Do as the Romans. Ninety-six hours was clearly not enough time to see one of the most gorgeous countries in the world. I started my week on Wednesday porting in the city of Naples. The city was neither the cleanest nor the safest, so the majority of us tried to get out of town as soon as possible. I started out by getting on a 40 minute metro/train to the fascinating archaeological site of Pompeii. I’m currently enrolled in an anthropology class so it was nice to have some background in the area and know what I was looking at. Pompeii was buried in 79 AD by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius killing 25,000 people in 19 hours. The city sat covered and untouched for 1700 years before it was rediscovered. Nearly only 1/5 of the city has been excavated which we all saw. It was incredible to see the preservation of the city overall the years. You could see all the different craft shops, restaurants, pottery, and everything else still standing. After Pompeii I went back to Naples for the evening. I ended up catching up with my parents and Nick for awhile on the phone as well as some others online. After pizza and gelato I ended my night early so I could wake up for Rome.
There were about forty students and ten adults who all took busses to Rome for 2 days. Upon arrival we went to a typical Italian restaurant. We had traditional spaghetti and tiramisu. It was quite delicious; afterwards we headed to the Colosseum which was one of my favorite parts in Rome. The thing is absolutely huge, in modern times it resembled a huge stadium like Fed Ex or Michigan’s “Big House.” It held over 80,000 people. We had a guided tour which bypassed us through the hours long wait to get into the structure. Once we were inside our guide gave us some highlights… There were three sections for seating based on class, they could have it filled in less than twenty minutes, and on average ten people died in the gladiator combats as well as hundreds of animals dying. After our intro we got to walk around and go to the top to take pictures which was an awesome view. After the Colosseum we went to the hotel to unpack our things and then headed to dinner where I had the best meal in Italy. We ended up meeting up with another SAS Rome group, there was about 100 of us plus 10 other tables of other people all sitting outside. The restaurant was on the outskirts of town but it’s exactly how you would picture Italy with a perfect Tuscany setting with old Italian guys playing guitar and the accordion, and big candle torches lit all on the outside of the restaurant. Not only was the setting gorgeous was the food and wine were great too! They served us Manicotti along with other Italian dishes. After dinner we all got back on the bus and headed to the city for the night tour. We stopped at the famous Trevi Fountain. There were hundreds of people there throwing coins in and making wishes. It’s one of the most popular hotspots at night, history says if you throw one coin in you’ll return to Rome and if you throw two in you’ll find love in Rome. I didn’t necessarily need to meet the love of my life at the bar Sloppy Sam I was headed too so I decided to just throw one hopefully returning sooner rather than later! From Trevi we headed to the Pantheon. It’s currently the oldest standing structure in Rome dating back to about 70 BC. The building had gorgeous pillars and scriptures all throughout; from the looks of it you would have never guessed it was over 2000 years old. After the Pantheon we went to Piazza Navona which had lots of street vendors and music playing in the square. At this point the old folks headed back to the hotel and the young crowd went to another square called Campo di Fiore where all the bars were. My dear friend Kim Galloway studied in Italy and recommended everywhere I needed to see, eat, and drink. I hit most of them including the two bars Drunken Ship and Sloppy Sam. They had a really fun atmosphere where we met a few other Americans who were backpacking and studying in Italy, along with many other people from all over the world.
Our wakeup call at 6:30am the next morning came earlier than expected. After prying ourselves out of bed we grabbed breakfast in the hotel and gathered in the lobby. (If I see you this summer remind me to tell you the story about one of our guys who got locked into the bathroom in his hotel for 8 hours. Seems as though the hotel didn’t have a key, screwdriver, or axe.) Anyway after everyone got all of their stuff together we got back on the bus and headed to the Vatican Museum. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see the Pope but I did get to stand in awe in the Sistine Chapel and admire Michelangelo’s work of the scenes from Genesis along with the Last Judgment. Although the artwork has been cleaned over the years it hasn’t been touched up in anyway. The color and detail were absolutely unbelievable; every other person looked like they were popping out of the wall. Taking pictures is not allowed but I snuck a few after I saw many other people doing so, unfortunately my pictures w/ no flash don’t do justice to the artwork. At the age of 25 he completed the ceiling in four years and then went back and did the sides years later in another four years, nearly all by himself. After visiting the chapel we went to St. Peter’s Basilica and saw many more pieces of art, sculptures and architecture. When we finished with the tours we had hours of free time. We grabbed lunch, shopped around and then went across the city to see the Spanish Steps. Luckily when we were there it was relatively quiet with many tourists taking pictures; last summer there was a crazy guy who got the great idea to drive down the stairs at high speed, no one was hurt but many of the steps were chipped.
After seeing as much as Rome as possible in 36 hours we got back on the bus back to Naples. Arriving around 7:30 my friend and I grabbed the last ferry at 8:15 to Sorrento, a southern city in Italy on the coast. Sorrento was gorgeous at night time; the entire was city was lit up including all the villas that sat up on the cliffs up above. We began our trek up the mountain to our hostel, after about a 45 minute hike we finally arrived to the beautiful Village Campogaio. My other three friends from the boat, also Hoosiers, were there along with one of my friends Lindsay who recently graduated from IU and is living in Italy for the summer. After checking into our cabin (vinyl siding, no window or light, and a porch door) we found our friends and hung around the campsite and told travel stories for the rest of the night.
The next morning we awoke early to the sun beating down on us. We gathered our things and headed down the cliffs to the beach. After hanging around Sorrento for a bit we caught a ferry to Capri. This island so happens where all of the beautiful rich and famous people spend their summers there. Brad Pitt, P. Diddy, and many others have often been spotted in Capri. I unfortunately didn’t see them, but I did see yachts that could have cost upward to 100 million dollars. Capri was gorgeous, there were huge villas on top of cliffs and restaurants and shops everywhere. We spent the next six hours lying on the beach and huge rocks and swimming in the Mediterranean. Every once in awhile we sat back and got to see what Paradise really looked like. After grabbing my 10th gelato (at least 2 a day) we took the ferry back to Naples. It was very sad to leave such a beautiful country, especially knowing that I had two 5 pages papers due when I got back. I’m almost half way to Turkey in the middle of the Mediterranean; the water is an incredible deep blue and very smooth. It’s very much a tease as I would give anything to go water skiing right now. Somehow I think I’ll survive though as I go back and look over my pictures from the past four days and look forward to Istanbul, Turkey.
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