Pompeii and Sorrento

Hey everybody! Once again, I apologize for my blogging tardiness... Its becoming more and more of a task the more pictures I take. Its getting ridiculous. However, I am trying to put more pictures on my blog in case the albums still aren't working for everyone not on facebook... (I still have no idea why). Allora... (fun fact: "allora" is like "so..." or "anyways..." in Italian and they say it ALL THE TIME over here)

Last weekend, February 28th and March 1st, we went on our second free overnight trip with the school to Pompeii and Sorrento in Southern Italy. We got on the bus at 6:30 am and 7 hours later we arrived in Naples. (Napoli, as the locals say)

The first thing we did was to tour the ruins of Pompeii, the ancient city that Mount Vesuvius buried in a volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. Pompeii remained buried until 1748 before the excavations started and now two thirds of the city has been fully excavated. The ruins are extensive, and we only had around 2 hours in it so we didn't get to see it all.

This is a picture of me in the main square, or piazza, of Pompeii, and Mount Vesuvius is in the background.
All organic things, such as wood, plants, and people, decomposed in the ash in all those years, but air pocket-like "molds" remained in the ash, so before excavating, they poured plaster to fill in these "molds" of people and doors and such. So the "people" we saw, such as this one, are made of plaster, but their bones (the only thing that didn't decompose) are still inside. There was also a dog, a pregnant women, and many doors made of plaster. The vases you see here were recovered in the excavations.
The cool thing about the ruins was that in most places you could actually explore. We thought it'd be a great place to play hide and seek.
This was a courtyard of [clearly] the rich family of Pompeii. They had a huge house, with this courtyard, and many mosaics (the mosaics were amazing in Pompeii for how old they are and how they kept during the excavations). Do you spose the palm tree is 2000 years old?? haha.
Kinda dark, but this was towards the end of our tour and a bunch of us girls posed for a picture. I can't tell you what we're in front of, since at this point, everything was blurring together as "old" and "ruined" so I didn't catch much from the tour guide. (That and the fact that I was always lagging behind because I'd stop and take pictures--go figure.)
At the exit of Pompeii, they have another house that has these amazing frescos in it. This was the first bright red ever used apparently. They were very cool.
Lemon and orange trees everywhere! A friend and I actually picked an orange and tried it... wasn't good. :(
After Pompeii we stopped and saw how cameos are made (the pearl silhouettes you see a lot on broaches and rings). It was pretty cool to see all the work put into them. They were a tad pricey though so I didn't buy one for my ring collection. We got on the bus and drove to Vico Equense, where our hotel was for the night. It was a small coastal town in between Naples and Sorrento and we drove along the coast the entire way to get there. Above is a picture of the Mediterranean sunset, however its not so great because I was on a moving bus. Beautiful views...
Speaking of beautiful views... our hotel was once again amazing--especially for a free trip. I roomed again with Emma and Han, and we were the last to get a room assignment and we BY FAR got the best room. This was our view. We figured all the crappy rooms were given out first, since we were the only ones facing the sea and we had a huge balcony. AND all I could think about was that all my gleisner gals should've been there drinking wine and sex on the beaches.... next gleisner gal weekend location?? haha. 
This was the view up from our balcony... palm trees and starlight... how's that for poetic? haha Saturday night we went and ate a group dinner at a well-known and fantastic pizzeria. The pizza was phenomenal and thick, since most pizza's here are the really thin crust kind. After that we just came back to the hotel and chilled out on the balcony, and in bed by midnight since we had done so much walking in Pompeii.
The next day, Sunday, we ate breakfast at the hotel (which is hysterical, since we probably look like we've never seen breakfast before... we always steal fruit and eat TONS just so we don't have to spend money the rest of the day), then we got on a bus and traveled along the coast again to Sorrento. Sorrento is another coastal town that we were told doesn't have a whole lot of cultural aspects, but is a very big vacationing spot for rich people. And you can also catch a ferry from Sorrento to the island of Capri. My roommates Han and Emily did that on Saturday since they both had been to Pompeii already, and they said it was really pretty. We didn't have time to do that on Sunday since we only had a few hours in Sorrento. The above picture is Emma and I with the Port and Sorrento in the background.
This is Emma and Han and I down at the Port of Sorrento, with the other side of Sorrento in the background.

So the next thing about Sorrento is that they're obsessed with Hello Kitty. I have found a friend here who loves Hello Kitty as much as myself, and we found a Hello Kitty store which we spent 45 minutes in. I ended up getting one of my rings there, and I also got a sweet wallet that was half off. And it gets better...
My life is now complete! I've had hello kitty flavored gelato! (strawberry tasting with little chocolate candies in it) 
Clearly I'm a happy girl... and although its hard to see, my new hello kitty ring is on my finger. I also got another bling ring in Sorrento (I'll put a picture up of the two on my ring blog soon) and I got a fantastic "fake coach/gucci" looking purse for only €15 so I was excited about that. Unfortunately it rained most of the time we were there so we got rather damp, but it was fun to see and to walk around. 
I didn't take many pictures in Sorrento, since I put my camera away once it started raining, but it was a beautiful town. See the pretty flowers? We also played with a stray kitty on the port, had a random dog follow me and my [hello kitty] friend Jenny around for five blocks, and this was where I tried the orange picked from a tree. 

After a few hours in Sorrento, we got back on the bus for the 7 hour ride home... fun fun. I'm glad I can sleep well on busses. I literally slept the ENTIRE seven hours on the way down. We got back home in Firenze about 9pm Sunday night. I really enjoyed the trip, Southern Italy (or Mafia country--haha!) was really beautiful and much different from Florence and Rome. The coasts were fantastic and I can imagine its much more awesome in the summer.

(Be sure and check out the pictures if you can on the right... "Pompeii and Sorrento Part 1/2" are the condensed versions, the not-so- condensed versions are the other four.)