else at the restaurant was also having a birthday and the crowd started singing. Ian being viscerally adverse to public displays such as these, he instead opted for some gelato on the way back to the apartment. On our day of departure we visited the Colosseum on an early, sunny morning to feel more closely what it must have felt like to gladiate there in front of an estimated 50-80,000 spectators in ancient Rome.

Napoli & Amalfi

We settled into the southwestern coast of Italy for a week of slower pace and stunning views of the Mediterranean. Napoli (Naples) is grittier with a less than perfect reputation for visitors. We explored the Spanish Quarter and Centro Storico, sampling some of the best street pizza and gelato yet, visited ‘Underground Naples’ - excavated caverns under the city that provided the stone to build the city and were hence used as aqueducts by the Greeks and Romans and as bomb shelters during World War II. We explored a marine preserve and beach for swimming, and discovered that many beaches in Naples are hard to find (they require reservations given the scarcity of sandy beaches and the number of people wanting to use them).

We travelled down the coast to Positano for a day-trip to get a feel for one of the most talked about vacation spots on the planet. The bus ride there navigated chillingly narrow roads over steep cliffs, while the ferry ride back delivered less nausea and great sunsets. On the Amalfi coast we found beautiful vistas, crystal blue water and flower-draped villas impossibly perched on hillside cliffs. We ran into fellow Calgarians at a cafe, our shared remorse for the Blue Jays loss once again facilitated by Finlay’s hat. We also found the highest prices (by a mile, almost double from Naples) we have seen anywhere in Italy (including distasteful tourist up charges at restaurants). See for example the $50CAD caesar salad *&%!@. The feeling is that this part of the world has been oriented to, and overtaken by, the tourist masses, especially in the summer.

We finished our Naples trip with a tour of the famous town of Pompeii which was devastated by the eruption of nearby Mt Vesuvius in the year 79CE. The skyline of the mountain showcases how it was split in half by the strength of the eruption - amongst the strongest ever recorded and one of the first to be well documented by humans. The mountain is visible from most areas along the coast providing a constant reminder of the history of the area (and an excuse for the Napoli dark humour apparently). Pompeii feels massive; we walked through the buildings with an audio guide telling us stories of the inhabitants that lived here. The evidence suggests there were approximately 13,000 people who perished in the city and surrounding area because of the eruption. The speed and size of the gas and ash cloud likely caught many people by surprise but preserved the buildings remarkably well. Once buried, the area remained so for approximately 1500 years until it was re-discovered, and the area is still being actively excavated with one display allowing us to walk over top of a current dig site. This whole experience gave us a unique glimpse into life in the ancient Roman empire (and the life of an archeologist!). One of the more fascinating stories was of a business described as an ancient fast food restaurant; archaeologists found ancient coins hidden away under the counter suggesting that the vendor was hoping to return once the inconvenience of the pesky eruption ended.

Pompeii with Mount Vesuvius in the background

Hell is a place….organized by the Italians

You may have heard the old joke where in heaven lovers are Italian (we could not verify), but in hell, the Italians are the organizers. Although we try daily to challenge our biases, we can validate that indeed, organization is not the strong suit here in Italia. Line ups to nowhere, conflicting directions from transit staff (of which there are many since it is so confusing), bus stops that are moved without notice, to buses that are supposed to show up but never do, seem like standard operating procedure here, met by Italians themselves with a simple shrug. The great exception is the trains - these so far have run on time. The Sharps are learning patience and humour in Italy - a small price to pay for the best pizza, pasta and gelato ever!

Jasper

My favourite part of Italy was making fresh pasta. I liked the feeling of the dough and seeing the expression on Finlay and Dad’s faces when they ate it. Pizza is so much more floppy - the crust is thinner here than in Calgary. And there is no ice cream, there is just gelato and I really liked it.

Finlay

PIZZA! PIZZA! PIZZA! AND FOOOOOOOOTBAAAAALLLLLLL!

I have been trying Margherita pizza at every chance I get. Margherita pizza is basically cheese pizza with a little bit of basil on it. Margherita pizza has quite an interesting background to it. A long time ago in Italy under the reign of Queen Margherita a chef decided to honour the Queen by making a pizza that looked like the flag. The chef decided to put cheese as the white part of the flag, pizza sauce for the red part and basil for the green part. That is the origin of the Margherita pizza. I also went to a football match: Inter Milan versus Florentina. Inter Milan won three nothing. Let’s go to Milan!