It all began Friday at 6:45am, and yes, I looked like the walking dead. We all met at a piazza where our buses awaited for u to board and take a lovely 6 hour drive to Napoli. After the long drive, we ended up in Napoli, which honetly shocked me, and not in a good way. When we first entered the city, I looked around and it reminded me of a really bad area in New York City. I was seriously afraid to walk off that bus. Not to make it any better, but when we got off the bus, it started to rain and of coure, brilliant me, forgot to take her umbrella off the bus. Before we went on our guided tour, they took us to what they said was "The Best Pizza you can find in Napoli." So me and my friends stupidly believed that and went to this retaurant with a fixed price of 15 Euros for an appetizer, drinks, and pizza. I couldn't eat the appetizer so they brought me out a ball of mozzerella...a ball!!! What am I supposed to do with that? Well, I'll tell you what I did. I ate it. And it was too much. And they brought this out to me AFTER i ate that pizza. Want to know about the best pizza in Napoli? Yeah, wasn't the best. Can say that without hesitation.
After the pizza, we continued with our guided tour. It began with this building:
It was said to have an egg underneath it that no one knows about. And legend has it that, that egg is still there that no one knows about. I'm sorry, but for something that I've made my breakfast with, I don't think there is an egg under there, nor do I think a building this beautiful sculpture-wise should have a horrible story as an egg sitting underneath it that could or could not be there. Then the tour continued. I would love to tell you everything we saw and be able to describe it in some way, but unfortunately, I can not, and for that, I blame my tour guide. She was awful. Every time that she stopped to talk, I wa literally standing up against her side praying that I could hear just one word that came out of her mouth. But sadly, I could not. She hated us though. I have no idea why, but our tour guide couldn't have despised our group anymore than she did. If me and one of our chapperones were talking you would see the horns popping out of the top of her head. Luckily, I met some really cool people along the way. People that are actually going to be in Florence until May like me. There was Taylor and Jonah, Austin and Joel. They were really nice people and luckily I had them in my group to have reasonably humorous conversations with during the horrible guide. Let me just say, humor will beat any bad mood. Trust me...I know. But since I can't explain to you what I saw, I will show the pictures. The ones of inside the church were definitely not allowed to be taken but I wasn't told that until after I took about 15 of them. Jut a warning now, you can never take a picture inside of a church. Doesn't matter what kind, you just can't. But we saw some beautiful churches, a palace, and castle while being on this tour that I think you should see:
After the dreaded tour was over, we got back on the bus for another 2 hours and headed to Sorrento, our home for the next two nights. It was beautiful! compared to Napoli. Just the drive to Sorrento made me fall in love with it. Our bus drove on the highet road on a mountain and it overlooked the whole city. While some of the girls on the bus were closign their eyes thinking we were going to drive off the road and die, I was mesmerized by what I was looking at. Sorrento is pretty much one main street. Everything and anything you could imagine is placed on this main street, Via Italia. So don't worry about getting lost, you either go one direction or the other. But the views? Oh, I think they speak for themselves:
And these pictures were just on the dock waiting to retrieve our boat to take us to Capri for the day. The boat ride seriously looked like an airplane. I don't know if Italy has thing backwards or they are just weird like that. But there were four columns in rows of three and four and I was sitting thinking that a drink cart was about to make it's way down each aisle. Thankfully they didn't, otherwise I'd be really creeped out.
So you know how everyone has their dream place to live? YOu want to move to the Carribean or Japan or Europe? Well, Capri, is mine. I fell in love!! Even though it was an island and I wouldn't be very close to any other civilization besides Capri, i would be okay with that. The ocean was beautiful! The houses? amazing. the architectual detail that you saw around this island would astound you and unfortunately you can't be there in person right now but my pictures will show it's incredible potential to be the location of your next dream home.
The first couple of these picture were just when I got off the boat. Everyone got to go their own path. Me and three friends decided to just go walking and find some viewing spots so we could see Capri from high up in the mountain. We started walking and decided to folow this path. We found a map that said if we kept following that ame path we would end up at a viewing point called Villa Jovis. On the weay we saw some of the most beautiful houses and their entry ways (and this wa about the time me and my friend decided we were moving here later on in our live whether we have the money or not). About 2 miles later of climbing the steepest hills and sweating because of the beautiful weather it was outside, we finally reached the top at Villa Jovis. Apparently this was a meeting place for a very royal being back thousands of years ago. No one was up ther when we all went, but the views we got out of it were unlike what anyone else probably had seen that whole entire day.
After we left, we passed a small restaurant called Bar Jovis. It was this tiny restaurant that overlooked the entire city. We didn't care if it was going to taste good or not because we were starving after climbing a mountain that day. But to our surprise it was amazing. We all got these panini's which we were expecting to be hard and have no flavor but little did we know that the bread was perfect, the mozerella was fresh, as were the tomatoes. Despite the fact that the degrees outside dropped about 20 degree, we decided to sit outside and enjoy our view, and we definitely did. Afterwards everyone got cupaccinos which I heard were incredible! but since I don't drink coffee, I got a hot chocolate which was the perfect ending to my lunch. And we got to enjoy an amazing view and food for only ten euros. The day was perfect from then on. We had some time to spare before we got onto the boat back to Sorrento so we took a bus to AnaCapri, which is another area higher up. There really wasn't anything there but a lot of houses really close together. We got lost but it was so much fun because it was like a maze and we had a blast just running through all the old houses and down the small cobblestone roads. Everyone that went to Capri was going to go into the Grotto, however, because of the rough waves (which were about 6 inches high, if I may add), they cancelled that portion of the trip which made it hard to find something to do for 8 hours, but me and my friends explored and filled the time doing incredible and random things. But that's the fun in the adventure right? Around 6:30pm, our boat departed from Capri :( and headed back to Sorrento. But I knew that the night to come was going to be amazing because we all decided to go out that night. So around 11pm we all ended up going to this Irish Pub called The Pub (creative right?) It was the most fun I've had at a bar. It's this old man and his wife that own and bartend and they love when Americans come in. They play music and give us really good drinks for a very reasonable price. They are soo much fun and my whole school was in this bar having the time of our life. We definitely achieved a good night that night.
The following day was our last day and we went to the infamous Pomepei. You may know it as the home to Mt. Vesuveus. But we didn't get to climb it. We got ANOTHER guided tour of the ruins but this time, it was definitely worth it. This guy was full of so much detail and he was very funny too. Being inside a town that existed over 2000 years ago before the volcano ruined it was insane. Just to think that people were living where I was walking was just so surreal. Although it was ruins, it was truly beautiful. I think this trip was definitely the perfect ending to the weekend. Walking around and seeing all of the different pieces of the town that lasted from the tragic incident is almost like a miracle and an opportunity for all of us to see what life was like back then and what information can be attained from just the ashes and pieces of rock being left behind. The amount of land we covered was ridiculous and the site we saw were just as unbelievable as the history of the land.
After Pompei, we got on the bus for a lovely 6 hour ride back to Florence. This weekend was filled with so much beauty, history, architecture, and friendships. Italy, you never let me down.
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