My last week in Italy

Pompeii molds
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From Bolzano, I headed back to Tuscany to stay the weekend in Siena. Lucky for me, Maryanne decided to come along to Siena with me, so I met up with her in Florence and we caught the bus from there to Siena. Siena is lovely. I really enjoyed it. Its got great winding streets and a fantastic main square where Maryanne and I spent 99% of our time...sitting, eating and people watching. Well, maybe not 99% of our time - we did manage to see some of the sites around Siena - but I can safely say we were well-fed during our stay there! Unfortunately, Maryanne had to head back to Florence, so we had to say goodbye (yet again). I'll have to start planning my trip to New Zealand now that I have a place to stay!

Mount Vesuvius
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Back on my own again, I headed off to Sorrento to explore the Almafi Coast. I loved it! I spent my first full day visiting Pompeii, with Mount Vesuvius still looming in the background. I never realized Pompeii was so big. I mean, huge...it was an entire city full of ruins. And some of them were so remarkably well preserved it was shocking. The most impressive/saddening part of the visit was viewing some of the plaster casts they made of the victims. When the archeologists re-discovered Pompeii in the late 1800's, they came across empty cavities in the fortified pumice stone. They realized that when the ashes rained down from Mount Vesuvius, the ashes suffocated the people and then solidified around their forms where they lay. When the bodies decomposed after two thousands years, they left perfect molds of their bodies as they were at the moment they died. The archeologists poured liquid plaster into the cavities, and when it hardened, they had very exact molds of the citizens of Pompeii in their last moments. Its eerie to say the least.

Positano
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The next day I spent wondering up and down the Amalfi Coast. I bought myself a tickets and road the bus down along the coast line to Positano and then on to Amalfi. They should slap a Mickey Mouse sticker on that bus and charge 99 bucks for a ride...because its about as scary as any roller coaster I've ever been on. These roads are literally built right on the cliffs. There's the bus and then a sheer drop to the ocean. And then, just to make the ride more, shall we say atmospheric, the bus driver pops on his IPOD and starts rocking out to some EuroPop song while driving along the cliffs. At one particularly hair-pin turn, he stopped air drumming long enough to make the sign of the cross three times and I thought to myself, dear god this is it. But after my heart had come back out of my throat, I realized he was making the sign of the cross because we had driven in front of a small road-side shrine to the Virgin Mary...(why the shrine was there at that particular curve, I don't really care to know). It was a beautiful drive, and had absolutely stunning scenery. But I took a ferry back home.

Island of Capri
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Positano was my favorite. So gorgeous and beautiful. I wondered around the tiny village for a bit, before hunkering down with an iced coffee at the cafe by the beach. I spent most of my time watching some guy water the beach. I still haven't figured out what he was doing, but he got out a water hose and, for the better part of an hour, systematically watered the sand. Yard, I get. Beach, I'm still confused about.

On my last full day on the Amalfi Coast, I took a ferry over to the Island of Capri. I think that was my favorite day of the Amalfi Coast. Capri is stunning. The first thing I did was go by boat to see the famed Blue Grotto. Its crazy. You hop on a small motor boat at the main port, which takes you around the island to the Blue Grotto, where there are about a dozen rowboats hanging out in the water waiting to take you into the Grotto (i.e., cave). You then transfer out of your boat to the row boat, get jostled around for awhile among the dozen other row boats full of Japanese tourists, before you finally get rowed into the Grotto. The opening of the cave is about 3 feet tall, so you have to get on the floor of the row boat and then duck, and wait for the right moment for the rower to boost you through the cave opening on the crest of a wave. Its hilarious. Once inside, you find yourself in a small cave floating on the brightest blue water you've ever seen. The rowers all suddenly break into song and you row about staring at the bright blue water for a couple minutes. Then, you duck back down and on the next wave, you're shunted back out into the wide open again and back onto your boat. The Blue Grotto is gorgeous, and the entire process is crazy entertaining. From there, I took a tiny bus up to Anacapri where I hopped on a chair lift that took me up to the top of the island's mountain. It was so peaceful and beautiful and the view from the top was amazing. Having learned from my chair lift adventure in Bolzano, I decided that I would spare myself the ride down and instead, spent an hour hiking down the mountain. I spent the rest of my time wandering around Capri and the rest of the island, before catching the ferry back to Sorrento.

Today I headed back to Rome and tomorrow, I catch my flight to Crete. My great success of today was finding a self-service laundry. Never thought I'd get this excited about clean clothes. I can't believe that six weeks have already gone by and its time for me to leave Italy already. I had such a wonderful time here! But now its off to Crete...where I am going to attempt to teach conversational English to wee Greek children. Think of the power...I can make a whole horde of kids say things like "small dog" and "why don't we play it by hand." I'm looking forward to it! So arrivederci Italy, and however-the-heck-you-say-hello-in-Greek Greece! (I can already feel that I'm gonna be a hit there...ha ha).