Hi Everyone,

This past weekend was our first adventure outside of Rome. On Friday morning we woke up bright and early to catch a train to Naples and then on to Pompeii. The ruins were amazing and you'll have to check out my pictures of those. I'll do my best to explain what you're looking at. Our guide for this tour was a very interesting man to say the least. He was very touchy feely and got right in your face when he was talking to you. Let me just say I did my best to stay in the back of the group as my bubble is quite large. He was very charismatic though, I'll give him that. It started raining towards the end of our tour which dashed our hopes of climbing Mount Vesuvius. So we headed on to Sorrento where we were going to stay.

When we got to Sorrento we were supposed to get on a bus that would take us to the campground where we were going to stay. The campground was only about 3 km from the train station so we could have walked but we didn't know exactly where we were going and the rain was steadily getting heavier. We got directions to the bus but when we asked the bus driver, he gave us different directions. So we tried to follow them and that wasn't right so we got directions from someone else. And on and on and on. By the time we actually got to the campground all ten of us were quite wet and crabby. After about two hours of attempting to get there, we finally checked into our "bungalow" which was actually a camper. (We reserved a cabin but the "upgraded" us). The night was saved though by the amazing spaghetti with basil that I ate at their restaurant - best spaghetti I have ever had.

On Saturday we were going to take a boat tour to Capri and through the famous Blue Grotto and a few less famous grottos. However, we woke up to extreme winds that crushed any hope of doing that…the boat tours were cancelled. We could have reached Capri by ferry via Sorrento but that would have cost us 30 euro (about $45) just to get to Capri and back. We settled for a bus tour to Amalfi and Positano which was only 6 euro ($9). It was an excellent choice. The ride to Amalfi was about two hours long and about 15 minutes into it we were looking straight down into the Mediterranean from halfway up a mountain. The road was absolutely crazy… you'd take a sharp turn left only to take a sharp turn right about 20 seconds later. This continued the whole length of the trip. It is a miracle that I didn't get car sick, not even a little bit. The same cannot be said for a few of the people I was traveling with… they missed out on a beautiful tour of the Amalfi Coast. I ended up taking pictures with Katie I.'s camera because her's takes higher quality pictures and she was sitting on the wrong side of the bus to take any. I took pictures one after the other the whole length of the trip. It was gorgeous! I ended up taking about 200 pictures. I haven't gotten them off her camera yet so you will have to wait for her's. I will post the ones I took though.

In Amalfi we were deciding where to eat when a stereotypical Italian chef came out to greet us and told us "Welcome to Paradise! You must eat here…" So we did and it was good food in an authentic Italian restaurant which is something I've only done once since arriving in Italy. I ate a whole pizza by myself (well, with a little help from my friends). It was delicious. After that we went and explored the shops and the beach. In almost all of the shops there were jewelry made out of turquoise and coral, all of which I immediately wanted to buy. I settled on a bracelet with small turquoise beads. It's my favorite purchase thus far. Amalfi is also known as the birthplace of Italian pottery and I would have bought some had I any way of getting it back home.

By the time we left it was getting dark so it wasn't as scenic as the way there and I didn't take any pictures. But I didn't get carsick then either really. We got back to Sorrento and thought we would just get back on the same bus we had taken the night before, then go eat at the campground restaurant again for supper. WRONG! Apparently the buses change at night but we came at night on Friday so I don't know what the deal is there. So after a half hour of waiting for that bus we finally ask a different bus driver where to go. So we head there and along the way see the bus we thought we were supposed to be on. It wasn't going to stop so we chased after it. We ended up getting separated with a few making it to the bus and a few thinking the others had never ran in the first place. We missed that bus and found each other again so we went to wait at the bus stop where it had stopped. It took about a half hour but we finally got on the bus. Only it was heading in the opposite direction as we were going. We thought it would just go in a loop so we stayed on until it brought us to the other end of Sorrento. Out of Sorrento in fact. The bus stops and the driver comes back to say "This is the end. Where are you going?" So we showed him a picture of the sign of our campground and he laughs and tells us that we would have to walk there. We thought he meant from where we were at that point but he explained that after his 15 minute break he would head back to the same place we had gotten on the bus in the first place. About two hours had passed from the time we got off the Amalfi bus to the time we got back to the original bus stop. We were all so frustrated that we paid a taxi 30 euro to take the five of us 3 km to our campground. On which ride we almost died as we swerved out into the opposite lane to pass mopeds and other vehicles our driver thought were going too slow, almost rear-ending one of them. So we head up the mountain and as we near the campground the turns get sharper and our driver decides to speed up to save us on fare. I would have rather paid the extra. Needless to say, we were quite happy to see our "bungalow".

Sunday wasn't very eventful. We had had enough of travel and went back to Rome after only a few hours of looking around Sorrento. It was funny because after having a hectic weekend away, our apartment and Rome felt very much like home to us. I would never have thought I could say that but it was a very cool feeling. As we walked to our apartment from the metro, we noticed that they had changed some of the shop displays as we passed them. This may sound weird but it was one of the coolest experiences I have had since leaving home two weeks ago.

Well I'll save my other stories for another time… I hope you enjoy them.

Ciao,

Kristi