South Field Trip

South Field Trip was off to an early early start, we left the apartment at 6am to catch a bus to the train station... unsurprisingly, almost everyone fell asleep at least for a little while on the train.

A few hours later, we landed in Naples and took a maze-like path out of the metro to find ourselves in front of the Naples National Archaeological museum. We spent a while at this museum (a little bit too long, maybe, we all ran out of things to see before it was time to move on...), but saw some interesting things, including things from Pompeii. There were tiny mosaics, bright frescoes, and marble statues galore. Some of the ancient artifacts were these little metal objects that looked remarkably like saftey pins, but as I could not read the italian name plates, I do not know what they actually were. One part of the museum that stood out was the Secret Cabinet, which was entirely erotic art.. plenty of phallic symbols there.

After the museum, we grabbed a quick lunch before leaving on the train to Sorrento. I was not too sad about not spending a lot of time in Naples, it really didn't seem like that exciting of a place, but that was just my initial impression.

Getting into Sorrento, we had a few hours to explore before meeting up for dinner. I wandered around with Meghann, Ty, Ryan, Aaron, Huy, JJ, Jamie, and Erin. We looked around in some of the touristy shops, found a nice view of the bay, ate a fresh orange off the tree, and climbed up the hill to get a nice view of the town and the bay.

Dinner was at a place everyone referred to as the "Lemon Tree" Restaurant (actually called Restaurant La Favorita O' Parrucchiano. We all filed in (in our group of around 65 or so...), and sat at our tables... we were then brought an amazing dinner, starting with bread and wine. Antipasti included bruschetta, fresh mozzerella, stuffed zucchini flowers, among a couple other delicious bites. Primi was pasta with a red sauce. For Secondi, I got a veal dish, but probably should have gotten the fish, as the fish was so light and tasted delicious with the hint of lemon. Dessert was cakes with a lemon filling that was quite delicious... some of the highlights of dinner included the waiter asking Mike if he wanted "more pasta, baby?" then plopping a single mushroom onto his plate and also feeding various other people their desserts. After dinner, Pia got a discoteque opened up for us. It was kind of fun for a while, but since it was only Iowa State people, it was a little strange to have the whole place for ourselves. The DJ kept trying to make us sing and would not stop talking over the music. Once he played YMCA and Grease, it was DEFINITELY time to leave.

The next day, we were supposed to go to Pompeii as a class, but would be free from there. Since it was rainy, our professors kept pushing back our meeting time. We, unfortunately, still got up too early, but enjoyed a delicious breakfast at our hotel, then sat on our balcony for a bit. We were instead released that day with the promise to be reimbursed if we did decide to go to Pompeii. This turned out to be a great day, though, despite the rain. On the way to leave our stuff at our hostel, Meghann and I found a stand that was giving out huge bunches of grapes and freshly squeezed grape juice. We then spent a good chunk of the day exploring the town and shops with some of the other graphic girls, then went back for some more free grapes (this time cake and wine, too!), and hanging out in the park for a while.

We left the other girls to eat dinner at our hostel. It was the most brilliant thing to stay in a hostel attached to a cooking school. We bought dinner there that night, and ended up finding some of the interior girls there at dinner. Dinner started out with eggplant and mozzerella, then some pasta in a gravy-like sauce with chick peas. Then we had what might have been the most delicious shrimp I've ever had and extremely fresh calamari (yum!). Dessert was a cookie sandwich with fresh cream sauce and chocolate chips, cinnamon, ginger, and spearment inside. So good.

The next day, Meghann and I bought breakfast at the hostel (great idea: filling enough not to really need lunch, leftovers from dinner the night before, super fresh croissants and delicious cappuccinos!). We thought about going to Capri, but decided that the ferry was pretty expensive and we'd have an equally good time going up the coast. So, we loaded up onto the bus.. it was a crazy bus ride, so zig zaggy and way longer than I expected...the whole time hanging on to the edge of cliffs and with the bus driver honking around every corner to make sure cars would stop so he could fit around the hairpin turns.

We rode the bus to the end and got off in Amalfi, where we sat on the rocky beach for about an hour so to relax, then wandered around the town. It was pretty touristy, but we found a cool shop that had some really nice handmade paper. Then we loaded back onto the bus and stopped halfway back in Positano. Here, the bus dropped us off at the top of the cliff, and we had to make it to the bottom to see the town. We stopped for a snack and to enjoy the view at the top before making the trek down so many stairs my legs felt like jelly by the time we got to the bottom. Here, again, we basically just relaxed sitting on the beach. We didn't even bother going into the center of town since we figured it would just be touristy shops again, but just sat and talked and admired the setting sun. The climb back up the cliff, we counted steps.. 640. Yikes.

The bus ride home was quite an adventure, with some drunk rich girl from LA telling some guy she barely knew about how she had racked up a bill of $5000 on daddy's credit card in ONE MONTH. Ugh. That got so annoying so quickly...

That night, we actually talked to the other people staying in our room at the hostel, which made things much less awkward since we kept walking in on people sleeping...

The next morning, we had another delicious breakfast at the hostel, then headed out to Pompeii, where we wandered around for a few hours, looking at ruins, mosaics, and frescoes... as well as a couple casts of bodies. Pompeii was a lot bigger than I was expecting it to be, actually, and it was pretty hot that day (plus we were carrying our bags all day), so although we stayed for a while, we did not see everything, we decided to head back to Rome.

All in all, I think the highlight of the south trip was the food in Sorrento, the dinner at our hostel being the best. Staying at a cooking school may possibly be one of the best ideas we've ever had...