Day 19

Quiet day...which I am actually thankful for.  My fingers are starting to cramps from describing the past weekend.  The description was well deserved though, a great time to remember.

Still not feeling great, but thankfully class was indoors for a little bit today.  No public transportation, thats something to be thankful for.  I will never appreciate my car more(which is hard to fathom anyways) then when I get back and get to drive.

So this was our first stop out of class.  A massive amphitheater built by Pompey, a war hero, for himself.  This doesn't even begin to show how huge it was, much longer than the Colosseum.

At around the turn of the millennium in Ancient Rome, it was considered very conceited to build a large monument to oneself.  They didn't even allow the building of permanent theaters.  They would build one for an event and tear it back down.  Pompey got away with this because he put a temple at the back, thus classifying it as a holy place.

Once a great monument attributed to a war hero...it is now where many kittys live.  It is actually referred to as the cat sanctuary.  There is no humane society here, so when a "clean up" of the citys cats began around 2000, an animal activist group asked the city if there was an area they could put the stray cats.

This ancient and historical monumental site is now for the cats of Rome.  Good for them.

Back to history. See anything important here?  Probably not.  Well that structure there was the temporary Senate house for Ancient Rome.  Still no significance?

Alright how about this is the spot where Julius Caesar was stabbed by 16 different people while he was emperor?  The popular myth of him being stabbed in the Senate house in the Roman Forum is false, because it was under construction at the time.  So the temporary Senate house was where meetings were conducted, and fearing he would be a dictator, his 16 Senators each stabbed and killed him.  

So I figured I would throw this on there for my parents and Kilwin's.  This is the equivalent of Kilwin's here.  Our professor bought us some gelato because she felt bad class was cancelled last week.  Very nice of her, because 22 of us certainly was not cheap.  

Well that is really all I have for today.  Spent most of the day catching up on the previous blogs which took several hours, but well worth it.  Thank you all for reading!  Tomorrow will be more exciting, and have pictures that were not supposed to be taken....explanation on that tomorrow!

Day 18

Last night I went to bed early because I wasn't feeling well and when I woke up I felt like I had a fever, joints hurt and some head pressure.  Not a great day to be feeling bad, considering the plan for today was to go boating from 9-4.  Even worse we had to climb down even more stairs than normal(around 650) to get down to the place where the boat took off.  It was raining and anyone that has ever been on the water during a rainstorm knows it is like little pellets hitting you at high speed.

Oh well, no sense in turning back on something like that, just need to keep my head down and ride it out.  Man am I glad I kept that attitude.

We had a covered boat, which was very nice for me because I could go underneath and still was cold.  To not bore everyone with me being sick: one of the girls gave me some advil and after awhile my fever went away and I started feeling 100x better.

This is a beautiful picture of leaving port on a rainy morning in Positano.

 The boat driver had obviously been through the area many many times before, and knew where to take us to show us the best sites.  Here is a cave that we could swim through and he would pick us up on the other side if we felt like it.

It is really hard to describe how gorgeous the water is, so I will just let you enjoy the picture.

Our boat was large and fit the 12 of us and 4 other people.  The neat thing though was that they only rode with us until we got to Capri, which means we had the boat driver for the rest to do whatever we wanted.

Here is another beautiful rock formation that you could drive your small boat through.  It is weird, but these rock structures literally rise right out of the ocean.  That means that the water right next to these rocks could be anywhere between 20-50 feet deep.  That will play out importantly in a few minutes...

Just another beautiful view of us leaving the caves.

A view of the lighthouse as we approach the tourist island of Capri.  There was no bridge to Capri, just ferrys and quite an active port and town.  Very pretty and is not a dirty place at all.  Many many stores and taxis.  As a matter of a fact in the middle of the city is a whole row of stores with high-end luxury stores that everyone knows.  Louis Vutton, Prada, etc.

Spent around an hour and a half in Capri(mostly eating under an umbrella) before returning back.  The rain had finally stopped as we were leaving and I was feeling so much better than earlier.  What does that mean?

That means cliff diving.  I am the last on the right. Checking exactly what I am getting myself into... It was not easy getting up there, many people got cut up on the coral and were bleeding pretty bad. It is a pretty good 18-25 ft drop into the water.  Though about doing my backflip into water or something cool, but I could easily screw that up and end up going around too many times and landing on my back.  There is a picture out there of me jumping, just waiting for one of the girls who took it to put it up on facebook for me to steal it.


Made our way back after this because one of the kids on board got seasick really bad and thankfully we were pretty close to port.  This wrapped up our time in Positano. It was time to attempt to head back to take a bus to Sorrento, a commuter train from there to Naples, then a real train to Rome.  Shouldn't be a problem, we planned this with plenty of time....did I mention how much I hate Italian public transportation?

Our bus ended up showing up 25 minutes late, that's okay we still have plenty of time.  Turns out as we are getting into Sorrento, a popular soccer team was being escorted by police through, stopping traffic for around 30 minutes.  As soon as we got to the bus stop we made a mad sprint to the train station and were happy to see our train still there.  But we still needed to buy our tickets just to be able to get through the gates.  Of course some idiotic American was arguing over the 4 Euro train ticket in front of us and we watched as the train left without us.  Which meant that we would have to wait another hour for the next one, which wouldn't be a problem if we didnt already purchase expensive tickets out of Naples on a real train for the very last train of the day. Wow I have never wanted to hit somebody as hard as right then.

Waited an hour and I literally knocked people out of my way attempting to get onto the train as the others followed as we hoped that we could make it back to Naples in time for our train.  It was a 30 stop mini train, although it would only be at some stops for less than 15 seconds.  6 stops to go...and it was already too late.  We called our roomate in Rome and had him jump on the internet, one train left.  The high-speed railroad out of Naples 9:30 PM, 15 minutes later.  Otherwise we would have to wait in the ghetto train station and my most hated place-Naples- until 4:45 AM the next morning.  All we had to do is rush off and go try and book tickets on the bullet train.  I was not getting stuck in Naples.

Sprinted off the train and ran to book tickets...only to find no tickets available.  "I am NOT getting stuck in Naples", I kept telling myself.  All options looked spent.  Well...not all options.  I could stowaway on the bullet train and just hide in the bathroom for the two hour train ride.  Well, that's what I will do.  While jumping on, we stopped to talk to a lady that checks tickets on the train, and although she spoke broken English, she seemed to indicate we could jump on and stand and just pay a fine. Not sure what kind of fine, but I am getting on.

She comes by halfway through the train ride and I notice her talking to an Italian that seemed not to have a ticket in front of us.  I looked at the charge, 86 Euro!!! We only payed 12 Euro for our original train tickets, I dont even have that much on me!!! Ughh, maybe I should run to the bathroom and hide still.  She got to us and remembered us, I showed her my original ticket and asked for the damage.  Turns out because I had an original ticket and just missed my train, it was only 22 Euro.  What a relief!!

We speed through the countryside under the cover of night at almost 175 mph, but thank goodness I am out of Naples and on my way back to my Rome home.  We arrive after two and a half hours, all relieved(although one did lose his ticket and did hide in the bathroom the whole time).  Back in Rome!  A few of us were so happy we went straight to the McDonald's across the street and bought Big Mac's.  Took a taxi home from there.

Well that was the trip, more of a story towards the latter half of today, but one hell of an experience.  No love here for Naples.  Sorrento was a pretty place.  Pompeii was incredibly historic.  Words cannot describe the beauty of Positano, I swore to myself that I would go back to it sometime in my life.  Great trip.  Thanks all for reading, and as always check out facebook for more pictures of us boating and the waters in Positano.

Day 17

So we made it to the most beautiful place I have ever seen.  Positano.  It is on the other side of the mountain from Sorrento, on the Almafi coast.

Very quiet and peaceful town.  One that you could walk around by yourself and not have any worries.  Beggars and crime are words that are not even known here.  Ferraris, Porches and the English language are things  that they know here.  Sounds like my kind of town.

For our two nights in Positano we stayed at this excellent Hostel called Brikette. Great place, only $25 a night.  Everyone there spoke perfect English and had a gorgeous view like this.  The actual apartment we stayed at was across the street and was only finished about 20 minutes before we showed up yesterday---it's only downfall.  This means the wi-fi didnt reach over there, among other things.  The water pressure was so bad in our bathroom for that apartment that if you turned the shower wand upside down, water wouldn't come out.  I've seen leaks with more water pressure than that.

Because there was no A/C, we had to keep our windows open during the night time--which was fine.  The downfall to that was the location of the window.  The window was right next to a very tight, uphill blind curve.  This means at about 6:30 AM buses would blare their horn coming one way to alert other motorists, and then slam on the gas when going up the opposite direction.  That got old pretty fast.

But all of that combined couldn't change my love for this place one bit.  I would rate the staff a 20 out of 10, they were just excellent.  Even got pancakes and eggs for breakfast in the morning, haven't had that in several weeks.  Plus, showers over there had plenty of water pressure.  Enough with the Hostel!

The first day we went to the beach, naturally.  Spent almost all of the day there and had a great time.  The water was a little cool, but completely swimmable.  Time to go do what I really came for...

A little bit of rock jumping.  Yes that is me doing a backflip off the rock there.  Apparently my specialty, because no one else could do one.  I can thank the time I spent on my cousin's trampoline a few years ago and sadly watching professional wrestling as a kid for teaching me that.  Oh well, good action shot though.







I had a blast going down to the beach.  Town as just as fun.  One thing to note, you may notice in the pictures in the town that the water looks really far away.  Well it is.  I consider the 17 steps walking upstairs in my house to be tiring.  Its 627 steps down to the beach and around 427 down to the town.  Being that it isn't all my money I am spending, I cannot justify spending money on a cab.  So what does that mean?  It means that I walked those stairs several times a day, including whenever you had to withdraw money from an ATM to pay for anything.  Being that the exchange rate is so high for Dollars/Euros(Around $1.45 for 1 Euro), I hate pulling out large amounts of money.  Which means I had to travel all the way down there for any activity we planned.  I already feel like my belly is getting a little bigger from all the food here, but man are my legs going to be HUGE when I get back.  At least we burn off some of that laboring up and down those stairs.

Night life is also cool here, although the one club cost around $35(for guys) to get into and drinks cost around $14.  No thank you.  Plus, if you don't have a sweater wrapped around your neck, your pretty much violating the clubs dress code.  Maybe a little bit too much like HHI...

Anyways, other than that everything was priced very normal as there are no chain stores.  Everyone that has a shop operates it themselves, much like my parents.  Really, really believe this is the most beautiful place in the world, and I swore to myself I will be back in my lifetime.  There is no getting around a promise like that.

I could put 1000 pictures up of Positano, but I feel like it would be of the pretty view.  Go on Facebook for extra pictures!  Thank you all for reading!

Day 16

Excited to finally leave Naples!  Onto a bus heading towards the ancient city of Pompeii.

So brief history on Pompeii.  This was a bustling Roman city nestled between several mountains and sitting right alongside the Mediterranean sea.  There was a large earthquake on August 23, 79 AD.  The following day, Mount Vesuvius started a two-day eruption, thus covering the city in volcanic ash for nearly 17 centuries.

Hard to figure out where to start.  Pompeii was not a small town.  In fact 4 hours was no where near enough to run through the entire city.  We only saw around 40%, which is disappointing.

Unfortunately we have become so conditioned to avoid buying what vendors throw in your face that we ignored the guide book to Pompeii.  Would have been nice to figure out what we were looking at, however we did jump into a few tour groups.

Next place we went is to the Amphitheater.  This...is the small one in Pompeii.  Perfectly preserved, we are very lucky to be able to walk something that literally has not been changed in thousands of years.

 Dang who is that kid with those huge calf muscles ...must walk alot of stairs. And no that is not a man purse, it is my camera case.

Cool activity grounds.

One thing I did manage to catch from listening in on tour guides explained these marks.  The carts used by merchants for travel were pulled by horses and used very large wheels.  The several hundred carts passing by a day would lead to an eventual weardown/shift in the cobblestone road.  Very neat to to see wear that is not recent.  Just another tribute to how beautifully this place was preserved under volcanic ash.

These weird little lion statues may not look like much, but they are the original legs to a table.  However it was not just any table.  The table belonged to the person who was first of sixteen to stab Julius Caesar in his assassination not too far from where I stay in Rome.  The man was exiled and his goods sold, the wealthy family here obtained the table at auction some 2000 years ago.

I put this up because I always think about how long ago the Civil War was for the America.  Pompeii was encased in volcanic ash what seems an amazingly unbearable time ago.  2000 years.  Well, actually when the eruption happened, there were signs of history from nearly twice as long to Pompeiian's as they are to us.  They are currently excavating remains from 3500BC.  Nearly 5511 years ago remains are still there.  That is simply unfathomable to me.  Here is where I see the oldest things that exist in the world.  Rome can't even hold a candle to that.  5500 years ago.  Think about it.

These are the remains of an upscale restaurant.  Thankfully I caught a tour guide explaining this, or I wouldnt have figured out what they were actually.  There are dozens of restaurants around Pompeii and are identifiable by the holes in the serving counter where fire would be beneath.  This is one of the nicer restaurants I found.  If my Grandpa lived in ancient Pompeii, this would probably be one of his favorite places to talk about.

 Pompeii was a town that had nutrient rich soil, and thousands of acres of land for growing food.  The garden has been re-used and reconstructed by analyzing the preserved roots of the old garden.  Some of the plants had to replaced by our modern plants since some of the plants there have changed drastically in genetic structure over the thousands of years.

Did I mention that we were in the small amphitheater?

Camera started giving up on me here, I just need a few more pictures!!!!!!

When the eruption happened, many people ran for cover.  The air was full of volcanic ash, completely void of oxygen.  Most people were suffocated to death.  These are some people who ran into a house nearby and are preserved very well.

Really sad, but look at the child cuddling against his mother while they faced death in the face.  Several bodies of children were in this house.

A determined look on this man's face.  He was fighting until the end, maybe that was his family he is looking over.  Really makes you wish you could figure out what his final thoughts were.

Human or animal, no one made it out alive.  This was a family dog that was found and preserved perfectly.  It is sad to think of, but it is how life and history happened.  We should be glad to have the opportunity to learn and honor the people and animals who lost their lives in this town.








Okay how about some happy photos??

 How does the most beautiful place in the world sound?  The Almafi coast.  This is on the other side of the mountain from Sorrento, and is the very quiet town of Positano.

If Hilton Head Island, SC and Lake Tahoe, CA had a baby, and that baby ended up being a superhero, this is what it would end looking like.  Truly the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my entire life.

The town of Positano is unbelievably peaceful and so beautiful.  Unfortunately this is where my camera gave in.  Don't worry, what are friends for if you can't steal their pictures?  Look for tomorrow's blog for a better description as this blog is already so full of great stuff!










Sorry it took so long to read, but this was one day I will never forget.  I am so fortunate to be able to put this into writing and remember it forever.  By the way: obviously I couldn't include every picture I took in Pompeii in the blog or I would be writing until I left Rome in three weeks. Check Facebook for every picture. Thanks for reading!

Day 15

At 5:00 AM my multi-destination trip started.  Very early and although I had prepared as far as packing, at this time of the morning when rushing out you do forget/can't find things.  For one, my keys.  The keys here are apparently special enough that if you lose them it is a 300 Euro(approx $450) charge to replace your keys.  Really really hope I find those.  Otherwise I am going to start having to join the beggars on the side of the streets in Rome.

Headed to the train station which was a very pleasant experience compared to the buses in Italy.  First stop, Napoli(Naples). I heard from my professor that certain parts of Naples are not very nice, such as the train station.  We were in a large group of 6 guys and 6 girls so that adds a decent amount of protection.  Upon arrival, the train station was not so bad until we made our way outside.  Our professor was right.  First thing that happens is a 10 year old comes up to us and pulls out a air pistol on us.  True its not near as scary as a real gun but it could pierce your skin and who knows what this kid wanted.  Tons of trash everywhere on the street.  I don't mean just trash you throw out of your car, it was bags and bags of trash.  First impression is pretty bad so far.

Made our way to what was supposedly the best pizza in Napoli(where pizza was invented).

Turns out we were not the only Americans to have visited this pizza place.  Sandra Bullock filmed Eat, Pray, Love in this restaurant.  That is pretty impressive.  Not a huge fan of the pizza though.  There were only two choices of pizza, Marinara and Provolone.  Very friendly restaurant though.  Our waiter seemed a little...slow though.  We caught him talking to the wall once.  Interesting.





We found a beautiful church that had been around for ages.

Inside courtyard behind church.  Church had been bombed in WWII and was damaged pretty badly.  Rather unfortunate because the church was the largest in Naples and housed many historical artifacts.

Some recent excavation shows that this was a very popular church back in ancient times.  What is in this picture is an ancient hot tub.  Slaves fed a fire below that would produce heat which would then go underneath the water and produce warmth.  Pretty nice.







Enough boring stuff.  Lets see what Naples looks like from above. Way above actually.

To give you an idea of just how high we had to climb, the green roof is the church we are at.  We climbed at least two skyscrapers worth.

Despite climbing a few hills, many winding streets and finishing with 406 large stairs(around 800 if they were normal stairs), people at the top didn't seem to appreciate how much effort it took.  Probably because they took a car to the top.  Oh well.  Time to take the easier climb down.

 One of the more prettier objects in Naples.

 Medieval castle which was actually pretty cool to look at.

Hostel we stayed at was better than I expected.  Looked over port, which as anyone who takes cruises knows--it is not usually the nicest part of town.  No real A/C.  Internet was available, just no wi-fi.  Six of us to a room but at least we had a shower.

It was a holiday in Italy this day, and they decided to start celebrating around 11:00PM.  No A/C=open windows.  Celebrating in Italy=tons of traffic and people playing instruments on the street.  Ughh.



I am glad that we stopped at Naples, but plan to never return. I have experienced everything that I wanted to see, and my favorite part is when I was several thousand feet above the actual city. The place that Frank Sinatra sung of and my Grandma's ancestors hailed from is a city that is much different now.  Just glad we only spend one night here.  Look for tomorrow's blog for Pompeii!

Day 14

I apologize for the momentary lapse in blogs due to my traveling.  Everything is on schedule to return to normal.

During day 14, class finally resumed after a public transportation strike caused our class to be cancelled.  For class today, we visited a museum that was really beautiful and contained many of the statues and paintings from Ancient Rome.

First statue that we visited is a statue of a boxer in the old day.  When created, it was a very glossy and perfect bronze statue that has obviously faded a little.  We know this guy is a boxer because he has lacerations on his face and has gloves on his hand.  Gloves back then had metal around the edges, and were literally deadly weapons instead of cushioning the punch.  This man is believed to have just heard that he was defeated and is meant to motivate Ancient Romans to appreciate that while someone wins, someone must be defeated and that happens to everyone. 

I just liked this picture because it has a kitty capturing a bird in it.  Reminds me of my boy Ashes!

This is a spectacularly preserved statue of a man playing a sport in ancient Rome, discus.  When the Roman empire was finally defeated and sacked, many statues were destroyed or beheaded, so it is believed these were buried to preserve it.  Literally flawless, every muscle, vein and strand of hair is perfectly crafted and extremely impressive.

So these were on the head of ships in ancient Rome.  Looking incredibly intimidating, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that these were on the heads of warships.  That would be completely wrong.  Apparently the Romans had party boats where they would go to get drunk and throw lavish parties.  These were on the heads of those.  Good 'ol Romans.

This was extremely impressive in my view.  This is an exquisitely crafted coffin for a war general.  If you click and zoom in on the coffin, you can notice that a war is literally taking place on the coffin.  The general is front and center striking some barbarian that the Romans are defeating while people and horses from both sides are being trampled at the bottom.  Very impressive. The face of the general was left blank which signifies that this was made before his death and was intended to be filled in later.  None are sure why, but no one ever finished the face of who lays in the coffin.

These next two pictures are the things that awed me the absolute most in all of the museum.  This is a small portion of an entire dining room that belonged to a villa of Julius Caesars wife.  The whole dining room walls were decorated with a painting that is intended to simulate a different season while looking outside of someone's back yard.  Incredibly intact, it was striking to me.  I love nature, and cannot believe that someone hasn't tried to do this in their own dining room nowadays.  Everything from the blades of grass, birds and even the pinecones on trees are perfectly hand painted.  Modern lights were put in that change colors to simulate the seasons, and added even more awe to the picture.  The next shot is a panorama, and adds a little bit more to how big and far this painting stretched.

So that is it for today, tomorrow will be the start of my trip to Naples.  As always, thanks for reading!

Day 13

Very quiet day compared to the day before.  Woke up and went for a run by the river again.  It is a nice place to run because it is about 50ft below the roads.  There is certainly alot of cars here so it is rough to run by the road and inhale all the exhaust fumes.  Probably not too healthy for you as well.   It was cloudy too so it wasnt very hot.  Rome weather is very similar to South Carolina weather actually.  It is a little bit less humid than HHI, but probably about the same or a little more than Columbia.

After run went to the market again and am beginning to think this is going to be a regular thing.  You can bargain the people that work there down a little bit and they are all very friendly and have prices that are already cheaper than most of the actual stores.  I always try to avoid buying from so called "brick and mortar" stores because you can get it cheaper from someone who doesn't have add in a little bit on the price to compensate for paying rent.  (Think of looking for stuff at Bestbuy then buying it on Amazon.com).

Took nearly 2 hours to write yesterdays blog, so that cuts into a good bit of the afternoon haha.  But completely worth it to remember and share what I am experiencing here.  I am very fortunate to have all the technology and devices to document everything that is going.

Went out later in the afternoon with two friends to show them where I found the park and monuments near the Colosseum.  As we were walking through the park I was describing how Nero supposedly burned all the buildings that were there and how they created thermal baths.  The girl I was with stopped and looked at me then asked, "When did you take a tour or whatever of this area?" Nope. No tour, just very interested in history and love to learn the lives that were lived here over 2000 years ago.  If there was a real way to capitalize and make money on history, I would love to be a history major.  I am just too fascinated and deep into learning of  the financial markets. Who am I kidding, I love the idea of the flashy and competitive lifestyle of the financial world.  I was born to walk that path.

Anyways, we were walking in the park where we found some oranges high in a tree and my roomate climbed up to get them.  Looked like oranges, but were either over ripe or too early and ended up tasting sour.  Went to throw my orange over a fence into what I thought was a grassy field.  I heard the orange hit something metal, and my roomate looked at me and told me I just threw that into a Military Zone. Oh great.  I had no idea and really thought it was just another field.  So of course I stepped up and hightailed it out of there, not knowing what I really hit.  Please don't attack me!

Made it back without trouble and had ended up getting some cheap pizza.  No real going out for dinner this week, gotta save money for my trips!  Quiet night too, went out for some gelato and considered going to karaoke night but decided against it.  I will be traveling to the Almafi coast, Naples and Pompeii this weekend.  I apologize in advance if my blog slacks for a few days, but I have no idea what the internet will be like in any of these places or if it will exists there yet.  Thanks all for reading!