Fun but Chilly Weekend

So this past weekend I went on a trip arranged through my school! We left Florence at 6:45 in the morning on Friday so that by bus we could arrive in Napels around 1:00 for lunch. I was so tired, I hadn't gotten much sleep for the past couple nights, and now I honestly can't remember what route I took to walk across the city to the meeting point. Not really a good idea for keeping myself healthy, but I survived and have caught up on sleep. Anyway, after a long nap and longer bus ride, we finally arrived in Napels.

Napels is actually the home of pizza, and particularly Margherita Pizza (which is topped with sliced tomatoes, fresh Mozzarella, and basil leaves), so of course we had that for lunch, along with some truly delicious appetizers! It was absolutely delicious, but unfortunately, as soon as I ate the pizza, I started to feel sick. We then went on a two hour guided walking tour of the city, in the rain. I am really glad that I saw Napels, especially two of the churches which were absolutely gorgeous, but honestly I wasn't overly impressed. It is a large city, about one million people, and definitely "acts" like one. It's loud, modern, dirty, the people are crazy drivers, and the crime rate is higher than most of Italy. Although, we did get to see Mt. Vesuvius for the first time which was pretty cool! It may look like any other mountain, but there really is something enthralling about staring at an active volcano.

After Napels, we took a bus to Sorrento, checked into our hotel, and had dinner. The resturant had a meal of gnocchi (a traditionally Italian course, that is very starchy, made of potato and pasta and then covered with a sauce), veal, and "Delizia" for dessert. I was still feeling pretty sick at this point and couldn't really eat the gnocchi or bread, so I decided to do what I have never had never done before - try the veal. For anyone who knows, although I eat meat, I can get very squeamish if I think about the fact that it used to be a living animal, especially when eating red meat. It's something that I haven't been able to get past for a few years now. I have never been able to bring myself to try veal before. It was very good, and I could eat it without making myself feel worse, but I did have to work to not think about the animals. I also had a few bites of Delizia - amazing! Delizia is a popular dessert in the area, made of spongecake, filled and topped with lemon cream. Sorrento and the surrounding areas are known for their lemons and their lemon products.

I pretty much crashed as soon as we got back to the hotel, I was so tired. But, I woke up Saturday morning well rested, feeling better, and ready for a day on the island of Capri! Capri is this gorgeous little island, basically a mountain or two sticking up out of the sea, which is an absolutely clear and beautiful blue. It was sunny that morning, and probably the warmest period of time that we had (the rest of the weekend was pretty chilly - ironic since we were in a tropical environment!) Buses take you from the marina up to the city - we were packed in like sardines, and then taken on about as wild a ride as you could get while going up steep roads. Then I went with most of the group to a "beach" on the other side of the island. Capri doesn't really have sand beaches, so the place we were going was basically where the water met up with the rocks on the coastline. The hike down was long, but absolutely beautiful, as was the coast. Of course, you have to realized that we just hiked down to the beach from the main city - which is a lot higher on the hill! Hiking back up wasn't as much fun... but it was totally worth it. I spent the rest of the day just exploring the island with Sarah and Melissa after a nice lunch.

Sunday was the day that I had really been looking forward too - Pompeii! Pompeii had been on my list of "must see" cities and it didn't disappoint! Actually, it made me think again that maybe I should have considered archeology more.... Not really - I love design, archeology is just an interest. It was so amazing to see an entire city still laid out as it was hundreds of years ago. You know, if you go anywhere else, you may just see a building here, a few artifacts there, but Pompeii is literally an ENTIRE city! It made it really easy to understand what life was like back then, how people lived, and what they valued. You could go inside the houses, walk along the actually streets, see the frescoes, walk into the stadium, find the restaurants, and explore the roman forum. We had a guided tour of the ruins, and I found everything that she said so interesting. I also couldn't put my camera down (I didn't realized it at the time, but I took almost 200 pictures there - not sure what I'm going to do with that). I honestly don't know how to go into more detail about some of the things that we saw there, it was so amazing and I ended up learning so much more about the city.

I think that's about it for the weekend, but I put up more pictures on Flickr from the trip this weekend! Ciao!