South field trip and Capri

So last Thursday was the start of our South field trip, we take two trips as an entire group, we will go on our North trip in early November.  The plan for this trip was to take a train to Naples visit a couple museums and then we would get on a bus to Sorrento where we would be spending the night, and then on Friday we would head out to Pompeii for the day.  This trip started out bright and early at 5:30 am in order for all of us to get ready and take the metro train over to Termini Station where our train would be leaving from.  Once we found our car we all went back to sleep for awhile as best we could to get ready for the day.  We were going to be heading to our first stop straight from the train station.  We arrived in Naples and realized that it is actually a really dirty town, in a clean sense and crime rate to, they told us that the Mob is really influential on how the city runs, kind of a weird though (and rumor has it the day after we left the military was called in because something was going down.)  In Naples we went to the National Architectural Museum where they have a lot of art and sculptures, it would have been a cool museum but a lot of the exhibits were closed due to renovation so that stop only lasted a couple hours.  We also visited the Fine Art Museum, that was really neat, thousands of paintings were up on the wall.  We got back on the bus and rode or a little while and went to Sorrento, we stayed at a convent that night.  This place is run my 6 nuns, when we got there they were so happy to see us and showed us to our rooms right away.  It was really funny because they were all about 4 feet tall so I looked even taller.  We only had about 15 min to get in and drop our stuff and get changed for dinner.  Every year they do the Rome trip they take the student to The Lemon Tree, and really nice restaurant, there in town.  The had us pick what meal we wanted ahead of time so that we wouldn’t have to wait 5 hours ordering.  I’ve never had a full 5 course meal before so it was really cool.  They brought out bread appetizers first, then 2 pasta courses, a main course of fish and potatoes, and then a creme puff type dessert.  And don’t forget the wine to go with it, normally I don’t like white wine but it was really good there.  I was stuffed after all of that.  We took the train back to the convent and called it a night, but enjoyed the views from our balcony first.  The next day we got up and the nuns had been getting breakfast ready for us.  They had pastries brought in from somewhere, jam to go with those, little pieces of toast and some really good coffee.  After breakfast well hopped back on the bus and went to Pompeii for the day (the only bad thing about these trips is you end up stuffing everything in your backpack and carrying it with you if there is no bag check, luckily Pompeii did have one).  Pompeii is an ancient city that was destroyed when the near by volcano erupted and covered the entire town, until just recently in the past 30 years they have made a lot of progress digging out the remains.  The way the soot fell so fast many of the people didn’t have time to evacuate and where their bodies were formed negative space that was filled in with plaster making a perfect mold so you could literally see how they were when it happened.  There were also a lot of paintings on the walls that had survived the years of wear and tear.  We had seen really everything we wanted to in a couple hours and since we weren’t going back to Rome with the rest of the group we were free to leave when we wanted.  We picked up our bags and headed to the train station to go back to Sorrento where we would catch the ferry out to Capri, as we waited it started to down pour rain so we had 8 people all huddled under 4 umbrellas.  I’m sure that was funny to see.  When we got to Sorrento we went and found the ticket booth and then had to wait 45 min for our boat to leave so we killed time just walking around.  The ride out to the island was really cool, the view from the water was amazing and the whole trip only took 30 min, the boat was cruising.  When we go to Capri we had to catch a bus up to Anacapri which is the other town on the island, took us a little while to figure that out but we made it.  What really surprised us was how nice people were, when we got off the bus we all looked confused and kind of lost I’m sure and a guy came out of his shop and told us where to go.  When we checked into our hostel the people working were super happy to see us and brought us juice which was kind of different.  On Saturday we woke up kind of early and started out our day, we wanted to go to the blue grotto but it was closed because there to many waves.  We did a hike that took about an hour and looked at The Natural Arch, and some other well known rocks.  We took our time soaking in the views and taking pictures.  We headed back to the hostel laster in day and got all cleaned up, we wanted to go somewhere nice for dinner and get some good seafood.  I ordered the fried fish of the day, ended up being a plate with a little octopus, sardines, and a couple other types of calamari.  The squid was kind of a weird texture but it was actually pretty good, can’t say I will develop a taste for it though.  After dinner went found a little night club called the Red Lounge, they had an italian stand up comedian that was doing an act, we had no idea what was going on but it was still fun.  On Sunday the grotto was still closed so we had to cross that off the list again, we rode a ski lift up to the top of the mountain, it was a 12 min ride to the top.  It was super quiet the whole way up which was a nice change.  We hung out on the top and took a bunch of picture and then headed back down to the hostel for a quick swimsuit change, girls had found a small beach and a spot to go cliff jumping the day before so we all headed over there.  We swam out to this rock and climbed up, it was about a 15-20 foot drop by the time you added in your jump height, it was a lot of fun.  What we didn’t know was that there were jelly fish in the water, a couple people got small stings to that kind of killed the swimming for the day.  Since it was Sunday already everyone had to head back to Rome; Garrett, Tim, and I had decided to stay an extra night so we headed back to the hostel and took a much needed nap.  For dinner we got cleaned up and went to the Capri side of the island, I got seafood pasta this time, amazing.  The clams and stuff were still in the shell and the noodles were really good.  We also found what might be the best gelato we have had since we have been here.  This area of Capri is like their 5th Ave. in New York, every high priced store you could want all in a row.  D&G, Armani, Prada, Hugo Boss, Rolex, and all the expensive Italian store to.  We walked down the street just thinking about how much money we could spend, there was a really nice suit in one of the windows, €3600.  There was a store called Harmot and Blaine that had a weiner dog as their logo, and since that’s pretty much my favorite dog I thought it would be cool to get something with that logo on it.  There was a stocking cap on the manikin in the window-asked how much it was….€150….made of 100% cashmere.  After all that fun we rode the bus back to the hostel and sadly did a little bit of homework so we didn’t feel so far behind, but we were so worn our from the weekend we had the lights out by 10:30, I don’t remember the last time I went to bed at 10:30.  Monday was our last chance for the grotto to be open but it was still closed, the tides were still to high for boats to go in so we just started to make out way back to Rome which was a small adventure in itself.  We caught a ferry back to Naples this time so that we could leave straight from there and not have to deal with going back to Sorrento.  I had called the girls who left the day before and asked how to get back to the train station and they said they took a cab since that was the easiest way to do it.  We got a cab and I told him to take us to Napoli Centrali which was easy enough, but once they hit the gas they are off to the races.  I wasn’t scared sitting in the front, more in amazement that everyone drives that crazy and there aren’t more accidents.  We had been driving a little but when he yells ‘Mama Mia!’ and pulls a u-turn and starts weaving down a bunch of side streets and we had no idea what was going on.  I guess there was a bunch of traffic that he was trying to avoid but it was all over.  We made it to a different main road but traffic was almost at a standstill.  It took about 20 min to get to the station and when he dropped us off he kept motioning that it was very busy and traffic was crazy and he was laughing about it, it was a crazy ride.  It was actually really good timing because we bought train tickets back and there was a train back to Rome leaving in 30 min so we just went right to the platform.  Got back to Rome at about 3:30, I walked back to our apartment so I could stop at the store and get milk since I knew I was out at home.  All in all it was an very good weekend, I put up some of the pictures on the web gallery so you will have to check those out.

http://gallery.me.com/cgroten1#gallery

Since we have been back it has been a very busy week, we had our sketchbook journals due on Wednesday so I spent a couple days getting that wrapped up.  We also had an art history quiz today that I was busy studying for.  The busy part of the week is over but now we have a project due on Tuesday so that will keep us busy this weekend.  It was originally supposed to be due Wed. with the sketchbook but they extended the deadline to next Tuesday which we all needed.  Should have plenty of time to get it done now.

No other big travel plans for the rest of the month, need to spend some time crossing off my Rome list to.

Talk to you all later,

Collin