Pompeii, Sorrento, & Capri

My favorite weekend so far! So this may be a long one because my roommates and I spent Saturday in Siena, and then 4 of us went on a school trip to Pompeii, Sorrento, and Capri on Saturday and Sunday. Needless to say we did so much in such a small amount of time that last Friday feels like it was weeks ago. But I will do my best to remember what I did haha. The pictures should help!

So Friday morning the girls and I caught an 8 o’clock bus and took the hour and a half ride to Siena. Maddie has a family house in Siena and one of her aunts is living in it. So her aunt met us at the bus and gave us a little tour around the city. After Maddie and her aunt left, the rest of us explored the city. We walked around to different lookouts trying to get the best views of the city, and then bought a museum pass for 10 euro that got us into the museo dell ‘opera, battistero, cripta, and Cattedrale (the Siena Duomo). I’d go into detail of each but it would take forever because there is so much to say. My favorite was the museo dell ‘opera mainly because there was a small spiral staircase in the back of one of the rooms. The staircase lead to different areas on the roof where the view was gorgeous! The Cattedrale was amazing as well, mainly because of the elaborate designs inside.

After touring through a few of the museums we took a break to eat! And as usual the food was great! We ended up eating at a pretty fancy restaurant. Ironically they played American music which consisted of pop and rap?! Everywhere we go, and no matter how nice the restaurant or store is, they play American music. Its beyond weird but none of us can help but laugh. Kristen and I split (as always) and one of the dishes we ordered was a pear ravioli with a white sauce over it. I don’t know what all was in that ravioli but it was fantastic! Ahhh I love food! Oh and when we first got to the city we ate gelato at a homemade creamery that Hannah’s book had suggested, hahah We eat so much here…but we’re trying to “live to eat” like the Italians ;) something that is not hard to do.
We got back to our apartment at about 7 that night, did some homework, and packed for the rest of the weekend.

So starting at 5:30 a.m. Hannah, Katie, Kristen, and I loaded the bus with a bunch of people from our school, and Luca, one of the teachers. And took the 5 hour drive to Pompeii. The drive flew by since all of us seemed to sleep the whole way! The bus dropped us in Naples (which is a frightening place, ill write more about it later) and we all went to different restaurants to eat pizza. So I have officially had pizza from Naples! After that we walked to the village of Pompeii and met with our tour guide. He gave us a 3 hour tour of the archaeological site and we still only saw about half of it. About 110 acres of the site has been restored, so it is huge! I don’t even know where to start….we walked through the streets, on the cobblestone which still has wagon marks and saw different houses and bars that were popular. Some of the houses still had frescoes on the walls and everything. We saw two theaters, one amphitheater where the gladiators fought, and one field where they trained. We also saw some of the baths, a brothel, a giant swimming pool, and the part which seemed to have the biggest effect on all of us, were the casted bodies. Most of them are in the fetal position, many of the adults had their arms wrapped around children. It sounds really morbid but I think it made all of us realize that the Pompeian’s were just normal people who were used to going about day to day life. On a lighter note, the whole town was so much more sophisticated than I ever would have thought. Hannah and I were talking the other day about how hard it is to imagine that all of Pompeii and its many developments were here before Christ was!

After Pompeii the bus took us to Sorrento. The city is located right on the Mediterranean Sea and is known for it’s lemons….so there were lemon products everywhere! We stayed in a 4 star hotel called Hotel de Michelangelo. And it was so nice because we all got to pick our rooms, so I was just with my roomies haha. That night we had a three course meal, where we experienced the “food of Sorrento” :P I can’t even remember what my meal was but I started with an asparagus risotto and ended with tiramisu so it was delish!
That night all of us walked to a lemon cello store. They brought around samples of limoncello and lemon cream, as well as chocolate covered almonds and macaroons. So the girls and I tried everything. The limoncello and lemon cream were pretty brutal going down haha. I wish I had pictures of all four of our faces….hahhaha oh geez! Anyway the chocolate almonds and macaroons were soo great…so we pretty much stuck to dessert. Hahah I talk about food so much in this blog I feel like a should be a hundred pounds overweight! But we walk EVERYWHERE it’s crazy and I love it! I feel like I sleep so well every night, especially when we’re traveling because we spend majority of the days on our feet.

After the limoncello we went straight to bed and woke up around 7 to catch a ferryboat to Capri. Amazing amazing Capri hahah. So far, it is my favorite scenic place in Italy! After we got to the island we had a half hour to hang in the port before getting on a small boat which took us on a tour around the island. The whole day was kind of stormy, but in the end that’s what made it the great experience that it was! The water was a little rough at first but seemed to calm down as we got around the island. After the boat ride we had from 12 to 5 to spend on our own. So we took a cable car up to the village and spent all of our time wandering around. Capri is a resort town so it was absolutely packed with people, mainly tourists haha! So we ended up winding down these narrow paths to the residential area. All of the paths/walkways to the houses were lined with white fences and there were flowers everywhere. The island is fairly small so it never took us long to get from one side to the other. We’d just be walking along and suddenly one of us would see the ocean and know it was time to pull our cameras out.

We found an amazing gelateria that Luca had told us about. They made their own waffle cones so they were warm when we got them. And Luca suggested a toasted almond and Capri special flavor that were to die for! Yumm! So we ate those and searched for the zigzag walkway to the beach. After searching for awhile and taking several wrong turns…we found it! It probably took about 20 minutes for us to get to the bottom and when we were almost there it started to rain. So we go to the beach and we all had our swim suits on so Hannah and Katie decided to get in. Kristen and I put our feet in but didn’t want to get wet because we had to be back on the bus in an hour and didn’t have towels. While we were there a model and some photographers were having a photo shoot on a rock about 20 feet from us, and there was a restaurant a little bit above us. So people were staring at us like we were crazy, since it was raining and we were in the water. Apparently everyone else had gone inside because the place was suddenly desolate when the rain started. During our quick 15 minutes at the beach it started pouring so we all took off our dry tops and hiked in our swimsuits and shorts back up the steep walkway. Kristen and I were completely drenched in a matter of seconds after heading back up. So we both vowed never to avoid being spontaneous again. Therefore the next time we only have an hour before we get on the bus we are getting in the Mediterranean!!! Kristen was convinced it was God’s way of telling us to not hold back next time hahaha. So great!

Anyway, we’re all such dorks and started singing sound of music and cracking up laughing as we ran and jogged through the pouring rain! There was a couple we met on the way down that was celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. So as we were heading up they were hiding in a little cove from the rain. The mom asked if she could take a picture of us to show her daughter how fun it was to study abroad and we had her take one for us as well. So we made it back to the top…and all of us got our 2nd gelato because we figured we weren’t going to have Capri gelato ever again…unless of course we venture back their someday. So we took the tram back down, got on the ferry which took us to the bus, and loaded the bus in the port of Naples which brought us 6 hours to our little foreign home of Firenze. Oh man it was quite the trip! We got back at about 1 in the morning and we were all very exhausted. I think the craziest part about studying abroad is the fact that my weekends are amazing adventures and then come Monday morning I'm sitting at a desk in class. Hahaha So amazing!

Sorry this blog was soooo long! I just couldn’t leave anything out :)