Last Minute Italy

While on safari, I decided to shorten my stay in Africa and instead change my flight to Europe earlier. Picture me using the international data plans of my friends while deep in the Serengeti, with my head popping out the top of the Land Rover to get better reception. I think one quote to the United agent was, "Sorry for the background noise, I am on safari and a hippo just yawned real big"


It all worked out in the end, and my mother was finally able to deceive United by pretending she was me and changing both my date AND destination for a mere $66.

My good friend Scott was in Rome. Scott and I met a long time ago on an online dating site, and while dating wasnt in our cards, we became good friends over a shared love of the Steelers, old school hip hop concerts (Scott can sing both the male and female parts of Positive K's "I Got a Man"), and rock-climbing.

He had been practically begging his employer to lay him off so that he could either travel or move to a warmer climate. After probably 3 years, they finally agreed to lay him off.

After 3 years and 5 flights, Scott and I finally were able to do part of our long-awaited Big Trips together. I finally arrived in Rome after my ridiculous connections (again, points whores cant be choosers...) It took me roughly 26 hours of travel, which I definitely exaggerated each time I was looking for sympathy or excuses for being short-tempered, but was happy that Scott and I were able to meet up.

I had been to Rome two times already, and Scott had done most of the major tourist sites prior to my arrival, so we were able to just putz around Rome, eating drinking and shopping. Well I guess I was the only one to do much shopping, but seriously, what backpacker cant live without a Benneton sweater dress??

I also cashed in some Marriott points at the 5-star, Category 8 (yes, EIGHT!) Boscolo Hotel. It was beautiful and newly opened. Let's just say they have to work out some of the kinks, and I made sure to let them know what the kinks were. Regardless, we enjoyed sleeping in high thread count sheets and receiving apology messages on the TV


From Rome, we headed down to the Sorrento and Almafi Coast. We made Pompei our home base.
Pompei & Pompeii
Interesting trivia fact- Pompeii is the ancient city that was buried in 79 AD when Mt Vesuvius erupted. Pompei is the modern day city that built up around the ruins of Pompeii.

So, from Pompei we walked the 800 meters to Pompeii and were happy to learn that admission was free on that day. (The savings of 11€ per person was redistributed to our wine budgets in short order...)

This town was pretty interesting, because it really didnt get covered with lava as commonly misunderstood. Rather, it was covered up to 6 meters high in ash. But the kicker is that most everyone who did not get out in time was basically killed by inhaling the fumes from some sort of gas or some other byproduct of the volcano explosion. So a lot of the city (including people) were well preserved under ash. They were able to excavate most of the city, as well as take casts of those who were caught unawares.



I think that we really got to explore the regions, and did manage to make some fun trips to the following places, which seem really close when you are playing Family Feud on the iPhone during the entire train-ferry rides

Positano


This is a postcard perfect little town on the Amalfi coast. The bus ride to get there from Positano was harrying and Scott even got a bit nauseaus, which I thought was funny. I didnt think it was so funny when we got off the bus and had to stop at one of the very first restaurants we saw. For some reason, when Scott gets off of long bus or ferry or even train rides, he immediately gets over his nauseau and it is replaced with this huge hunger that must be satiated immediately, or else he acts like me after a 46 hour commute to Rome....

Anyhow, we sat down to a lovely view, at a very empty restaurant called Bruno's. I thought it was Burger King, and custom ordered my pasta dish "My Way." The dish was delicious...fresh fish and tomato sauce with homemade thick pasta that reminded me of Eat'n'Park Chicken Noodle Soup noodles. The Ozzie couple behind us started talking to us (I think I heckled them into taking our photo after they looked at our menu). Quite interesting couple, in that the man actually knew 2 out of the 3 Rivers in Pittsburgh. He was REALLY close on Monongahela.

Then they asked us why we chose this restaurant and why I ordered the dish I ordered. We didnt have good answers to either question, "Because Scott was nauseus and needed to eat before he bit my head off, and I like to be as difficult as I can in a foreign language" were the best answers we could come up with. Turns out that this restaurant, and my particular dish, were written up in some Australian travel guidebook!


Capri
We headed to Capri on a rainy day. Luckily by the time we got to Capri, it was just overcast. So we decided to skip the Blue Grotto, with the mindset that I'd be back someday (ohhh someday...the one you gave away will be the only one you're wishing for...someday, someday...oh oh someday). Yes, that is a Mariah Carey song, who spends a lot of time on Capri. Alas, we didnt have any Capri sightings.

But I did bust the funicular ticket seller who was trying to short-change me on 5 Euros.

In spite of having a thief on the tourist island, Capri is really an all around beautiful town. I got the cheapest eyebrow and upper lip wax of my life on Capri. Hoity toity CAPRI of all places! For 8 Euro as a walk-in, I got both eyebrow and upper lip waxed and the eyebrow's turned out very well. I suppose the upper lip turned out well too, but it's kind of hard to mess up that wax job.


Sorrento
After both day trips to Positano and Capri, we transitted through beautiful Sorrento and spent the evenings there. We had lovely meals, sampled Limoncello, and really just enjoyed this little town.

Mt Vesuvius
Again, I got to be a showoff hiker from Colorado and Scott and I hiked up to the crater of Vesuvius. It's no joke guys, it really does look like a crater and you get to walk along the rim of it. Apparently the eruption from 1944 was a very slow moving eruption, and they predict the next eruption to be within the next 40yrs and on the scale of the one from 79AD (the one that destroyed Pompeii). Our tour guide told us that the experts predict that they will only know AT MOST 3 days before the next eruption, so it will be quite a feat to evacuate all of Naples and Pompei in time. Just a hint if you are planning a trip to the Amalfi Coast, you might want to splurge and buy the travel insurance.