Italia

Today we woke up and checked out, took our bags to the train station, and stored them there.
Then we went back to the circumvesuviana part where we had gotten so lost yesterday. We bought breakfast.
We got on the train to sorrento which was the opposite end of the line (we were at one extreme).
It took an hour to get there. There was no sitting space for most of the ride because there were like 20 boys In one groupmonopolizing all the street. Then there was another loud loud group ofostly teenagers who were screaming and making noise and being obnoxious for most of the ride which was 40 minutes of it. When we got to sorrento we took a bus to get to positano on the alto coast. This was about a45 min ride. Since we had a train to get at 1:50, we only spent 20 minutes there, but the two hour travel time was worth it for the amazing seaside view of cliffs, houses, winding streets, and sparkly blue water. We also bought some food at a local store. I bought a bottled water, two apricots and a banana for one euro 30 cnts. The apricots were so sweet. It lwas great!
We took the bus and train back, got our luggage and barely made our train. It was three hours, but very nice. It was express and much newer and so much more comfortable.
We got here, came to the hostel, met the roommates ( two girls from Georgia about priyas age), and then got some azimg gelato. There are tooamy flavors to choose from! I had mixed berry and mentocioccolato( mint and chocolate pieces). Both were very good. Now we are going to dinner and then we are going to watch the cup finals. Most in Italy are rooting for Spain! What about you?
Goodbye then!

We had a hard time figuring out our seats on the train. At first we didn’t know seats were assigned and we were afraid we wouldn’t find seats.
The train Ride was two hours and I slept formost of it.
We got there and went to the hostel. It was very hotelieh and we had just a double for this one
We then walked to this museum that has most of the authentic Pompeii artifacts buut for some reason a lot of the museum was closed off and we couldn’t find amy mosaics. We did see a lot of pots and furnishings and paintings and even food. I never realized how advanced Pompeii was!
Then we went to find this famous pizza shop because Naples is the birthplace of pizza. It was good but already cold by the time we had a chance to eat it.
By this time we were running behind schedule. This day was supposed to be packed but we realized we didn’t have enough time because we went to themuseum. So we went to the train station and changed our train ticket the next day from the morning to the afternoon.
Then we went to catch a train to Pompeii. We missed onby seconds and had to wait half an hour for another. Another train finally came, but two or three stops in we realized that this train was the wrong line. It started out as the same route but then branched off. We got off at a station that had a ok e connecting the two. The station was deserted except for two people were going in the opposite direction from us. We had to wait another half hour for this train and then again when we got to a stationonthe right line. We finally got to pompeii at six only to find out that we had only 1.5 hours until closing.
We walked around the ruins. It wasamazing and especially nice since there were only a few people there. We were also not too hot because it was night and that is onenof the major problems that people have. Another is the bad labelling of signs. We looked for the casts of people for a long time with no luck. I finally spoke to a guy ( from Iowa originally new jersey and who had been to concord) who told me that it was on the other side of the park. This was at closing time.
We didn’t leave and instead walked toward the casts. It took another hour and a bit for us to reach them and when we did it was kind of anticlimactic but still really cool. It was sad because everone had been lying onthe groundcovering their faces and noses with their hands to block out the hot ash. It was, as my guidebook describes, gruesome. To get out we hopped a metal fence because we didn’t know ifthe exit would let us out and we didn’t want to walk that far.
That was the end of that.
The hostel didn’t have wifi as far as we knew.

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