Hey there!

Hi friends - I know that I've been slacking on the blogging lately. Life is busy, but I'm just checking in to say a quick hello and let you know that I haven't forgotten about this space!

Regular posting will hopefully resume soon. I have a lot to share, including a trip to the UK! Be back soon - I promise. Have a good weekend!

The Amalfi Coast!

When I was in high school, I worked as a hostess at a restaurant close to my house - Antonio's Pasta Grille (sadly, now closed).  My favorite dish was called Chicken Amalfi.  At the time, I had never heard of the Amalfi coast - I never really understood how restaurants come up with entree names anyway, but now that I'm older and wiser (ha!), I can tell you (and show you!) that the Amalfi coast is a stunning spot on the southern coast of Italy!!

However - Chicken Amalfi, which featured chicken with eggplant, proscioutto, asparagus, mushrooms, roasted red peppers, mozzarella, and a shallot merlot sauce, does not really have a whole lot to do with the Amalfi coast.

Andiamo!

You may recall that on our last day in Rome, I was totally sick.  I hadn't gone out with everyone on our last night because I was in bed.  When I woke up the next day, my roomies and I decided to go get some breakfast before our car picked us up in the morning.  As we were all getting ready, I was cracking up because John and Margaret were wearing the same shirt.

"That is so funny you guys put on the same shirt today.  You guys are such dorks," I sad.

Imagine my surprise when the rest of the gang showed up at breakfast with the same shirts too!  Now, I love to wear matching shirts (refer to exhibits one and two), so I was super excited that they had gotten a matching shirt for me too!  Woohoo!!

Since there were seven of us, John had arranged to have a car pick us up in Rome and drive us down to our next stop in Sorrento, and along the way, we stopped in Pompeii for a quick two hour tour of the city.  I wasn't really dying to see Pompeii, but it was on the way, so why not?  But I ended up really liking it a lot!

First of all, the place is enormous.  I guess that makes sense because it was a whole city, but in my mind, I thought it would be smaller?  Our guide took us through several areas of the city, including this bath house / brothel that was just recently restored and opened to the public.

Beautiful original mosaics

You can kind of see that it was a painting of the port itself

My favorite thing about Pompeii was that it was so well preserved.  Unlike some other ruins, you really didn't have to use your imagination as much because everything was just as it used to be!

The main path to where the port was has these small stones that would reflect moonlight so that people could find their way back to the port.  Genius, huh!

This (unfinished) mosaic was in the largest house in Pompeii.  It depicts a battle, so our guide told us that people think the person who owned the house was in the military or something.  It made me think - if my house was discovered in the future, what would the remains say about me?

Our blue shirts made it easy for our guide haha.

 After we left Pompeii, we continued on to Sorrento, where we spent two nights in a hotel, and then we drove all along the Amalfi coast, stopping into several of the towns, before spending four nights in Positano.  The scenery was absolutely amazing!  I'll leave you with a bunch of lovely photos to enjoy!  Ciao!

The eternal city

Ah, Roma!  After an early morning flight from Budapest, we landed in beautiful Rome and reunited with the rest of the crew!  This is the third year in a row that we have gotten together for an annual adventure (previously Peru and Asia), and I love being able to spend time with these lovely friends!

After grabbing some cappuccinos and checking into our AirBnb, we headed out to see one of the highlights of Rome - the Vatican!  We booked a private tour in order to avoid the line, and our guide Tomasso explained that since the Sistine Chapel was closing early that day (there was some sort of holiday in Rome that weekend), we needed to push through all the crowds to get there first!

As we raced through the main part of the museum, I tried to snap as many photos as I could while still keeping up with our guide as we weaved through SO many people.  The one place that wasn't crowded - the ceiling - had the most beautiful artwork!    

You can see here that some of the hallways were still being restored.

No photos were allowed inside the Sistine Chapel, and even though there were tons of people breaking the rules, I didn't want to be one of them.  Personally, I was a bit shocked and offended by how many visitors to such a meaningful place could be so utterly rude and disrespectful.  And I'm not even Catholic!

We spent some time just looking at the artwork, and Tomasso told us some funny stories about some of the scenes depicted on the ceiling.  It really is incredible how every single character has a story and serves a purpose.  After we had had our fill of Michelangelo, we headed back towards the Vatican Museum to actually be able to look at the exhibits!

St. Peter's peeking at us!

We were SO incredibly fortunate during our second time through the museum.  It seemed that most people had just gone home after the early closing of the chapel, so we were basically alone in the Vatican Museum.  It was incredible to see so much magnificent stuff without all the other tourists.  One thing I've definitely noticed in Europe is that a lot of the more famous tourist sites are SO much more crowded than the ones in Asia.  I think it is part due to popularity, proximity, and just geography (the Great Wall is hard to be crowded because it is so massive), but it is really apparent to me, so this was such a nice change!

Tapestry of the Resurrection

Raphael's most famous!

We ended our first day with dinner and limoncello!

The next day, we spent the morning exploring the city by foot!  We hit a lot of the major sites and sweated like crazy in the summertime heat!

Pantheon

Raphael's grave

 

For some reason, I thought the Trevi Fountain would be round?

Spanish Steps

Hi friends!

We went through some back doors to enter the school

To find this fresco!

The only time I ate salad on this trip.. or at least, that's what it felt like.

In the afternoon, we had a guided tour to see the Roman Forum, Palantine Hill, and the Colosseum!

Yes, we had to wear those audio packs and follow a guide with a flag!

After a long day in the sun, we took our first gelato break on our way back to the apartment!  This certainly was not the best gelato we had, but it was just the thing we needed to cool off.  We ended the day hanging out in the Piazza Campo de Fiori for dinner and drinks.

Me, Michael, and Jill got up early the next day to go to St. Peter's Basilica, which normally opens at 7:00 am!  We wanted to get there early so that we wouldn't have to wait very long since we hadn't booked a "skip the line tour" in advance.

This was the line about ten minutes (6:50 am) before they opened.

As we waited in line, I started looking around and saw that a lot of people were dressed much more nicely than we were.  Like, we had our knees and shoulders covered, but there were a lot of people wearing their Sunday finest, even though it was a Monday.  We had heard that there was some sort of holiday in Rome that weekend, but it wasn't very clear to me what was happening.  As it turns out, the Pope was giving a Mass that morning at the Basilica!  That's why everyone was wearing their church clothes - they were actually going to church!  As you might imagine, you can't just show up for Mass with the Pope, and we didn't have tickets, so we snapped some photos and then left.  Interestingly, we learned that the Mass wasn't actually starting until 9:30 am - and there was still a massive line to get in hours ahead of time!!

I had actually woken up that morning not feeling great, and it just got progressively worse.  I actually spent most of the day in bed while everyone else explored Rome.  As it turned out, the crew dubbed this last day in Rome "good food day" because everything that they ate and drank was delicious.  I was absolutely gutted that I didn't get to partake in any of it!  I think I ate a slice of bread over the course of the entire day while my friends feasted on cheese, pasta, gelato, wine, and more.  Wahhhh.

The only bright side to being sick on our last day in Rome was not eating for an entire day meant that I was a little slimmer by the next day - when we headed to the Amalfi Coast!!  More about that in the next post.. ciao!