Well, I suppose I should start from the very beginning because it was a long weekend! We left Thursday night at 7 pm from Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence (after, of course, grabbing a very nutritious dinner from McDonalds), and by we I mean me, Kelly, Cara, Bailey, Caitlin, Abbie, Amber, and Tanja. It was a big girls weekend! The bus ride was about 7 hours long and we had to stop by some shady, out-of-the-way train station near Rome to pick up three random girls who were coming on the trip with us (all in all, there were about 48 of us, plus two guides, on this trip). We arrived at our very nice hotel/hostel around 2:30-3 am exhausted, hungry, and dirty but we all just passed out right away so it didn’t matter.
This was the view from outside our room down into the outdoor courtyard (10 of us roomed together!). Our guides told us it wouldn’t be wise to judge future hostel stays based on this one alone, and I believe them. It was a pretty nice place; downstairs there was a bar and they served us breakfast. We could eat dinner there for only 5 euro a plate (mostly pasta) and they had a rooftop terrace for warmer weather.
We all woke up the next morning about 7:30-8 am and were out the door by 9 to get to Capri. We had to take a ferry over and it was pretty overcast, but it was worth every single second. Capri is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Even with a cloudy sky the water looked navy blue and clear, and I could tell that the people staying on the island or living there were mighty rich, based on the number of yachts in the bay and expensive cars parked on the narrow, winding streets. First, we took a boat to the Blue Grotto, which is literally a small hole in the side of a huge cliff that opens into a dark cave.
Kelly, me, Amber, and Tanja were in a small rowboat, and the guy who was rowing the boat just told us to get down low so he could yank on the chain and pull us into the grotto. I don’t get nervous about small spaces or anything like that, but imagine having to fit a boat into that opening! It was pretty scary, but so worth it. Once you’re in, it’s a big, dark cave and you can’t see anything until you turn around to face the bright opening where the sunlight is streaming in. It shines up out of the water and it looks like there are lights below the water that are illuminating it–it’s so blue it looks like pool water. With all the men rowing the boats singing Dean Martin and their voices echoing off the cave walls it sends chills down your spine–there’s no other place like it in the world. No description can do it justice, it’s only something you can see firsthand to really understand what I’m talking about.
After that we took a tour on the bigger boat around the entire island (which isn’t very big), but it’s so beautiful. A lot of it is just green grass and trees or tan and white cliffs with cerulean waters breaking against them. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life (aside from Positano, which I’ll get to next!). The rock formations are amazing–I took a few pictures of natural caves, a natural arch, and a rock off the island that has an arch in it that we went under. It’s called the kissing rock and you’re supposed to kiss someone you love as you sail under it…unfortunately, I don’t love any of the girls enough to kiss them just yet, so I didn’t get to kiss under the kissing rock 
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After the tour, we hiked (and I mean hiked) two miles uphill to the town of Anacapri to get lunch and walk around a bit. That’s when things got bad–it was so steep hiking uphill that a lot of our group had to stop towards the end because we hadn’t exactly had a big breakfast or a lot of water that day, and some of us were in danger of passing out. After the initial suffering, we all sat down at a nice cafe for some pizza and much needed water before setting out to do a little shopping. We took a bus further up on the island and found a cute little place with lots of little shops with Limoncello, jewelry, and clothes. I bought a pretty necklace with green stones on it and a few people bought Limoncello. One of the salesmen took a liking to Amber and I so he kept giving us free "tastes" of the Limoncello. He also gave us a lemon-chocolate bar for 4 euro instead of its original price of 8 euro, so we made a friend 
. We had to meet the group back down at Marina Grande, where the ferry dropped us off in the morning, to get back to Sorrento so we decided to start walking down early instead of taking a bus back. Well, that was a mistake. We walked the three or so miles down a mountain of stone steps in the pouring, drenching rain. The steps were so steep and slippery we were all afraid we would slip and fall and have no way of getting to a reliable hospital–it was very scary.
This was the view from the top where we started our trek–down where those small, teeny tiny boats are is where we had to be. Can you even see them? Yeah, I couldn’t either. Anyway, we made it down alive and rewarded ourselves with some delicious gelato (which is the most brilliant thing man ever invented) which only served to make us colder. We did make the ferry back to Sorrento, but we were all so drenched and cold that we just stayed at the hotel to eat dinner because it was still pouring outside (we would have to walk about 45 min. into town to get dinner at a restaurant). We passed out that night around 10:30, and I’m pretty sure my parents called me around 11 but I don’t think I was even conscious enough to hear my phone ring.
The next morning we didn’t have to be out of the hostel until around 10, so we were able to sleep in! After grabbing breakfast we were off to a day at the beach at Positano. The day was much sunnier and warmer than Friday so the whole group was anticipating a nice, relaxing day at the beach. Most of the girls wore bathing suits but me, Kelly, and Amber didn’t wear ours so we just planned to sit on the beach and read. We sat through a beautiful, scenic bus ride until the driver had to let us off in the middle of the road so we could walk the next mile down more steps (by this point we were ridiculously sore from the steps the day before) to get to the beach. Apparently the roads down to the actual beach were too narrow for any bus to get through. Positano is gorgeous.
I may be biased because Saturday was so much nicer and so the water was bluer, but Positano is such a cute place. It has many little shops and cafes and homes all on cliffs overlooking the ocean. If there were elevators I think it would be much nicer, but that’s just my opinion. I saw more than one elderly lady walk up and down those hills without even breaking a sweat, so I can’t really complain without feeling silly. What I didn’t do that was really stupid was wear sunscreen, and I got sunburn on my face and arms. I got it even worse on my legs, though, and last night they were purple–I called my mom in a panic thinking I had severe sun poisoning and I had very little time to live. I’ve never had or seen anyone with such bad sunburn, so I can tell you that walking to the hotel from the ferry that night was a miserable experience (because we had to shower and get ready and make that walk again to go to dinner). The restaurant we ate at was really cheap and really good though, so I can’t complain about that!
The next day we left at 11 am to go to Pompeii and that was an experience. Mt. Vesuvius erupted 2000 years ago and buried the town of Pompeii under so much ash that it wasn’t found again until about 200 years ago. Vesuvius used to be 10,000 feet high (according to Antonio, our guide) and when it erupted long ago 7,000 feet blew off the top of it. That’s amazing–nature is a stronger force than we think! So many parts of this city are still amazingly intact, like the town market, the town center, the public baths with a lot of the original marble floors, a brothel, a lot of murals, and also a few human bodies preserved in ash.
Coming back into Florence last night felt like coming home, and that was the best part. I was so glad to get on my familiar bus home and get into my familiar bed and say hi to Maria. I think going away finally made me appreciate Florence since I finally feel like I know where I’m living for the next two months. This weekend me, Kelly, Abbie, Caitlin, and Will are going to Oktoberfest in Munich for a day (9 hours on a bus there, 9 back–don’t even ask how we’re going to do that) and that’ll certainly be an experience, but that’s what’s next for my adventures! I hope you enjoyed my description of my weekend, and I suggest that everyone go to Capri and Positano and Pompeii if they can one day–they are the places where all those pictures on calendars come from! Here are links to slideshows with all the pictures I took with captions so you can get a better idea of what I saw this weekend: Sorrento and Capri, Positano, Pompeii.
Until next time!!
Ciao!
KT
