Southern Italy

Sorrento

This place was absolute paradise. From the moment my heart skipped a beat on the train after catching my first glimpse of the bay I knew that life in this small coastal city would be good. The views of the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius are breath taking. I absolutely loved the feel of this city. You knew it was a tourist hot spot because there were definite traces...hotel after hotel down the main street mostly. It was not incredibly busy though despite its apparent popularity. Each day we would walk down the main street and never had any problems being seated for meals. The night we ate the best pizza ever at Restaurant Number Two, we were one of two groups seated in the outdoor area.

Our hotel was very inviting, the rooms were decent size and I loved the mosaic tile work in our bathroom, it almost made up for the incredibly tight fit of the shower! Though our hotel was nice it did not have its own ocean view but the back gardens were full of fruit trees and a nice sized swimming pool. The breakfast was likely a group favorite because they stocked little packs of nutella and the best chocolate bread known to man.

The nightly ritual for the roommates and I involved walking down the main street, despondently pining for the internet as we saw prices skyrocket from Rome. Small convenience stores provided individually packaged treats of the chocolate variety to brighten our spirits. We also stopped by the gelato place a time or two where I think I accidentally consumed rum with my white chocolate and "raspberry??" pick. Lesson learned, stay away from mysterious red berry substances. The best part of Sorrento by far, yes even superseding the divine pizza, was the magnificent view. We made our way down to what turned out to be a popular make out spot every night to take in the sunset and monitor Vesuvius' activity. Words cannot accurately explain but my pictures do attempt...


Pompeii

We stayed in Sorrento for a few days but mostly used it as a base to visit other sites. The first day trip was to the ancient and unlucky city of Pompeii. I only have a few things to say about Pompeii, though it was interesting to see and surely a memorable day....it was the hottest, driest, most draining place on our trip. There was hardly an ounce of shade, and no water fountains. I thought for a good while that we might die in Pompeii as a good chunk of us lost our professor. We were so hot and tired from walking around that we practically collapsed by a field of poppies as others tried to figure out where we had gone wrong. Unfortunately I finished my water the moment we started our lecture that morning. Even less fortunate was the fact that I ran out of Euros and they have yet to install an ATM in old Vesuvius' stomping ground.

The frescos were impressive, plaster casts of the dead were creepy and the reunion with Mark J. and the rest of the group was sweet. I'm fairly sure after the train ride back to Sorrento followed up with a dinner of pizza, we made our way back to the hotel and slept!

Capri

If I had to put my money on it, I would say that people in the group lacking excitement for our day in Capri were few and far between. Who wouldn't be excited about a gorgeous island in the Bay Of Naples. I know several girls who were excited because it would not be a traditional museum/cathedral day. It was not devoid of history and lecture though. We started off our day at the Villa of Tiberius on the top of the island. It was a long time coming though, we walked from our hotel in Sorrento down the main street past the train station which I'm thinking is a good thirty minute walk. We made it down to the marina after descending hundreds of stairs down the cliff. There was a bout of excitement upon seeing a the huge monster of a ship that would take us to our dream island. We boarded and a short time later we were dropped off on the dock at Capri.

Now we knew that we were taking a bit of a walk together to find the villa and listen to Mark J. for a while. What we did not know was that we were actually taking an hour long hike straight up to the very top. Thankfully there was a funicular that took us part way up the mountain, it also somewhat removed us from the hub bub of all the other tourists. Hilariousness ensued when I quickly figured out that Mark J. couldn't remember the exact way to go. He kept speaking hushed Italian to little old laides and we would wind around a different corner. As soon as he got his bearings we realized we were in for a bit of a hike.

An hour later and a dozen inclines higher found us gazing out from Tiberius' Villa over blue water as far as the eye could see, only to be interruppted by small islands protruding up out of the rippling waves. The majestic view was well worth the hike but that didn't mean we were not tired or sweaty!

The other highlight of Capri, well besides Super Mash on the shoreline was the Blue Grotto tour. It took a little convincing for some of us to fork over the 20 Euros for what we knew would be five minutes at best in the grotto itself.

Our Blue Grotto adventure went as follows: big burly leathery tan man helped us onto his speed boat and proceeded to be thouroughly amused with us. Could have had something to do with our gleeful excitement and anticipation upon taking off and zooming around the island. I was being a total diva that day which means plenty of funny pictures! The speed boat slowed and we were promptly chucked into little paddle boats, three in each with a paddler. I'm not going to lie, I definitely freaked out a bit at this point because I had no idea what was going on. I felt like we were being sent to the slaughter, like dead weight to mobster men or something.

As evidenced by the photo, Caroline and I were neatly tucked into the back of the paddle boat and as soon as we got to the entrance of the grotto our guy-also featured in photo yelled at us to get down. Despite being so confused Caroline and I smushed ourselves down and were laying like two very squished sardines so that our heads didn't get chopped off by jagged cave opening- we come to find out later. Once inside I was in a state of delirious hyper activity for most of the time, even more so when the paddlers started sining to us in Italian. Mostly they just rowed us around inside the most beautiful and eery blue water as our little boat rose and fell in tune with the tide.

Our paddler was a little disgruntled with us because apparently we were cheap tippers but I wasn't sweating it. We could tell he was put off because he kind of just shoved us back into the speedboat but we managed to get safely back to shore!