been spending the nights here in naples with julie's brother and his family, and have been doing some rather long days trips out from here. its a neat area to be doing this in, as there is literally just a ton to see. in addition, tom, julie's brother, is stationed here with the navy, so we have access to the base, and all the good old american goods that it has to offer. MT DEW! the real deal. mmmmmm...
lets see, in the past few days...
mt. vesuvius, and pompei - climbed to the top of vesuvius, not a BAD hike really, did it early enough in the morning to where it wasn't really too hot or taxing. i managed just fine in my new snazzy flip flops (which i bought at this amazingly huge flea market deal the day before, along with a new swimming suit, for a grand total of $5. they also had an entire used clothing side to the market, which was amazing in and of its own right, and made me want to spend $10 on 10 shirts and ship them home. but eh, i didn't) aaaaaanywho, vesuvius was pretty darn neat. hazy though, so we couldn't see naples from the summit. off from there to pompei, the city burried by vesuvius in 79 AD. its an entire CITY! its HUGE. and it was hot. but just amazing. the pictures won't do it justice.
amalfi coast - WOW. what else can you say. sheer cliffs, speckled with towns, all along the bluest of blue mediteranean. we take a road from solerno to amalfi, and its the curviest, narrowest road you've ever seen. packed with traffic. and around every corner you want to stop because its the most amazing photo op EVER. stop then in a town called ravello, further up on the cliff, where they have these open aired classical music concerts, in a garden on a cliff overlooking the sea. wish i could have seen one, but they one day we go, they're not doing it.
tour of naples - today we got a rather well run tour of downtown naples. small group, nice day. many churches, each unique in its own way. some you would never even know were churches. then aparently there's an entire underground naples, as the city was built right on top of roman ruins (which were in turn built right on top of greek ruins). very cool.
thats all i know. well actually i've got a better sense now of whats happening in the near future. tomorrow we're off to ischia, an island near the island of capri, but supposedly much better. then rome on friday. saturday i will finish up rome and go to sienna. probably stay there a night or two. then a night or two in cinque terra, then off to france somewhere to meet up with jim and vanessa again. sooooo, yeah. thats what i know.
sleepy time again, been burning the candle at both ends lately. i need a day of just sitting on a beach somewhere getting burned...