Tuesday, October 12, 2010

So i caved . . .

. . . and bought some peanut butter at the supermercato yesterday. It was Skippy, probably packaged at the same factory as the peanut butter maddy was using! A very small jar cost almost 4 euros. Anyways, enough peanut talk.

Last weekend was our Bing trip to Pompei, sorrento, and the Amalfi coast. Pompei was a bit of a marathon tour in the blazing sun. The main things i took away from the trip were that people were a lot shorter two thousand years ago, and people in Pompei enjoyed their prostitutes. Theres even a large phallic symbol in the middle of the town that points the way towards the brothel. We had a lovely dinner in sorrento that night, where i ate fish at a restaurant for the first time ( i have taken a hiatus from vegetarianism in italy to fully experience la cucina italiana). I don't have much to compare it to, but it was pretty delicious. The next day we went to a couple of coastal towns and i swam in the aquamarine water at Positano. It was great to see a completely different part of italy. Florence is great, but even most Florentines have a house in the country that they go to on weekends to get away from the congestion of the city. My host father designs boats, so he frequently goes to the coast to manage the building of his designs. Tonight at dinner he said "he would die if he had to stay in the city all the time". After going to amalfi i can understand why he enjoys his visits so much. On Sunday, Justine, I, and four others went to the island of Capri. We took a ferry from sorrento to the marina maggiore, and then we spent about an hour finding a place to check our bags and standing in line to buy tickets for the funicolare, the tram-like thing that takes you up to the actual town of Capri. The wait was well worth it though! We took a stroll through the old historical center of anacapri, and then we took a chairlift to the top of the mountain. It was one of the most visually stunning things i have ever experienced. To borrow a phrase from Rick Steves, it was a "scenic hoot". We all wanted to stay- probably forever- and do more things on the island, but we needed to get back to florence before it was too late. We took another ferry from the island to Naples. We made a mad dash to the train station in a taxi where we encountered "luigi the taxi driver" (he asked us several times to friend him on facebook) and arrived with only ten minutes to spare. Of course, none of the ticket machines would take american credit cards, so we had to wait an hour for the next train. The kicker was that there was only seat left on the whole train which i was lucky enough to get, but everybody else had to stand for the three hour ride. The train arrived about 25 minutes late, but one of the things i have learned in italy is patience. This comes in handy when you have to wait an hour for your megavideo to load or spend over an hour signing up for a library card. The picture from capri won't upload now, but i will try again tomorrow.

1 comment:

  1. Yay! Capri is one of my favorite places there is! (And I'm lucky enough to have an Italian friend with a house in Anacapri). Please eat lots and lots of gelato for me! -VB

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