POMPEII
On Friday we had to take a bus to Pompeii for the day and from there we would be released for the weekend. The day started out with Kelsey and me sleeping in as late as possible, since we had to leave for the bus at 7:00am. We began walking down the stairs at 7:03am, sure that they had waited for us. We got to the bottom of the stairs, and everyone was gone. Marissa had just been down there with the group, and said they must have just left. We decided to walk to another hotel where the A&M students were staying. Nobody was there either. Kelsey called up Andres, who didn’t answer, and then called Ryan whose number we had luckily gotten the night before. He answered and we asked where they were. He said walking to the bus. Kelsey said, “Where is the bus? We are at the other hotel.” Ryan responds, “Oh, uh guys…we left Kelsey and them at the hotel…” We quickly started walking in the direction they told us, and came around a corner where we found Chip running towards us. Apparently, as they had found out that we weren’t with them, they saw another bus parked where we were supposed to meet ours. Sharon, one of the women in charge at Santa Chiara, started freaking out because buses in Rome can’t stop for very long, or they get fined 250 euro. She yelled at Chip that he’d better have us running there or he was paying the fine. The image of him as we turned that corner, yelling at us to hurry and motioning for us to run will be forever stuck in my mind, like a track coach encouraging his runners to pull ahead in the state championship track meet. Chip is one of our teachers, and he happens to be the one that runs 4 miles a day, so he had no mercy for us as we waddled along with our backpacks full of clothes and toiletries. It was a little difficult to run on the cobblestone roads, not to mention Kelsey is 4’11” and her backpack is as big as her.
We came around the corner where the bus was, Kelsey and I a good block behind Chip and Marissa, and saw them stop running. The bus Sharon had seen earlier wasn’t ours, and as we slowly caught our breath and walked towards the group, our bus pulled up. Perfect timing.
We slept through most of the bus ride to Pompeii, and when we got there we met up with our tour guide for the day, Giavonni (history teacher). Pompeii was an amazing experience, and it was much larger than I expected. I assumed it would be maybe a mile in circumference with just a few ruins, like a lot of things in Rome, but Pompeii is a huge city! And they haven’t even uncovered a quarter of the city! We began our tour, and I listened to Giavonni and followed along with Rick Steves so I could get the most out of my time there. It was a little dangerous trying to read while walking on those first century streets, I almost twisted my ankle a couple times. Giavonni told us the scientific and technological aspects of Pompeii, while I was in the back of the group reading the interesting facts about first century fast food and brothels. Everyone makes fun of me for reading aloud, but I think they secretly like knowing what he has to say - I’ll be calling Rick Steves for my diploma in May.
We saw the forum, the basilica, and the baths, walked past the brothel but unfortunately didn’t go inside, and saw other various houses and shops. We went past what used to be the market, which now houses all the vases and furniture, etc., retrieved from the ruins. This is also where they display plaster figures of people in the position they were in when they died. Rick Steves taught me that when they were excavating Pompeii, they kept finding mounds with nothing in them. Somebody smart decided to drill a hole in the mound and fill it with plaster. When they broke the lava rock off the plaster, they found a perfectly formed person. They realized that these are the molds of people in the position they were in when the volcano erupted, and then they decomposed leaving no sign they were there. A couple of the plaster people were just lying down, covering their heads. One was a dog with its legs tangled up in each other, as if it was begin blown away, and it was frozen in an instant. The one that was especially moving was the mold of a person sitting down, knees pulled in to their chest, with their hands over their nose and mouth. These showed how instantaneous the tragedy was, people not being able to see, run away or even breathe with all the thick ash and debris falling from the sky. The position of that person was the position they died in, which was quite a concept for all of us to grasp.
After a while we started going on a different path than Rick Steve’s self-guided tour, so I got a little lost and started paying more attention to Giavonni. We came to a house that was gated off to the public, but Giavonni hooked us up and we went into the courtyard. He explained to us that this was the laboratory (luh-BORRR-ah-tory in his accent) where they keep findings from Pompeii and make lots of cool discoveries. We were able to see, and sometimes touch, the remains that they have found. We saw anything and everything they are working with, from a full loaf of bread to 3 human skulls, one of a pregnant woman. There were dates, wheat, nuts, pomegranate, beans, fish net, ropes, a little turtle shell, a big sea turtle shell, a wick from a lamp, sea shells (including ones with paint in them because that is what artists used to hold their paints), a bear’s tooth, a deer’s antler, a flower pot complete with holes for water drainage, a basket made out of grape vines, an ax, and imprints of leaves in the rock. All of these items were charred black, as you’ll see when pictures make their way to Facebook, but the scientists have discovered what they are from looking at the chemical makeup of each item. There was some fish sauce people in Pompeii used to make, and the scientists have found the ingredients and re-created what the sauce would have been. It smelled disgusting, but the people that tasted it said it was like a fishy soy sauce.
There was also an urn they had found with the ash of a dead person. In the ash was one bronze coin, because they believed you needed one coin for your final journey. We got to pass the coin around, and I got to hold, in my hand, a bronze coin from the first century (prior to 79 AD when Mt. Vesuvius erupted). Very cool!
We finished our day at Pompeii with a visit to the renovated Little Theater, and saw the outside of the Amphitheater (it was closed) and the facility where the gladiators trained. Then we (6 boys and 3 girls including myself) began our weekend in southern Italy.
SORRENTO
We caught a train to Sorrento and searched out our hostel. It was in a building that we thought was vacant at first, until a woman in a café below directed us to the second floor. This hostel was much nicer than our first hostel – it was much smaller, and therefore much quieter. When we were checking in, they asked if it was okay if we all shared one room. Andres said yes so that we wouldn’t have to worry about other people in our rooms. We went down the little hallway and opened the door to find 4 bunk beds and one single bed in a room the size of my dorm at Santa Chiara (very little). There was one bathroom that we had to share with the boys - yuck. It was a great experience – like camp, and we are all oversized kids. Unfortunately I chose a bottom bunk, and Zach (6’3”) chose the bunk on top of mine, and whenever he got on his bed, the space I had to sit up in shrunk drastically. There was more than one occasion that he sat on my head.
By the time we all got settled it was beginning to get dark, so we bought some wine and went to the bay to watch the sun set. We met up with our professor, Chip, who happened to be visiting the same town as us, and he hung out with us the rest of the weekend. We ate dinner at Rick-Steves-recommended English Inn, where I had some decent fish and chips.
CAPRI
The next day, we got on a ferry (more like a cruise ship) to go to Capri. It’s about a 20 minute boat ride, and there was great scenery the whole time. Capri is a-MAZE-ing. It is sooo pretty everywhere you look, but you pay for that view so beware! It’s a very expensive island, and a true tourist trap. Since it’s the off season, a lot of places were closed, so we had very few options when getting lunch. We ended up at a very nice restaurant that had decent prices, until we got the service charge. Also might have gotten pricey because we couldn’t resist dessert. We were a little bored at first, since so many shops were closed, but we eventually walked to a park that had a beautiful view of the Mediterranean Sea and surrounding land. The day only got better, as we looked down the side of the cliff and spotted some tiny, tiny people, waving at us. It was Chip, Sarah, Andres and Jeff (who we call Hollywood because he is from Landscape Architecture (LA)). They motioned for us to make our way down.
Looking down over the cliff, there was a path that weaved back and forth down the side of the hill. We walked and walked down this ramp, until we were as low as we could go before the path curved around the hill out of sight. We stood there confused, seeing that the only way down was a path that had been blocked off with a “Falling Rocks” sign and a locked gate. We got their attention, and they gave us the go-ahead for the illegal path. We slid through the gate (the frame was all that remained of the gate) and began hiking down the steep hill (me wearing my cute black flats). I hadn’t expected to be rock climbing today. Surprisingly, my shoes made it pretty easy to climb as long as I avoided the broken glass. I was able to carefully slide down the gravel steps and used a rope when it was provided, but when I got to the big boulder-like rocks it was very easy for me to hop from rock to rock and make my way to the others. When we arrived at the bottom of the cliff, we got to lay down on one of the rocks and touch the water. I decided to take my shoes off and stick my feet in. I left my shoes off for a while and walked around barefoot, pretending I wasn’t freezing from the strong winds.
The boys explored a little and found a cave (complete with man-made toilet) and a shelter that looked like Tom Hanks had made it in Cast Away. After relaxing for a while, we gathered our things, I put my shoes back on, and we hiked back up to the path. It was much easier to go up than down. We wandered around some more and found access to a pebble beach. I threw my things down, kicked my shoes off, and ran around in the water some more. We hung out on the beach and collected rocks until we had to catch a bus back to the top of the hill to go back down the other side and catch our ferry.
We went back to Sorrento and had a deliciously inexpensive meal at a family-owned restaurant just off the main road. It was called Ristorante dell’800 and I highly recommend it! I’m going to call Rick Steves up as soon as I get his number.
We went to the famous gelato place, Gelateria Primavera, where they serve huge cones to lots of famous people, and still have time to make the Pope pastries. The gelateria is covered floor to ceiling with pictures of everyone famous that has been there, and there is video playing of all the events the gelateria has been involved with. I had Snickers and it was super. Did I mention they make 70 different flavors daily?
We finished the night by visiting an Irish Pub where we ran into the A&M people. We tried to go to a discoteca, but they were all closed. Very sad. The next morning we packed up and headed back to Santa Chiara. We made it home for a deliciously free 3 course meal. Dessert was ice cream sandwiches – I’m concerned our cooks are getting lazy.
This week we actually have to work on studio stuff, and have to go to all our classes. In jewelry class I’ve already made a rose ring out of bronze that is just lovely, and I plan to put one of the stones I picked up in Capri into a ring or necklace. I’m super excited for a weekend visit from the one and only Rachel Cooper. She’ll be here Thursday night to Sunday, and we plan on going to the Arezzo antique fair. Kelsey and I are going to push our beds together so we can have a weekend full of cuddle parties. Or as Rachel put it, a play pen.
We won’t be traveling for two weeks, but then we’ll be very busy – Venice one week, Barcelona and Valencia the next week. It will be exhausting and I will be extremely broke, but hey – once in a lifetime opportunity, right mom and dad??
Love you all!!!!!
Cara Marie
This sounds like an excellent trip!
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