Whereas, the last 3 days-time spent in Sorrento have been breezy and relaxing, our last 2 days in Rome were exhilirating. This past Monday, we spent the entire day in Vatican City. We woke up super early to get to St. Peters Basilica when it opened-7am. We were the 3rd and 4th people in line. We walked in the cathedral and it was wonderfully quiet and empty and peaceful. The church is so huge yet so elegant and majestic. My favorite part of the church is Michaelangelos Pieta sculpture, now protected in bulletproof glass, one of the most beautiful scultpures I have ever seen. After seeing the church we climbed the stairs to the dome of the church for beautiful views of the city. Next, we went to the Vatican Museum. Thanks God we had tickets and were able to bypass the 4 block long line. There, we spent most of our time checking out the beautiful room of art by Raphael-the most famous work of his in there is the famed School of Athens-and then went into the Sistine Chapel. The Chapel was soooo gorgeous and surprisingly very small. It is full of LOUD tourists unfortunately trying to take pictures of the chapel with workers contstantly yelling at them. Nontheless, it was a great experience. We listened to our Rick Steves audio guide and learned that Michaelangelo had NOONE helping him do the painting. He did it all by himself, whereas Raphael had many people helping him paint his room in the Vatican Museum. After the museum, we went on the Vatican Scavi tour, which is the underground tour of the Vatican excavations. It was pretty cool. We learned that there are 2 layers underneath the current Vatican-one being the previous church that was there and then there was a neocropolis under that layer, which was an old burial ground. We were shown some of this burial grounds-mausoleums and also some artifacts surrounding the story of St. Peter being buried under St. Peters Basilica.
Our last day in Rome was special in that it was the only day in Rome that we took at a slow pace. We went to some lesser known churches, did some city walks recommended in our travel books and went to one of my favorite spots in town-the Galleria Borghese. This is one of my favorite art museums ever! I went there last time I was in Rome and knew that despite Chris not liking art too much that he would love it-and he did. It's a small museum of 2 stories and houses art collected from a ruthless cardinal hundreds of years ago-Cardinal Borghese. He acquired this art using limitless funds he received from the Vatican-I believe the audioguide said his uncle was the pope at the time. If money couldn't buy the painting he wanted, then we would threaten the art owner until they agreed to give it up.
The next day-Tuesday-we got into Sorrento. We rode a sketchy train called the Circumvesuvia from Naples (after taking the standard regional train from Rome to Naples.) to Sorrento. I told Chris this was the time to really watch his valuables. We spent our day here strollling on the city streets-it is a really small town and looks a lot like Charleston, SC. We checked into our hotel-the Ulisse Deluxe Hostel. It is soooo beautiful, cheap (70E night), and has huge clean rooms . . . and we get our own bathrooms. Woooohoo!!!!
Wednesday was my favorite day of the trip so far. We took a taxi tour of the Amalfi Coast, a bit of a splurge but soooo beautiful and memoriable. It was just Chris and I and a taxi driver named Lorenzo. He was fabulous and totally made the trip for us. He was histerical, knowledgeable, spoke English and he said he would get drunk and force himself to watch movies like Under the Tuscan Sun so he could explain to his American patrons where in Amalfi Coast the scenes were filmed at. The views on the drive were breathtaking. We stopped at Positano-Chris and I want to buy a house here someday to retire (if we get rich!) A lot of movies have been filmed here-its a picturesque town crammed on a seaside. We had an our to spend here and then rode to Amalfi and spent an hour there as well. Finally, we stopped for a few hours to have lunch at Ravello. This town is beautiful-not on the water but high up in the hills and overlooking the sea. Aboslutely beautiful. The lunch we had was scrumptuous. I ate at this same restaurant last time in Italy and it was one of the best meals I had ever had. The food was fresh from the owners farm. The vegetable tray was my favorite. After lunch we went to Villa Ruffalo to see amazing views of the sea from the town. After this, we we rode back to Sorrento.
Yesterday-Friday-we took a boat to the island of Capri, a 20 min ride from Sorrento. The island is gorgeous and VERY VERY touristy. Rich people like to hob nob on this island. We took a chair lift up to see the sweeping views of the sea, sort of a 360 view of the island. So beautiful. Then, we hiked down the mountain. It was one of the most peaceful parts of our trip.
Today, we slept in (lovely) and went to Pompei, a 30 min train ride from Sorrento. I was soooo excited for Chris to see this town, since 1) I am very passionate about archaeology and studied this town when I was a small child (dork) and 2) One of my goals this trip was to get him more interested in history. We did a 40min Rick Steves audioguide (we love this guy) of the site and it was great. We saw the famous houses that were excavated, an amphitheater, a bakery, a brothel (there were naked pictures at the entry of every woman's room-each room's stone "bed"was preserved, the forum, even plastered bodies in the exact same pose since 79A.D . It is amazing how preserved the city is for being close to 2,000 yrs old. There were several dogs roaming the site along with the tourists. I saw a sign trying to get people to adopt these dogs. I told Chris I wanted to take one him with us-they were soooo cute, but looked kind of sick, like they needed a good vet.
Tonight, we are watching the Champions League final, well what I really mean is that I am making Chris watch this. It is the European equivalent of the Superbowl for Europe's favorite sport-soccer. I loooove European soccer and want to get Chris into it-what better than this exciting match. Sorrento is a big vacation spot for the British. There are several English pubs here. We are going to hit one of them, eat some fish and chips and watch the game. And, I am going to drink Bellini's, one of my new favorite drinks-Prosecco (dry Italian Champagne) with a little grenadine, and peach juice-YUM.
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