Sorrento, Napoli, Pompei, etc.
Things I forgot to post about: ^
Lets get to it. I'll primarily be using my photos to reconstruct the trip. Except that I still remember every second because I haven't quite lost my memory...and it was so much fun.
This was my final trip within Italy. Like good college students should, we decided to save a few bucks by taking the overnight bus to Naples. The way there? Not so bad! The way back? Essentially a disaster! But we made it eventually so 'sall good. God forbid we execute a flawless trip, ya know?
My favorite part of the ride down (and the only part I remember, considering I was sleeping the entire time) was when we passed Caserta as the sun rose over the beautiful palace. Gianluigi warned me to keep an eye out for the beautiful sight (he was born and raised in Caserta). We arrived at the Naples train station in the early hours of the morning, and suffered through a looooong wait for the bathrooms to open. And for the sun to rise- we had been warned about the area around the station...and Naples in general...something I didn't truly feel like I experienced until we returned a few days later for the midnight train home.
The streets of sunny Naples were littered with...litter (thanks, Mafia-controlled-trashcollectioncompanies!)...as well as beautiful tropical plants and buildings with shockingly bright colors.
We (oh yeah, that's Hannah, Rachel, Evan, and I) eventually stumbled upon a beautiful University garden, surrounded by a formidable spiky gate. We initially supposed that this was designed to keep everyone out- turns out it's just for certain people because they buzzed us in after we stood at the gate looking confused for a minute.
We rested in the park/garden and watched tons of kids come through on a field trip that involved a reenactment of some sort- thoroughly entertaining.
We met up with Mallie and headed to Pompei! After eating the most delicious pizza in Naples. And by eating I really mean scarfing down. Like we essentially shotgunned a pizza (actual footage from the actual event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQDad31iu2o). Okay, so Pompei. I remember it being different than I expected- not quite sure why. It was incredible to walk through an entire destroyed city, and I was shocked by the level of sophistication that their ancient civilization displayed. Also Evan fell off a stone thing and ripped her toe open, so that was interesting.
Oh also we were following Rick Steves but maybe started at the wrong point? Anyway, we had almost no idea what we were looking at. Still so cool.
A man caught in the ash- they found the hollow spaces where these peoples' bodies decomposed, rather than the actual skeletons. The ash preserved the exact shape and positioning.
Aaaaand moving on from Pompei. We headed straight to Sorrento, where we stayed for the night. Our hostel left us with these words of encouragement:
Then it was beach hopping from Sorrento to Amalfi to Positano, where we spent a beautiful couple hours on the beach, after a long, windy, treacherous detour teetering on the side of the massive cliffs along the Amalfi Coast. Everything citrus was literally to die for.
Can't get over the beautiful blue water.
WE MADE IIIIITTTTT. Positano in the background.
The Positano beach aka heaven.
View from the beach of the adorable town of Positano.
Directly behind the beach- this beautiful tiled church dome.
Needless to say, we decided that in order to survive a trip back to Amalfi, we'd need to avoid the cliff death roads. So we took the ferry at sunset:
We explored the Amalfi Duomo, did a little Limoncello tasting, and then boarded the bus back to Sorrento. Where (here's where it gets interesting) we discover that the very last train to Naples is about to leave! Lucky us! But we don't have our bags! Shit!
So now we're trapped in Sorrento with no way to Naples, where we should be catching our midnight bus in about 2 hours. Good planning (ugh). Here's where the incredible Southern Italian hospitality comes in to save the day. (Sidenote- funnily enough, our art teacher told us a similar anecdote from his travel experiences in Naples when we told him we were taking a trip down south). Our hostel owner volunteered to forgo watching his soccer match (...that's not real life, that doesn't happen) to drive us from Sorrento to Naples. The trip took about an hour, and was really necessary because Hannah's sister was due in Siena bright and early the following morning. Also we had an essay due the next day (oops). HE SAVED OUR LIVES AND WE ARE FOREVER GRATEFUL. It also got us home in time to witness this most incredible sunrise:
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