One of my friends from UM, Colleen, is on a different study abroad program where she lives in Pompei (yup, in Italian it only has one "i") and gets to actually work with other students and scientists doing archaeological digs in the site. So, when we realized we'd both be in Italy for the summer-a visit was definitely in order. This weekend my program was going to Venice, but since I'm going there with my mom and brother after the program, I decided to not pay to go twice, and to instead spend the weekend in Pompei.
I got to town on Friday afternoon, and Colleen was still at work, so I unpacked at my hostel and kind of wandered around town. Pompei is kind of divided into 2 parts, the area near the archaeological site that is super touristy with vendors and hotels and such, and then the actual town part that is much more relaxed-which is where I stayed and where Colleen lives. In Florence, everything closes from around 2-4pm for "afternoon nap" or something, but here, their time closed was a lot longer, so even at 5pm everything was still closed and my wandering wasn't much of an adventure. I met up with Colleen in the Piazza, covered in dust from digging all day, and we headed to her apartment. About half the kids in her program are from UM, and the others are from various other schools-and I actually knew 2 of the people in her program from other classes! So a group of us all went out to dinner-had a nice pizza, and some REALLY good house wine.
Saturday morning a couple of Colleen's roommates went shopping with us, and we did all the touristy shopping and postcard writing and picture taking, and then we headed to the archaeological site later in the afternoon once the day cooled down a bit. The actual site was amazing to wander-it is a lot bigger than I was expecting, we definitely didn't get to see the whole thing, but everything I did see was really cool. Since the students in her program are mostly majoring in this stuff, everywhere we wandered, someone could tell me what we were looking and, and knew where to look for the really good parts of the site. It was cool, and very eerie at the same time, especially in the recreated gardens, because you could imagine the place being a real home to people.
Sunday, we met up for breakfast (I had the best chocolate filled croissant I've ever eaten!!) and then decided to head to Sorrento to go to the beach-kind of spur of the moment. Sorrento was gorgeous-the water of the Mediterranean is such a pretty color blue, and even though the beach was packed (and expensive!! 13 euro!!) it was the perfect way to relax for the day. The weekend was exactly what I needed, because I had some familiar faces from school (I didn't know anyone on my own program prior to it) and most importantly, one of my really good friends-which makes a HUGE difference when you're across the world and start to feel kind of alone. Since both of our programs are UM based, we've put together a joint trip for next weekend that I am super excited about!! We're going to all stay at the same hostel in Ischia (an island next to Capri that is cheaper and apparently just as nice) and go to the hot springs and hang out on the beach.
So, even with the Naples mess, the weekend was really great and Italy is still wonderful :)
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3 comments:
:) Glad you got to hang out with a familiar face for a weekend at least. Mom and E will be there before you know it, only about 2 weeks...I only know because I'm counting days until my semester ends and my birthday arrives. They happen to fall on the same day. :) I got bored with writing my blog soooo I decided to start attempting to write it in espanol. It's a good time. Anyhow, love you and have a great rest of the week!
Did you get to see some of the bodies there? It is very creepy. I remember one you could see the person holding up their arms trying to shield themselves, and another a mom was covering her child. It is amazing how detailed they still are. Pompei I remember being a very perverted city.
Yeah, I saw some of the bodies, but they freaked me out so I didn't look closely-it feels so wrong that they are objectified for the world to see now...
As for perverted, the guys in the south are definitely a lot more forward, and have a lot less shame in going after it. Florence is so touristy that I find the cat calls humorous, and they don't happen as often-but I could hardly walk a block without something in Pompei. And we won't even go into Naples...
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