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This weekend was an absolute blast! It all started way too early on Thursday at 6AM. We had to meet at the train station (conveniently very close to our apartment) to take a bus to Pompeii. Little did we know this bus ride would last 3+ hours. Halfway we got to stop to grab food for breakfast, and then were back on the road. Two hours later, we arrived in Pompeii, which turned out to be one of the most awe-inspiring things we've seen thus far, and that's saying a lot!
If you don't know what Pompeii is, it is a city that suffered a volcanic explosion and was both extinguished and preserved by all the volcanic ash. It was discovered and excavated and is now open for the public to see - an entire civilization frozen in time. The preservation is so exact, that where people were suffocated, their body positions and facial expressions are imprinted in the ash, and although their bodies decayed, the imprint remained, and they filled these molds with plaster to have replicas of these people. As morbid as it is to see the suffering and agony on these people's faces, how amazing is it that it's possible to see it almost 2000 years later?
The most hilarious part of the tour was visiting the preserved brothel, which can be distinguished by the stone beds built into the wall and the fresco paintings of numerous interesting sexual acts on the wall. Brothels were also distinguished by a penis being carved into the stone walkway outside the door. Strange things these people did, huh? Our tour was awesome but after 2 hours plus all our travelling, we were all ready for lunch. We went to hat we expected to be a genuine Napolian pizzeria (Napoli was where the pizza was invented: Margherita after the queen, red sauce, white cheese, green basil, to be the colors of the Italian flag). Man were we wrong. It was a restaurant catering to Asian tourists with the most subpar food I've yet had in Italy. Our pizzas were hardly cooked and our salad consisted of lettuce and not-yet-ripe tomatoes. Ick.
After our less-than-satisfying lunch, we drove down to Naples to visit the museum where all the originals from Pompeii are held - they replaced many things with replicas to avoid damage and looting of the originals. A lot of it was closed and we didn't have a tour we were just allowed to wander for an hour, so it was basically less than appealing. The most interesting part was the strange obsession these people had with penises. Penis art work, sculptures, pipes, windchime-esque things, anything you could imagine, they had one involving penises. Extremely strange these people's deliberate obsession with sex.
After wandering the museum, we then drove to the pier to catch our boat to Ischia - which is an island off the coast, next to Capri. We had to wait an hour for our boat, and then had an hour and a half boat ride there on top of it, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. The boat had a bar with snacks and drinks and it had a beautiful view, so it wasn't all bad. We reached our hotel to find out that it had neither AC nor wifi, not that we need either of these to survive but they would have been nice. It was so hot; AC would have been much appreciated. We were going to go explore the beach but bumped into a group of girls from our trip who were going to eat dinner so we decided to join them instead. We went to a restaurant recommended by our instructor. Turns out she gave everyone the same recommendation because within 10 minutes of our arrival, 95% of our group was there scattered at tables. Thank goodness we arrived first, because they took great care of us. Apparently the staff wasn't as nice to the other groups and didn't give them free appetizers like we got. Their food also took forever to come out because their kitchen is small. Our dinner was amazing though, and we then decided to go exploring the city after dinner. We found lots of cute shops and the annual town festival. I was finally able to buy new shoes after having two pairs break. They are sandals similar to Birkenstocks or Memphistos. Aside from the fact that they appear to be THE shoe of Europe, they are hands down the most comfortable shoes I've ever owned. No more sore feet and back from walking on cobblestone and marble everywhere! Also, we found a bar, Kiwi Jam, with yummy drinks and wifi so we could all contact our families and let them know we arrived safe. We then headed back for an early night so we could get a good-night's rest for the next day.
Friday morning we woke up to go to a place called Poseidon's Gardens with the group. While a little overpriced, it was an absolutely beautiful resort with cold, warm, and hot natural springs, pools, and a private beach. We started our morning by the pool, had lunch, moved to the beach, then checked out one more pool before heading up to the Wine Grotto at the top of the resort (it is carved into the side of a mountain) then heading back to the bus. They had a full spa, but none of us went there because we had heard some bad things about it from our instructor. We had an absolute great time, enjoying the sun, and finally being able to plunge into cool bodies of water when we get hot like we wish we were able to do in super-hot Rome. It was definitely a little different from home, though. For starters, you had to wear a swim cap to enter the pools, and every body of water was salt water - even the showers to rinse off in when you got out of the water! The beach is also different, the sand is more rocky and the shores are very short. There was also hardly any current or waves. After taking the bus back home and cleaning up, we headed out to get dinner. It wasn't quite as amazing as night number one, but it was still yummy! We then headed back to that one main street everything was on in our town and shopped around again. We headed down to the pier where the annual festival celebrating the founding of both Ischia and the city was going on. We got there in time for a boat show and fireworks, but we were blocked by crowds of people, so we went back to Kiwi Jam because some girls needed to contact their parents, then headed back home for the night.
Saturday we had a free day to explore the island, so we decided to have a beach day. We found a nice private beach run by the restaurant next door, where you could rent a beach chairs and umbrellas. It was much bigger and more spacious than the crowded public beach not even 50 yards away, and the staff was super friendly. Ischia is not a very touristy place, it is the vacation spot for Italians and Germans, so people were very excited to meet Americans. The restaurant owner/grandfather and I had a nice conversation, trying to benefit both my Italian and his English. Then when we became aware that we had accidentally been using another family's beach chairs that they had rented for the month and we should have been sitting farther back on the beach, the owners were extremely helpful and brought us four new chairs in an acceptable location. It was refreshing how accommodating and welcoming they were. After almost 7 hours at the beach, we were ready to head home, clean up, and begin our nightly routine. We wandered around waiting for the clock to strike 19:00 (restaurant's don't even open before 7PM in Italy; they all begin dinner much later than we do at home) so we could eat dinner at this adorable restaurant we found by the pier, Pommarola, Aglio, Olio (Tomato, Garlic, Oil). All I had was caprese salad (Buffalo Mozzerella and and Tomatoes - yes I even ate the tomatoes, they taste so much better here!), house wine, and a garlic/olive oil pasta, but it was hands-down the best meal I've had in Italy yet! Must be because we weren't eating at high-demand tourist restaurants like we do everywhere else. It was pretty funny, when we ordered house wine to share between the four of us (we've been told to always order the house wine, it's the best they have - true!), he asked us if we wanted a ½ Liter. From our previous experiences, a 1L carafe yields about 4-5 glasses of wine, and there were four of us, so we told him no, we would take a full liter. Boy were we in for a surprise! I'm not sure what kind of tool they were using to measure volume, but that liter that night yielded about 10-12 glasses of wine. No wonder he thought we only needed ½! That waitor had also been really excited to meet Americans and asked us all about where we were from, why we were here, etc. After dinner we shopped around in the stores we hadn't seen yet, then headed back to Kiwi Jam for one last bit of wifi before heading home to get ready to leave in the morning.
We had to meet to leave at 9:40 the next morning, then took the bus to bring us back to the port. Our boat tickets said our boat left at 10:35, but there is no way we were on that boat and moving before 11:00 - we did a lot of standing around in the hottest, muggiest weather we've seen yet. So uncomfortable! We then were on a crowded, standing-room-only, 2-hour-long boat ride back to Naples, where we then boarded our bus for a 3+ hour drive back to Rome. By the time we stopped for lunch, we were all about to go crazy. To make matters worse, quite a few people (not me, thankfully) were sick with some sort of food poisoning from breakfast, so this only made matters worse. Our Estimated Time of Arrival had been 3PM, but we did not unlock the front door of our apartment until about 5PM. It was an extremely long day of travelling, but so worth it for the amazing weekend I was so lucky to be able to experience!
Ischia was just an absolutely amazing island. I definitely felt the we're-a-family-you-are-my-child hospitality you would expect in Italy - something we have not yet experienced in Rome. It was also awesome to go to a place I had not even heard of before this trip, because I feel like that's how you experience the REAL country, not the tourist locations where foreigners flock and no one is purely Italian anymore. Don't get me wrong I've loved everywhere else I've got too, this was just a nice change of pace.
I am so thankful for all of the experiences I've been able to have so far. Can't wait to see what else is still to come in these last 2 weeks! I'm 2/3 of the way done. How is time flying so fast?!
PS - this is my second time writing this super long blog, because offexploring timed out in the amount of time it took we to write it all. So now I've learned better to start in Microsoft word first then copy paste, but that meant re-writing this again. Ugh! So thank you for anyone who took the time to read this, I really appreciate it! Don't forget to check out the pictures from this weekend, there are some really beautiful ones! Arrivederci!
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