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Published: April 4th 2012
Hello! I’m taking a break from one of the busiest weeks of the semester to finally update this blog. I’ve been slacking, I’ll admit. Last, LAST week, March 23-25 I went on a class field trip to Pompeii, Herculaneum , the Almafi Coast and Naples. Last week, March 30-April 1, I went on a school sponsored trip to Sorrento, Capri and Naples. I’ll split both weekends up into 2 different blogs.
In my Roman Civilization and Daily Life class we are always talking about Pompeii and Herculaneum, the two civilizations that were destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. I know too much about this topic now…
So, it would only make sense that we travel there for a field trip! We left at the obnoxious hour of 6:30 a.m. and piled on a bus that brought us about 5 hours south to our first stop, Herculaneum. Here we toured the ruins and our professor talked about basically everything we walked past.
Next, we were off to an ancient villa outside the city. Here we did the same thing, walked around, got a tour and snapped more pics.
Finally, we went back to the
hotel to relax after that long day of walking around and seeing so many artifacts! We stayed at a 3 star hotel in Pomepii called Hotel Iside. I was in a room with my roommate Abby, our friend Arielle and another girl. The hotel was nice and we sat on the balcony during that free time we had.
That night, we went to a restaurant about a 10 minute walk from the hotel called Todisco Ristorante. I was really looking forward to dinner that night. I’ve learned that southern Italian food is much different than central or even northern, so I was excited to see what we would be served!
Our first course was a plate of fried dough-like things. They had a slight fish taste and were so salty they became addicting. We went through plate after plate and they just kept bringing more out which was great! Next, a soup was served. They said it was minestrone but I’ve never seen it in this form before. It was rice in a light broth with lots of vegetables and was delicious.
After that came a pasta course. It was described as having different vegetables from the
region. I identified carrots and eggplant before I managed to eat the whole thing. We were served salad next and then finally dessert, which was called tiramisu, but was more of a strawberry short cake in my opinion.
We were served unlimited wine and bread with the whole meal, so I can honestly we all stumbled home extremely full. We were all exhausted at that point, so after I Skyped my sister for a bit, we went to bed to be ready for the next day: Pompeii.
The next morning, at another horrible hour of 8am, we were expected downstairs for breakfast. It was basically, like I have noticed now in many hotels in Italy, a bread and meat feast for breakfast. I had a huge cappuccino, a cornetto and even more bread.
From breakfast we walked to Pompeii which was only a few blocks away. We entered the site and were immediately surrounded by a pack of dogs! They weren’t like rabid or anything, but you could tell they just wanted attention. I in no way was going to touch them because they seemed gross, but everyone else was loving up on these pooches. We learned
me in the baths
i had to do a presentation on these. i know EVERYTHINGthey just “belonged to Pompeii” and had no real owners. Eventually they scattered, but we saw more dogs while walking around Pompeii.
Our professor showed us what seemed like every inch of the huge city of Pompeii. I liked that I finally was able to see what we have been talking about for so long in our classes. I was also able to get pictures of the Baths for my power point presentation I had to give later that week.
In Pompeii I saw even more frescos, ancient homes, pottery and temples, and saw the plaster casts of some people who were killed during the eruption.
Luckily, the weather was great, if anything hot, so walking around only became tiring at the end, when we had been there for about 3 hours. We walked back to our hotel after Pompeii and got lunch on our own on a nearby street. A little later, we all loaded the bus to go to the Almafi Coast.
I loved this part of the trip! Getting there was almost nerve racking because the cliff we were driving on was so narrow and motorcycles were zooming in every lane. After about
an hour of that, we parked and were told that we had about 2 or 3 hours to roam the city. We got there around 3 so the weather wasn’t wonderful, but it was still nice to sit on the beach. We walked around and were offered free lemoncello in one of the many little lemoncello spots we passed by.
That night we went back to the same restaurant, but this night they had a karaoke singer who was ridiculously loud. The restaurant was small! Why was that necessary!? My professor hated it, he left early. For dinner we were served those fried dough things again and unlimited pizza. I can say that the first night was better. The girls I was with ended up staying the longest, while others left to go to bed. We ended up singing karaoke with the DJ and the Italians probably thought we were nuts. But, we didn’t make a face when they sang!! Oh well, it was funny.
On Sunday we had to wake up early again to go to Naples. We were dropped off right in front of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Every person was half asleep during
me in Pompeii
the Romans were short! Like me I guess.. this tour and I really couldn’t tell if the professor noticed this or not. After a full weekend of walking around a bunch of old cities, now we had to walk through a museum? It was exhausting. Here we saw more artifacts and paintings and mosaics from Pompeii.
After this, we all got lunch at a pizza place. Some of us split up to eat outside or in the restaurant, and I chose to sit inside. The pizza was delicious and it seemed like there were 100 to choose from.
Walking around Naples for the next hour was hilarious. We probably didn’t go any farther than 4 blocks away from the restaurant but we saw so many different things it seemed like I was in a completely different place!
We saw a random parade, avoided getting hit by cars in the narrow roads, saw a live baby octopus jump out of its tank at a street fish market, and tried the famous Baba pastry, that (we didn’t know) was soaked in liquor.
We walked through the rest of the city..no joke..to get to our bus and made the trip all the way back up to Perugia.
Amalfi!
looks like a calendar! It was a great weekend. I loved everything I ate and saw and was lucky to have the chance to do some of the same things again the next weekend—which is in my next blog. Read on! Whenever I get to writing it of course…
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