Southern Italy!

I know this update took forever! I am sorry! I had midterms this past week, and it's just been a hectic few days here.  Last Tuesday we embarked on our Southern Italy trip!  We left the Tiziano at 6 A.M. sharp and booked it to Pompeii.  We got there in less than four hours and set off on tours the minute we unloaded the buses.  Pompeii is an amazing city.  I was under the impression that not much was left after the eruption in 79 AD, but I was mistaken.  There were houses and streets and all kinds of other structures that survived.  I had to give an oral presentation for my Archaeology class at one of the houses.  It was a little unreal to be standing in the garden at this house explaining that it was built around the 2nd century BC!  A lot of the frescos were extremely well preserved, and you could even see electoral slogans painted on some of the walls throughout the city.

After touring Pompeii for hours upon hours, we boarded the bus and went to our hotel in Naples.  I had a quick dinner and then I think I fell asleep around 7 or 8 in the evening and slept all the way through the night.  The next morning we all had 5 o'clock wake up calls, and we ate breakfast at the Prati Hotel, our new residence for the next four nights.  We left the hotel and headed in the direction of Amalfi.  We got to take the famous Amalfi Drive.  It was absolutely beautiful.  We were pretty much driving along the edge of a cliff the entire time, and thank goodness Ricardo is such an amazing bus driver.  We made it to Amalfi after about four or 5 hours on the bus and had around two hours to tour Amalfi on our own.  Ann-Marie, Caroline, Hank, Sam, and I  headed for the Duomo and took a tour of that before grabbing pizza and some Limoncello, produced right there in Amalfi! If you want to see Pompeii, the Amalfi Drive, and Amalfi click HERE!

We all piled back onto our tour buses and headed for our last stop of the day, Paestum.  We drove through Salerno and lots of little towns and made it to the excavation site. After splitting into our three groups, we roamed around the excavation and more people gave oral presentation on the temples there.  After the site we all went to the museum and got to see lots of ancient stuff! We saw the Tomb of the Diver, which was pretty awesome because we studied that in a couple of my classes, and it's from around 475-470 BC.  We got back to Naples in time for dinner, and I called it an early night again. For pictures of Paestum and Archaeological Museum click HERE!

Thursday we got up early again, although it was not quite as early as the day before, so that was nice.  We stayed in Naples that morning, so we did not have any long ride.  After about ten minutes on the bus, we arrived at our destination, the Archaeological Museum!  Our morning was spent there, switching from tour guide to tour guide.  The groups each spent an hour with three different people, one showed us paintings, one showed us mosaics and artifacts, and the other showed us statues.  The museum was a really cool place.  After our morning there, we all went out and got lunch in Naples and met back at the bus about an hour later.  Our next stop was Cuma!  On the way to Cuma, I had to give another oral presentation, it was about Virgil's Aeneid, which is an epic poem we read in Mythology.  We passed Lake Avernus, which is in the Aeneid and it was thought to be an entrance to Hades.  When we arrived in Cuma, we visited the Cave of the Sibyll, which is where Aeneas entered the Underworld in the Aeneid.  We climbed a hill near the cave and visited some ruins up there.  We also had a really great view of the sea from the top of the hill.  Towards the end of our time in Cuma, it started raining, so we all hurried to the buses for our journey back to Naples.  

Friday was HALLOWEEN!  This was also the last day we had in the Naples area, and we had yet to visit Mount Vesuvius (Vesuvio), which I found absolutely ridiculous.  On the agenda today was a visit to the Capodimonte Museum, but I was pretty set on making it to the top of Vesuvio, so when we were getting ready to leave for the museum, my friend Ally and I hopped off the bus and went back to our rooms.  We waited for the buses to leave, found the train station, bought our train and bus tickets, and boarded the next train to Pompeii.  We got to Pompeii and took the bus to Mount Vesuvius.  The bus dropped us off quite a ways up the volcano, but we still had a lovely little hike up to the crater.  I am so glad that I am impulsive and made us get of the bus in Naples.  Vesuvio was AMAZING!  The inside is even smoking a little!  I had never seen an active volcano before.  I bought myself a rosary made out of lava, and it is pretty sweet.  Ally and I both tossed pennies into the crater and made wishes, I don't think you are supposed to do that though haha.  We also climbed over the fence so we could stand on the edge of the crater! It was such an awesome trip and it made for a great Halloween.  Sadly, I did not get to go trick-or-treating, the first time in my entire life.  :(

On Saturday, the last day of our trip, we got to visit Capri! We had to pack up all of our stuff from the hotel and take our bags downstairs to load on the buses. Exiting the hotel proved to be a difficult task all in itself.  I took one step outside, rolled my ankle, and collapsed into an Indian style seated position on the ground. (I was later told that I was laughed at from the other bus.) Anyway! We had a short bus ride to where the hydrofoil was waiting.  The inside of this boat looked like an airplane, it was pretty cool.  What wasn't cool or comforting was the attendant passing out barf bags before the trip started.  Needless to say, my bag saw some action.  I felt pretty bad, I was sitting between two of my friends, but at least I pre-apologized.  After I threw up my cheese sandwich from that morning, I stood up to get some fresh air on the back of the boat and immediately fell on this small Asian woman.  She was gripping the chair in front of her and looking completely miserable.  She weakly raised her head to look at me, and I apologized before stumbling the rest of the way outside.  It was pretty embarrassing.  After one torturous hour on the Hydrofoil from Hades, we made it to Capri, a beautiful island.  Annie, Hank, and I took the chairlift up to Anacapri and explored for awhile before sitting down for lunch.  We pretty much just took pictures and took in all the sites.  After lunch Annie and I met up with Sam, Ann-Marie, and Caroline and went shopping in Anacapri and Capri.  After shopping we continued exploring and photo taking and had a pretty quiet afternoon.  We eventually made it down to the beach and stayed there the rest of the afternoon.  It was pretty chilly, but I stepped in the Mediterranean just so I could say I had.  I collected beach glass, and soon the day was over, and it was time to head home.  I was dreading the hydrofoil ride back to Naples, but it was a lot smoother the second time around, so no one got sick.  After getting off the boat, we all got on the bus, and our trip back home to Rome began.  Everyone made it back safely, and the whole Southern Italy trip was a lot of fun!    

I will get more pictures up soon.  Hope all is well.

Ciao for now!  Allie