Amalfi Coast!

Yeah yeah I know, I've been slacking and I suck at keeping up with this blog.  Don't wanna hear it!  It's called being a lazy person and I can't say I'm not proud of who I am....

sunset in Sorrento

Anyway, I guess it was about 2 weeks ago I went to Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast on a school trip.  Once again, it was just Iva and I and then a bunch of girls from Lorenzo de'Medici Rome.  So, Friday, after spending a lovely day at the beach, Iva and I caught the train to Rome.  The school was putting us up in a nice hotel FOR FREE for the night so after dropping our stuff off, we got a lovely dinner with our friends from Rome.  The next morning, at a miserable 9 am, we met everyone at the main train station to go to Naples!  Once we got to Naples, we immediately rushed outside to get into the van we were taking down the coast.  I would have loved to just linger around and enjoy the wonderful scenery of extremely creepy looking men, murderers, and trash of Naples, but there just wasn't enough time...

Amalfi

We then drove to Gragnano, a really small town near Sorrento known for all of the pasta it makes.  After getting a tour of a small pasta factory, we then went and had this amazing like 20 course meal outside in the beautiful courtyard of some guy's house.  All of the food was fresh and local and I probably gained about 20 pounds.  We literally took 4 hours to eat everything and then just laid out in the sun for a few minutes before heading to a place where they make Limoncello!!  I personally hate that stuff, but it was pretty cool to see how it's made.  Basically, it's just a ton of lemon peels, sugar, water, and alcohol.  After a few samples, we headed to Sorrento!  After checking into our hotel, I went with Iva and some of our friends from Rome into the town to explore and get some food.  Luckily, after racing down the street like idiots, we caught the last few minutes of the sunset and got to see the pretty view of it over the cliffs.  So beautiful.  Sorrento actually turned out to be a lot bigger that I was expecting.  There were so many little streets filled with places to shop and so many people.  I don't even want to imagine what the place is like during the summer, I bet it's impossible to move or walk on the streets.  After totally living up to the fatass image I have for myself now by stuffing myself with tons of greasy fast food, and doing some shopping, we finally walked back to our hotel.

Amalfi

The next morning, we all got in the van to drive down the Amalfi Coast!  Our first stop was Positano.  We got out of the van to take in the view and buy any fruit from a fruit stand if desired.  I got to see GEORGE CLOONEY'S house. no big deal. The guy has a freaking elevator that goes straight from his house down to the private beach.  Must be nice....ugh.  We then made our way to Amalfi.  Let me just say the drive in between all these little towns is GORGEOUS.  Ok, here's my attempt and explaining it.  Imagine you're on the Blue Ridge Parkway, like on the parts right on the edge of the mountains.  But, take away all of the other mountains you have a view of and all of the trees beside and below you.  Replace everything below you with ocean...with beautiful, bright blue ocean.  Amazing.  Let me just say that if it had been me that was driving, we would all be dead.  You're literally like 2 inches away from falling off the side of the cliff, one swerve of the car and BAM, you're dead.  In fact, just on this one drive, we had to be stopped because of two different car accidents, both with people being taken away in ambulences.  Kinda scary.  So anyway, we spent the day in Amalfi.  At first, I wasn't very impressed with the city.  One of the main ''beauties'' of the town is supposed to be this church.  Hell no.  If I am forced to walk into another church to admire its 'beauty' and frescoes, I might kill myself.  So a group of us instead just ventured off in search for the beach.  We got lunch in this cute little restaurant and sat on its covered deck right on the beach.  It was pretty touristy but still cute.  The sun finally came out so we then spent the next hour or two laying out on the sand!  I got the worst shorts tan of my life.  So worth it though.  There were even people swimming, but I personally think they must've been crazy-the water was freezing.  Everything was SO pretty.  Just looking into the town from the edge of the pier on the beach was breathtaking with the cliffs and the buildings and everything.  It looked like a painting!  After buying some gelato, and then proceeding to drop the entire thing on the ground, we got in the van to head back to Naples.

Heaven.  I mean Amalfi

Ok, I'm sure you're tired of these stories (the one I'm about to tell) by now, but this is my life.  SO...the plan was for everyone to take the train from Naples to Rome, and then Iva and I were to take a train from Rome to Civitavecchia where our driver, Massimo, would pick us up.  The adviser we were with showed us the exact train to get on, so who were we to second guess her?  Mistake.  We should have second guessed her.  After about an hour on this train, that we thought was going to Civitavecchia, the train worker came around checking tickets.  He looked at both of ours and kind of smiled and then said this train doesn't go to Civitavecchia.  Like naive idiots, we say it's ok, as long as this train goes to Viterbo, Orte, Tarquinia, etc....  Nope.  We were headed back south to Naples.  Rattled and feeling like idiots, we got off at the next stop, which was some ghetto town called Latina, and asked a worker what we should do.  Luckily, there was a train leaving 10 minutes from then that would go straight through Rome to Civitavecchia.  We called poor Massimo to tell him we would be there to be picked up at 1 am instead, poor guy had to turn around and go back home.  We got on the train.  Scariest experience of my life.  It was a night train and Iva and I could both foresee the very likely event of our brains being bashed in on the window right next to us by the guys sitting with us.  It felt like everyone around us was in it together and were conspiring to either take us or murder us.  Luckily, before the men had the chance to, we got kicked out of our seats (because we of course didn't have tickets) and had to go stand in the aisle.  The train sat at the Rome train station for about 30 minutes before people started to ask questions and freak out.  The train had broken down and they needed to change a few of the coaches and wouldn't be ready for at least two more hours.  It was 12:30 am at this point so we just awkardly called Massimo again and told him we wouldn't be coming and the poor guy had to turn around to go back home AGAIN.  We walked through the extremely creepy homeless-men-filled train station to take a taxi to our friend Jessica's apartment in Rome.  THANK YOU FOR SAVING OUR ASSES, JESSICA because or else we would probably be face down dead in the Tibre somewhere.  Completely rattled and exhausted, we then got some sleep before SUCCESSFULLY returning to Tuscania the next morning.  Good times.  We didn't die....."Tutto è bene quel che finisce bene."

Despite ANOTHER train mishap, the weekend was so much fun and Amalfi was SO pretty.  I had never seen anything like it before except for in pictures or paintings.  Can't wait to go back.