Planes, Trains and Automobiles....

And taxis, and tour buses, and even a boat!!! And of course- on foot! Those were all of the means of transportation Mom, Mawmaw Pawpaw and I took during our 10-day tour of Southern Italy. It was amazing the amount of traveling we accomplished in such a short amount of time! During the plane ride from Palermo, Sicily to Florence Mom and I discovered we had visited 16 cities/towns in 10 days. We were traveling fools! I think it would be much easier for me to take this day by day since there are ten of them and let's face it, there's a lot to remember!

Friday the 20th: When I left you on Friday, I was about thirty minutes away from hopping on the train to Rome. I made it there with out a hitch and Mom and PawPaw were at the train station waiting to pick me up! It was so great to see them and hug them, I was pretty ecstatic! We carried my luggage up nine blocks to our hotel, which was actually a convent of Spanish (I know, why not Italian? who knows!) Nuns who rented out several rooms as a hotel. They were the sweetest Nuns, so welcoming and cute, I really wanted to be their best friends. So there ya go Uncle Mike- I almost joined a convent! BUT I didn't! That night we took a taxi straight to the Pantheon, since mom had never seen it, and then we found a cute, quiet little piazza and had a wonderful meal! After dinner we walked to the Trevi Fountain, which, if you recall is by far my favorite site in Rome, and mom and I made a wish in the Fountain. Mom wouldn't tell me what she wished for but I'm going to go out on a limb and say she wished to come back with Dad and Dom...ok fine maybe that was MY wish, but I bet she echoed it! :). After the Trevi we went and got their first cone of Gelato! It was delicious!! We had to go back to the convent after that because the Nuns had a curfew of 11:30, but believe me, we were all exhausted from traveling so it didn't bother us to call it a night.

Saturday the 21st: We slept in a little bit, grabbed some breakfast at the convent (a roll with cheese and a cappuccino) and headed out for the day! Mom, Mawmaw and Pawpaw had found a tour bus the day before that would take you all over the city of Rome and allow you to get off at any stop you chose and explore for as long as you want and then catch the next tour bus that came along. I thought this was a grand idea. The first thing we stopped at was the Coloseum. We went through the long line, and then walked around the entire arena. I was acting tour guide and basically parroted back everything I remember Fabrizio (my previous tour guide) had said. This is why I do well in school- I am an incredible audio learner, the real reason I don’t have a 4.0 is because I tend to daydream... :). ANYWAY, after the colosseum we hopped back on the bus and took it to the Vatican City. This is what I was most excited for Mom to see- I adore St. Peter's Basilica and every church in Italy pales in comparison to its ornate arches, sculptures, and frescoes. We debated not going in because the line looked about 2 miles long (I'm not joking) but we realized it was moving pretty fast and we got in line. I am really glad we did because the line, going through the church and getting out couldn't have taken us more than 45 minutes! It worked out really well! By the time we were out of the Vatican we were ready for some Gelato and a nap. So we got some gelato, caught the next tour bus and went back to our convent. We rested and then went back to the city center for dinner. We had the cab driver take us straight to the Spanish Steps but when we got there he had to drop us off a little ways from it because there was a marching band playing on the steps and quite a crowd of people standing around enjoying the music! We listened for a little while and then set off in search for a bancomat (ATM) and a cute place to eat! We found both and had another enjoyable dinner in a breezy little piazza. After dinner we walked back to the Pantheon to catch a cab and called it a night.

Sunday the 22nd: Sunday we had to get up extremely early to call a cab (which I managed to do in Italian, whoop!) and head out to catch our Bus Tour to Naples, Pompeii and Capri! The bus nearly left Pawpaw because he was on the phone a few steps away, but we caused quite a raucous while it was pulling away, and they stopped so he could hop on! I slept all the way to Naples (it was 7 am and I was in a moving vehicle, I didn't stand a chance). We didn't actually stop in Naples, we just drove through the port so I wouldn't say we got a good view of the city. It was a pretty dirty port, and didn't look inviting or fun at all, so based on that little bus ride I'd have to say Naples was a bust and not really some place I'd like to visit again!
After Naples we went to Pompeii! It was incredibly hot but our tour guide was great and always stopped in shaded places. We walked all over the ruins of the little town and I was amazed to see how much of the town was still in tact. Almost entire houses were in tact with their mosaic floors and painted walls. They were actually really nice houses. I was also shocked to see how far away Mt. Vesuvius was from Pompeii. I was under the impression Pompeii was a naive little city that put itself right on the foot of a volcano and was destroyed because of the lava. In reality Pompeii is several miles away from the mountain and it wasn't the lava that killed the people living there, it was the poisonous gasses and the 500-degree ash that settled over the town. It wasn't even that eerie to walk around but what was eerie, and very sad, was what we saw in the food market. There we were introduced to two former inhabitants of Pompeii. It was actually a plaster cast of their bodies in the position they were in when the disaster hit. What happened was their bodies were covered in layers and layers of ash during the volcano's eruption. As years went by the ash turned more into rock and the body decayed leaving a perfect mold. Some archeologist discovered this and decided to pour plaster into a small hole he made in the ground effectively giving him a perfect reconstruction of what the person looked like in the last moments of their life. I think that’s perfectly horrific but to each his own. I took about a MILLION pictures all over Pompeii so I will have to show them to you sometime, my description here does no justice to how cool the town actually was.
After Pompeii we were taken by bus to Sorrento, which is a really scary drive up VERY narrow streets where one side is a rock wall and the other is a plunge into the Mediterranean Sea. It was nerve racking, but there was a beautiful view if you could manage to look out the window, haha. Sorrento is a little town just 5 minutes from Capri. We stayed in a beautiful hotel called Hotel Vesuvius (no worries we were no where near Mt. Vesuvius at this point) and had a wonderful dinner. After we ate we enjoyed some coffee out on a lovely patio with live music. We went to sleep exhausted and knowing we had another early morning ahead of us.

Monday the 23rd: Ok, I am going to admit that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed Monday morning. I had fought a battle of the wills the night before- I basically had an excruciating headache and refused to take anything for it. Mother Nature won out around 3 am when I felt so sick I could barely sit up long enough to take some Tylenol. I know Mom and TJ are just shaking their heads at me right now. Why am I so rediculously stubborn about taking medicine? I have no idea. Nor is that really interesting haha, just an excuse to why I was so cranky the next morning. We woke up at 6am, all of us wishing we didn't have to get back on that bus and go go go for the rest of the day. It had been a rushed few days and I think we were all ready to sit still for a day...and maybe sleep in a little! But we made it out to the bus at 7:30 and met our guide for the day: Marco. Marco is a 30 something Italian man, as cute as can be and maybe a little too energetic. He took us to the ferry we took to get to Capri from Sorrento. When we arrived in Capri he basically RAN us to these little speedboats so we could be the first to enter the Blue Grotto. The Blue Grotto is a little little cave in the side of a cliff. We were told over and over again how lucky we were because the grotto was open that day. If the tide is to high or the water is too rough it is impossible to go in. Why would we rush to go in that death trap you ask?? I will tell you. When we arrived at the grotto's entrance Mom, Pawpaw and I climbed into a little rowboat with a very small Italian guy as our guide. Mawmaw chose the wide-open spaces, and I do not blame her, looking at the little rowboat and the even smaller opening we were about to go into was a little frightening! We rowed up to a 5 foot wide and 3 feet tall opening in the cliff. Our guide told us to lie completely flat in the boat and he pulled on a chain that pulled us into the cave. We sat up as soon as we got in and looked down into the water. This is why people come into the Blue Grotto. The angle at which the light comes through the opening of the cave causes a reflection that makes the entire cave light up in the most brilliant electric blue you have ever seen!! I got some great pictures of it, plus some great video of our guide singing opera once we were in the cave. It was really an amazing little ride.

Once we got back to the mainland of Capri we took a little bus all around the overly crowded island and walked and shopped. We saw an old perfumery where monks once worked making perfumes and soaps using all of the flowers and herbs native to Capri. We also saw a gorgeous little garden- it really is one of the most beautiful places in the whole world.

We only stayed in Capri for a few hours, by three pm we were back at our hotel and waiting for one more tour bus to take us back to Pompeii where we hoped yet ANOTHER tour bus would take us to Napoles where we would catch a ferry to Palermo Italy. Do you see now why I was a little upset that morning, we are talking a non-stop few days. We made it to Naples (turns out we got a huge 55 passenger bus all to our selves! I have no idea how!) and on the ferry with out a problem! We had some dinner, enjoyed some drinks and went to sleep, thankful for a chance to rest!

I think I am going to stop here for this blog- I will write about the rest in a separate post just for the sake of space!!!
So....To be Continued:...