Bahh!!!

I wish I would keep up with this thing!!! Well since Cinque Terre we've gone on a school field trip to the South. We went to Naples and Sorrento. We were only in Naples for a few hours to go to a Museum. Needless to say we didn't get a very good impression of Naples, as it has a bad rep for being dirty...and we definitely saw that side! Sorrento is along the Amalfi Coast which is absolutely beautiful. As a class we went to a restaurant called The Lemon Tree where you get to actually eat under groves of lemon trees. The restaurant is huge and amazing...the food was excellent. The morning after our class dinner we got to do our own thing and so my roommates and I stayed in Sorrento for the remainder of the weekend. We spent our time wandering, shopping, and sightseeing. I can't wait for my sister and mom to visit Sorrento, they are going to love it! It's a sweet, clean town, full of life and tourists. I ate some great seafood, which you have to do while you're along the coast! We also took a fairy to Capri...STUNNING! Seriously amazing! I think Capri, runs a close second to Cinque Terre for me as being the highlight of my travels thus far! I love being along the water, everything about it, the boats, the waves, the breeze, ugh amazing! Again, my sister and mom are going to drool! We took an hour long boat ride around the island of Capri, sadly the Blue Grotto was closed due to the high tides so we couldn't see that, but when I think of the Mediterranean that is what I pictured, every view was picture perfect. We got to see coral in the ocean (not coral reef coral, like coral coral :) ) On our last day we went to Pompeii. Pompeii it is something pretty interesting to take in, we all enjoyed it. It was pretty crazy seeing Mt. Vesuvius in the distance because it looks so beautiful but it's such a bittersweet site, because you're standing in the exact location where so many lives were devastated! We saw some of the casts of the bodies in the positions that they were in when the smoke hit them from the volcano killing them and also a dog :( It was also pretty remarkable to see how they lived, their homes were amazing, with the frescoes, two-story homes, courtyards, and what-not, they knew what they were doing back in 60 AD. I feel like our log cabins from the 1800's have nothing on them, haha! All in all, it was a great weekend!

Cinque Terre

Oh my GOODNESS! Words cannot describe how incredible Cinque Terre was! I was there a week and a half ago and I still can't get the visions out of my head! Everything is truly breathtaking. I had the best of my life with my roommates, all of 7 of us girls ;) The trip there wasn't such a joy, as we spent the day in Assisi with the our class and then took a midnight train that took 5 hours to get to Cinque Terre. Another downfall to our late night train was that we didn't have assigned seats and so we had to sit in the tiny little isle.....it was absolutely down right MISERABLE! but I knew we were heading somewhere splendid so we all kept a smile on our faces. None of us got any sleep on the train so we were beat! We arrived at one of the towns (Cinque Terre means 5 towns) at 4 AM, so we were hobos and laid out sheets and slept on the ground in a safe area for about two hours while a couple girls stayed up to make sure we were safe. We all watched the sunrise over a cliff, although I didn't enjoy as much as I probably should have because I'm not much of a morning person, especially when I only got 2 hours of sleep on concrete, hehe! Anyways, we made our way to our hostel, got breakfast, took a short nap and went to the beach for the day and did some shopping! At night we hiked up through the hills behind our hostel and found this amazing lookout point at this community space and just hung out together and talked. The next day was the BEST! We got up early, got fruit, and prepared ourself for our day of hiking. We hiked from town to town...it was absolutely amazzzzing. I honestly cannot describe how amazing it is, and words don't do it justice...

The town of Vernanza was probably my favorite of the 5, although they each have there own character. I would love to go back someday, I really enjoyed going with the girls...we had the best time together and hold a special bond together after that trip :)