DAY FIVE:
We decided during one of our many pre-italy meetings not to go to Florence and to go to Sorrento instead. Sorrento is this cool coastal town in southeast Italy. We chose Sorrento because Florence was supposedly extremely expensive, and Adam thought Sorrento was going to be really cool. Also, it was on the way to our next destination: Lecce (located on the southern most tip of the boot of Italy).
We boarded a train from Rope at the Termini to Naples. We about a 20 minute layover in Naples, but we used that time to get our Naples pass, good for Naples and Pompeii. It is very similar to the Roma pass. The train took about 45 minutes to get to Pompeii. Once in Pompeii, we stored our bags at the train station and searched for some delicious Pompeian pizza. There were a bunch of pizza stands lined up, and after turning every owner down at least once, one guy told us that he would prove to us why his pizza is the best. He brought me down personally to the kitchen. He showed me how he makes the pizzas fresh and that makes them better. That bought him 7 pizzas from us.
After lunch, tour guide Adam (and Ricky Steves) lead us on a tour through the Pompeii. The tour took two hours. We saw basically a really old city, made completely of rocks, that Pompeians lived in thousands of years ago. I’ll post some pics of that as well. The end of the tour ended at a cool coliseum. There, we took a little ciesta. I was, of course, the first one to get bored, so instead of napping, I ran and jumped onto where the coliseum goes up. everyone else quickly realized what I was doing and wanted to join. Nadav was the first one to get up because he was really tall. Everyone else wondered how I made it up there. I used my “jumping over walls” skills I aquired at gadna to get up and over the wall. I had to teach the others how to do it properly. Eventually, we all made it up. it was pretty cool
We left the ruins and reboarded the train going the same direction as before. Pompeii is almost exactly halfway between Naples and Sorrento.
Once we arrived in Sorrento, we did the usual getting lost for some time before finally realizing where we were going. Eventually, we reached the “deluxe hostel.” Let me tell you, it was probably the nicest hostel in the entire world. it looked like a up-scale hotel, but was the same price as all the other hostels we had stayed at. We had our own rooms. I roomed with Seth, Seffi and Joey. WE had our own shower, beds (no bunkbeds which was nice), free wifi, and a big TV! We walked downstairs to find the hostel also connectied to what seemed like the community pool. We didn’t end up swimming, but we could have if we wanted to.
Gabe, Nadav and I left a little later to hit up the grocery store. I had the great idea to but some Italian cheese and crackers as a snack. What an idea it was. The Italian cheese was so delicious!
After our grocery store run, we went to find dinner. What did we have for dinner you ask? Of course, we had pizza! A bunch of us ended up getting pasta and the pizza place though. I got gnocci, sooooooo good.
After, we went back to the hostel and watched district 9 on Adam’s computer. We went to sleep after it ended, around midnight.
Day SIX:
We slept in a bit the next day, and ended up leaving around 10:40. We took a train at 11 to Naples where we saw the famous archeological museum. It was really cool, but very similar to the Rome national museum.
After, we heard from Rick that the best pizza place in all of Italy is in Naples. Well, we couldn’t pass that up for lunch! As we made our way over to the pizza place, I quickly learned that Naples is dirtyyyyyyyyyyyy, but very alive. It’s a very interesting city. I woudnl want to stay there overnight, so I’m glad we only took a day trip. Rick’s pizza place had a line out the door and onto the street Rick mentioned that in his book as well. He said that the best pizza place in Italy had a “rival pizza store.” We figured the rival had to be good if it was the rival, so we decided to go there. Still fantastic pizza, quite possibly the best pizza on the whole trip. After lunch, I basically had given up hope of going to My. Thesevious, an inactive volcano in Pompeii because no one else really wanted to go as basd as I did or pay for it (it required taxi’s, buses and an entrance fee.) that was really sad. I don’t wanna talk about it. it was already getting dark at that point, so we decided to go back to Sorrento. Before we went to the station, we stopped by the “best hot chocolate in the world,” Illy hot chocolate. It lived up to the hype for sure
Once in Sorrento, we went back to the same place as the previous evening. We were regulars there, basically. I got pasta again, and it was till amazing. We thanked the owner and chef for a second great meal and went to wander around Sorrento. We went through the main square, and this place that seemed like the Sorrento version of the shuk. We ended up at the beach, which was spectacular. It was getting late that this point, but we didn’t want to call it a day yet. We went to a karaoke bar where we sung a ton of The Beatles and Elton John. We expected the karaoke bar to be just some guy sitting with a karaoke machine and hoping the three people the bar will want to sing a song. We were pretty much right. There was a big screen displaying the words for us to read, and whever we stopped singing, he took over. After we were singing without mics for about 10 minutes, he brought one over to us. When he turned on Billy Joel, we all went nuts. He was basically a professional karaokeist. Funny we left around 12:30 and got back to the hostel after.
To Lecce (Florence):
DAY SEVEN:
We woke up at 6, and left the hostel by 7. We were at the strain staion by 7:15. We neded to be at the naples Train staion by 8:50 to catch our triain to Lecce. Every time we had taken the train in the past, it didn’t take more than an hour to get to Naples. We gave ourselves plento of time just in case the train was running a little late.
A little late is an understatement. It was 45 minutes longer than we expected. We got off the train at 8:53, and sprinted through the whole terminal to our train. I think I knocked down at least 3 people during the sprint with my huge ski bag. It was crazy and a little fun, but it ended in failure. We missed our train to Lecce by exactly 3 minutes, even when it left late. We decided to go to Florence instead.
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