So this has taken forever to get around to but I’ve been swamped with school work/errands since returning to the states, anyways…. ITALY IS BEAUTIFUL! I had the most amazing time in the world. It was literally a life changing experience. Europe is breath taking. Everything from the architecture to the food— I’m dumbfounded by the time they put into constructiong such elaborate works of art…. I mean, seriously, even our food looked like it should have been in a museam. Just gorgeous. I figured if I wrote about all of this in just one blog post it would take up about two pages so I’m just going to separate it by regions of the trip.
The whole adventure began in Naples where my best friend Lexi (who is studying abroad in Florence) , her family, her sisters friend Shelby and Lex’s roomie Juls— yeah we had a pretty big crew—picked me up from the airport. My flight was over night and I probably had about two hours of off/on sleep on the way there but I was way too excited to be in Italy to worry about something as small as sleeping! Pshhh
We all piled into a Mercedes van with our driver who knew so much about the city. It was great having him with us. He liked to talk a lot…. KO (lexis dad) would crack me up rolling his eyes at the chatty kathy. Our main destination from Naples was the Amalfi Coast but we past the city of Pompeii on the way so we made a pit stop here where our driver recommended a DELICOUS pizzeria. It’s also where I had my first glass glasses of Italian wine. YUM! Following our lunch we took a quick tour of the ruins.
Here’s a little background on the city: Pompeii was a roman city that was buried in inches of ash after the erruption of the volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, partially destroying the entire city. The whole place was kind of swept under radar until its accidental rediscovery in the 18th century.
this is a picture of the cities ruins….the volcano exploded in 79 AD so this place is old.
here we all are inside of the city (from left to right): Juls, Shelby, Anna, Lexi and me
this is literally a cast of someones body from the city…. you see it and its kind of crazy to realize WOW, that was a real person. What happened was— most likely people would die of suffocation due to the smoke from the volcano and the ash would pile on top of them, harden, and create a cast of the humans body.
Some of the body cast were really sad… like this one for instance. It touches your heart. I couldnt imagine how they were feeling/ what they were going through.
on a lighter note….. there were women “brothels” in 79 AD which I found interesting. If you don’t know what a brothel is, its basically a prostitution house. Heres lue and anna inside laying on one of the beds. I made them take a picture here and poked fun saying ” look its just where you belong”
here’s a picture of us inside the roman cities “coliseum” — i don’t know if that’s what they called it but you catch my drift— this is where the entertainment was held.
The coliseum was one of our last stops in the city of Pompeii and probably one of the funniest. There was a huge tourist group from some other European country (we couldn’t quite figure out where from) but they had OBVIOUSLY been drinking. I mean, they were carrying tequila bottles around on the guided tour. They all sat down and were chanting this weird song they made up “Pomp- pomp- pomp pompeii” over and over again. We were dying laughing it was so bazaar. You can kind of see part of the group in the picture above; over our left shoulders. Needless to say the song became an ongoing joke our entire trip in… we would be in restaurants in Rome or Amalfi singing about Pompeii. haha
That about sums up the first city of many on my exciting adventure. It’s crazy I could write this much about just one day! After exhausting ourselves from roaming around in the sun all day, we piled into the van and made our way to Amalfi. I’ll be sure to write about the next city ASAP. (as in after butts and guts at five) Overall, Pompeii wet our feet for the many historical and enjoyable adventures we were about to conquer. HELLLLOO ITALIA!!
