VESUVIUS!!!!!

So our last weekend trip was to Paestum, Pompeii and Sorrento.  Apparently I am inept at reading emails because I completely missed the part of Elaine’s email that said there would be a pool at our hotel and thus I did not bring my swim suit.  I like to swim. 

The drive, per our itinerary, was supposed to take 1 ½ hours, but in actuality we got there in 3.  It was a really long bus ride, but I brought my own lunch along so I didn’t have to scramble about when we got there to find food. 

Paestum is a Greek colony in the south of Italy near Naples. It is INCREDIBLY well preserved and we got to go with the archaeology professor from school so that made it even better.  We got to see some temples and ruins of theaters, walkways and an ancient tomb to the unknown soldier.  I was in a really goofy mood, so therefore there are lots of goofy pictures from that day.  We got gelato at a little shop while waiting for the bus to come back and get us before heading to Sorrento where our hotel was.

We drove to Sorrento in the dark and got to see the coast line all lit up.  It was beautiful!  So sparkly and Narnia-looking.  Our hotel was super nice; lots of marble and glass, and we got a really good dinner there.  I had spaghetti with clams, chicken, cheesey zucchini, and amaretto cake. Yummmmmm!   It turns out that the pool closes at 6pm, so we missed swim time which made me happy because then I didn’t miss out on swim time.  My roommates and I fell asleep before 11 while watching a movie and fake studying for our history final.

Then next morning we had a really good breakfast at the hotel before jumping back on the bus to go to Pompeii.  I LOVED IT!  I remember checking out books from the library when I was little about Pompeii so it was doubly fun to see it in person.  I wasn’t expecting it to be so big!  There were so many different districts, religious ones, business ones, residential ones.  We were there for nearly 7 hours and didn’t scratch the surface.  It was so cool to go inside all the buildings and pretend that I was in ancient times.  You could even see the tread marks in the paver stones from all the carts, so cool! 

We saw some of the plaster casts of the people who were killed in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79AD that covered the city in rubble and lava.  They made me feel a little uneasy because it made you think that one day the whole city was there and functioning and the next it was covered and people were trapped.  

I loved seeing Vesuvius though!  So cool!  We took a bunch of picture pretending to be freaked out that it was erupting.  CSB|SJU study abroad photo contest winner, yup, that’s gonna be me. 

The ride home was horribly long though, because again they told us it was going to be 2 hours shorter than it was and every one smelled like wet dog because we had gotten rained on.  About half the bus was seriously car sick by the end.  Not the best way to end a really good weekend.