Amalfi Coast, or "Eat, Pray, and Loooove"

My trip to the Amalfi Coast was one I had been looking forward to for a long, long time, and it almost didn't happen for me. My class schedule this semester kept me in class on Thursday evenings until 8:30 at night, and pretty much any trip through either EuroAdventures or Bus2Alps departed Florence at 7:30pm at the latest. I had to do a good deal of bartering and begging with my professor to "please please let me leave early because all I want in life is to go to Amalfi".

So anyway, Thursday night I hopped on a bus with some new friends headed for Sorrento, in the Campania region of Italy. It was on this bus that I was first introduced to the incredible, adorable, inspiring, incredible Father Bruno. Father Bruno is 70+ years old, he is a painter, a priest, a wine maker, a teacher, and, recently, a tour guide to a bunch of college kids. He exuded energy and I'm sure this trip would not have been the same without him.

So we checked into our 'hotel' around 2am, which turned out to be a beautiful villa in Positano located on a lemon orchard overlooking the ocean. Incredible. The next morning we woke up early, met Bruno downstairs, and accompanied him on a bus trip to nearby "Po-si-ta-no"(Bruno made sure we could pronounce it properly, as he did with many other words on this trip). The day was overcast and rainy, but the beach and the town was beautiful. We played in the (freezing cold) water for a while, then warmed up with some pizza and panini.

Beautiful Positano

We then hopped on a bus to visit the town of Amalfi before heading back to Sorrento for a lovely dinner with Bruno. The next morning we woke up extremely early to catch a ferry to the island of "CAH-pri" (not like the pants). On the agenda for today was taking in some beautiful sights, climbing 1000 steps to the town of Anacapri, taking in some more beautiful sights, and hopefully swimming. Well, I greatly underestimated the intensity of climbing the Phoenecian steps, because for whatever reason 1000 didn't sound like a lot. Once someone mentioned that we only climb something like 87 steps to our Italian class twice a week, I knew I was gonna have a problem. And yeah, the climb kicked my ass, but it was breezy and beautiful the whole way up. Once our whole group, Father Bruno included, reached the top our next activity was to... climb back down the other side of the island (haha!) and visit the Blue Grotto, hopefully do some cliff jumping. Unfortunately the water was too choppy and it wasn't safe for us to do either of those things so we headed back to the town center to lay on the beach for a while. I took it upon myself to go for a scaled down version of cliff jumping, more like rock hopping, into the once again extremely cold water.

Beautiful Capri

View from something like 600 steps up

Beautiful beach, and the rocks I hopped off

That evening, Bruno invited us all to join him on a trip to Naples for what he mostly only described as "Eat, Pray and Loooooove, with Juulia!" We visited the original pizzeria, where Julia Roberts once ate when she came to Italy. It was delicious pizza, but I'm not gonna lie, I still think Gusta Pizza in Florence is better. This side of Naples was pretty sketchy (though I've heard other parts are beautiful) so we pretty much went right back to Sorrento as soon as we finished eating our pizza.

The accordianist in our train car

Pizzeria da Michele, authentic Neapolitan pizza

Sunday morning we packed our bags and made a pit stop in Pompeii on the way back to Florence. Pompeii was, of course, a very interesting experience, and we enjoyed such wonderful sights as penis pavers, a mummified pregnant girl, and an ancient McDonald's. It was really one of the coolest cities I've ever seen or probably ever will see.

Leading the way to the Lupanaria

Ancient people, stored on shelves with ancient pottery

Besides all the touristy stuff, Pompeii was also really beautiful

This trip was so much fun, and I was glad to spend time with some new friends and challenge myself with new experiences (climbing 1000 steps, rock hopping into the Mediterranean Sea, "Abbey Road" across Pompeii stepping stones). Easily one of the most fulfilling and memorable weekends of my life.

Up next: the International Craft Show, and climbing stuff around Florence