This weekend Daniela and I decided to take a trip south and visit the Amalfi Coast and Pompeii. It was an exciting weekend and I loved it! We left on Friday afternoon and the train ride was about 7 hours. We arrived in Salerno, Italy at about 9 pm and had to find our hostel. The directions posted online weren't very good and they had clearly been written by an Italian-speaker trying to learn English because they hardly made any grammatical sense. But notwithstanding this setback, we met a really nice lady who actually lived on the same street as our hostel and she said she'd take us to the street. We stopped once we got to the street and were trying to decide where to go when I guy walked by and asked us if we needed any help. We told him the name of our hostel and he told us exactly where to go. Italian people are so nice!
The hostel was kind of a dive. I'd never stayed in one before and it was definitely a new experience. This hostel had a lot of older people in it. Daniela and I shared a room with two girls from New York, a Russian lady, and a Japanese boy. Everything seemed really dirty and I was kind of disgusted the whole time. Especially as I picked hairs off the sheets. That was gross. Luckily we weren't there for that long. We got in late and left early. Everything went fine. There was a rather frightening moment when Daniela left me by myself so she could go call her fiance and the Russian lady pulled out a knife. I was sure she was going to kill me, but then she pulled out some pizza and cut herself a slice. We left bright and early, caught a bus, and went along the Amalfi Coast!
The Amalfi Coast is the most beautiful place I have ever been! I loved it! It is a long, cliffy coastline south of Naples. First we went to Amalfi, and it was charming. We explored the city a bit, ate breakfast, and went inside the Duomo. From there, we took a bus up the narrowest, windiest mountain road I've ever been on (it puts silver lake to shame) to Ravello. Ravello was gorgeous and it had an amazing view of the coast. After a little while in Ravello we took the bus to Positano, which was about an hour and a half away. The road goes right along the cliffs and the bus drivers are fearless. They just honk a couple times before ever blind corner and it's pretty intense with cars, busses, and mopeds going in both directions. Eventually we made it safely there. Positano is the most beautiful city I've ever been to!! I am in love with it. We had some lunch and gelato on the beach and walked around the streets and explored all the little shops.
From Positano we took the bus along the rest of the coastline and ended in Salerno. From there we took the train to Portici, right outside of Naples. I have loved every place in Italy that I have been...Naples is the exception. I don't ever want to go back. It wouldn't have been quite as bad if my visit there hadn't been preluded by fervent warnings from professors and others about the dangers of Naples, "La citta' di Ladri" (the city of thieves), as it is sometimes called. It was very dirty, didn't smell very good, and we recieved more honks and yells than we have in our entire stay in Italy put together. We eventually found our hostel and it was quite a bit nicer than the other one had been. It was actually pretty cool and we felt safe inside.
Despite the negative end to our day with our stop in Portici, it was an incredible day!!! I absolutely loved the Amalfi Coast! Everyone should go there at some point in their lifetime.
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