Capri…Italian for the most perfect place on Earth!

This past weekend I spent three days along the coast of Amalfi. I traveled, along with 45 other students down to the Southwest coast of Italy. The trip took about six hours each way, so there was a lot of down time to say the least. On the way down we stopped in Napoli (Naples). I was thoroughly unimpressed with Napoli. Naples is the third largest city in Italy, only to Milan and Rome. It is also the place where the mafia supposedly currently resides. (Although I think that’s supposed to be a secret. If I don’t make it back to America, we’ll know why…) However, it also happens to be the place where pizza was invented. Their pizza is fabulous!!! But, their city was very dirty because they are attempting to get over a trash strike, and there is so much crime there, I constantly felt on edge. Thankfully we only had a few hours there. Just enough time to eat a pizza, meet the prime minister, and have our first look at the ocean. Then we continued on into Maori, where we would spend the next two nights. Maori is a small coastal town, which is very hard to reach by land. We drove along side of a cliff in a giant coach bus all along the switchbacks of the Italian coast line. Every time we rounded a corner our driver would lay on the horn to announce to the world that a big ass bus was coming around the corner. And, if another car ever drove up at the same time, they were basically screwed because the one lane road didn’t really allow for large buses. So, that was an intense drive, but it was worth it! The coast line is the most breathtaking site to witness in person. These pictures will not even come close to doing it justice! Each small town that we drove through on the way in was more beautiful than the last. Our hotel was right on the beach and my room faced the ocean, so in the mornings I was able to watch the sun rise over the ocean…PERFECTO!! By the time we got to Maori on Friday, the sun had already set, so we only had enough time to run to the ocean and dip our feet in before dinner. However, after dinner, we went back down to the ocean with a bottle of wine to watch the moon reflect off the ocean. My friends Julia, Emily, and I ended up going swimming in our underwear. It was kind of cold, but the water was so clear you could see all the way to the bottom – even when it was too deep to touch and even only in the moon light. The whole swimming in the underwear thing sounded like a good idea until we realized that we had no towel and it was really cold outside.

During the day, the ocean was so brilliantly aqua marine, it was indescribable. We had to be awake at 7 AM, but that gave me an excuse to watch the sunrise! We first had to take a small boat along the coast to Amalfi, and then we got on a larger ferry that took us out to the island of Capri. Capri is literally in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea with very few islands surrounding it, so it took forever to get to it, but it was worth the two hour boat ride because this was the most beautiful island ever. The second we got there, we got on another boat that took us to the Blue Grotto. This is a cave that when the sunlight hits the water, it reflects up onto the top of the cave, making the whole thing the most brilliant blue you will ever see. When we reached the entrance of the cave, it was not at all what I thought it was going to be. They moved us all from the boat we were in, into tiny canoes. I got crammed, along with seven other people, into a tiny canoe that I had to lay down in. The entrance to the Grotto was so tiny that our gondolier literally had to lay down on top of us to get into the cave. It was such a cool experience though because once you went through the tiny opening, the cave opened up into a huge room, where our tour guide bega

n singing to show us all how well it echoes in the cave. We didn’t get to spend enough time in the Grotto in my opinion, but it was an unforgettable experience! After the Blue Grotto we hiked to the top of the island and back down the opposite side so we could go to the

beach. It was so surreal to see the rich blue ocean meet with the tallest cliffs without any kind of transition or beach. While on the beach we went cliff diving, which was actually kind of scary, because the water was so clear that it didn’t look like it was deep enough to jump, let alone dive into the ocean. But, in reality, the water was about thirty feet deep! It was a crazy experience. I have never seen water that clear in my life! After swimming, we hiked around the mountains some more taking pictures and taking in the views. After Capri, we boarded the boat again, made a short stop in Amalfi to see their Duomo and crash a wedding, and then headed back to our hotel. In the evening, our teachers set up a beach party for us complete with a bonfire, tunes, and booze. (You have to love European’s ideas of schooling!)

The next morning, we boarded the bus entirely too early to go visit Pompeii. I was pretty impressed with the site, but for some reason I wasn’t expecting it to be so huge! We spent almost three hours inside and I still felt like there was a lot more I could have seen. It was very interesting to learn about Pompeii because I was so unaware about everything before. Silly me, I thought that the lava got the town, but no. Lava never ever reached the town seeing as how it is 10 or 12 kilometers away from Mt. Vesuvius. It was actually the toxic volcanic gases that suffocated the villagers, and the 12 feet of volcanic ash that buried the city. It was so interesting to see the town and all the people who were so unaware of what was going on. It was a little depressing to see. There was a dog that’s apparently famous, but it was tied up outside someone’s house, so it was all curled up in an awful position.

So, that was my weekend. Full of memories I will never forget, and sites I will probably never see anything like again. The absolute perfect weekend!!!