Pompeii, Sorrento & Capri

in the Pompeii amphitheater 

Last weekend we took at trip to Pompeii, Sorrento and Capri with our study abroad group API. To get to those places you have to drive through Naples, which is a very interesting looking city. A lot of the buildings were left unfinished.. and it's highly populated by the Italian Mafia. Don't mess with Naples haha.

ancient drawings on the walls 

Ancient to-go food

Our first stop on the journey was Pompeii, the city of ancient ruins left from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius  around 2000 years ago. It was so neat to see how everything stayed perfectly the way it was because of the volcanic ash. We saw where the gladiators used to train and where they used to put on shows. We saw the ancient baths that all of the public was allowed to use FOR FREE. How amazing was that-they got to go to a spa every single day if they wanted. This was because they thought the only way to cleanse themselves was through the thermal baths. Since Pompeii was a port town, there were a lot of people coming in and out and they had no idea if they were bringing in diseases.. therefore it was mandated that every resident of Pompeii could use these Thermal spas.

The town would fill with water through the mountains so
they built these stepping stones to get across the roads
when it flooded-the lines were for the carriages

We saw the brothels.. definitely an interesting sight. All of the paintings were preserved so unbelievably well for being 2000 years old. In these brothels there were paintings of all of the different options with the price underneath them because it was easier that way since most of the people who used brothels were sailors (and they did not speak the same language). Also, Pompeii was really into having penises everywhere pointing the direction in which all of the brothels were.. interesting.

Pictures in the Brothels

penis pointing in the direction of the brothel

in the forum

Next stop: Sorrento. Sorrento was a beautiful little town. We stayed in a very adorable hotel which had the most amazing breakfast I've had since I've been in Europe. Audra, our API Resident Director, took us on a tour around the town and showed us all the cute shops, churches, etc. We got to try LOTS of limoncello because this area is famous for it-they also have the BIGGEST lemons ever. Audra took us into all the shops to try the chocolates (I've developed quite a sweet tooth here, not okay). That night all my roommates and I went out for appertivo and then to this cute little Italian restaurant and had our typical 4 hour Italian dinner, definitely going to miss those. In America everyone's ready to go in 45 minutes, lame.

Saturday morning we left on a ferry for Capri. This was the choppiest ferry I have ever been on and half of our group ended up vomiting the whole way there-not gonna lie I almost did too. However, we finally arrived in Capri without anyone being thrown overboard. Capri is the most beautiful city. We took a boat tour around the island but unfortunately we didn't get to go into the Grotta Azzurra (Blue Grotto) because it was too choppy. We took a red mountain tram up to the city and walked around and looked in the super expensive shops. Then we took a bus over to Anacapri and went on the chair lift up the mountain. This chairlift was more like a lawn chair on a rope.. very interesting but goodness didn't it have wonderful views. At the top we got to explore a little bit and of course the boys thought itd be a great idea to go to the edge and almost jump off the cliff, stupid. After that we just shopped around a bit and went back to Roma!