Pompeii

Pompeii was one rad tourist trap.

You get off the train and instantly people are like, I'll drive you to Mount Vesuvius! Buy this audio tour! Here's a map! Etc etc. We were wheeled and dealed a little bit in getting to Mt. V, but the options were few on the day we went. We figured a few extra bucks was worth it though, it's not every day you get to walk around Mount Vesuvius. And Mercedes taxi's are very comfortable. Whatever.

The city of Pompeii was incredible. I had no idea the site was going to be that gigantic! It really is an entire city you can walk around! That was really cool. You got such a really good idea of people's lives, and it was pretty wild to think about all the people living in this complex and exciting society thousands of year ago. It was then even more wild to think about them all getting wiped out by this volcano.

In the end we were SO happy we'd decided to cut our losses, skip the Greek islands, and add Naples/Pompeii to our itinerary. There were some definite highlights from these cities that previously weren't a part of our plan!

View from the top of Mt. V.

The crater!

The crater II.

Hi.

Clayton still exists. We still kinna look like siblings. 

Weird.

Finally, some Pompeii bodies!

So wild.

Hanging in a courtyard. An ancient courtyard.

Drinking from a water fountain. An ancient water fountain.

Cool doorway type thing to a tree lined road to a coliseum.

Fancy counters at an ancient fancy restaurant.

I was so impressed by the art and designs that had lasted through both thousands of years and a VOLCANO.

Walking around Pompeii was crazy. The grounds are gigantic and so many things are still totally in tact.

Living big.

Lovely.

Trandscendent Experiences in Naples

Poor little Napoli. It gets such a bad rap. Ok, so there's trash and dog poop everywhere! But if you don't look down, you don't even notice!! We LOVED Naples. Reasons include the following: 1) The buildings and whatnot of the city itself. 2) The people. 3) Pizza. 4) Pizza. 5) Pizza. 6-1,000,000) PIZZA.

Naples is big and winding and colorful. At every turn, there's something old and cool. It was such eye candy. For example, our hostel shared an alleyway with this building.

Some awesome old red church. 

People were so fantastic there! Even on the train down from Rome to Naples, some lady on the train with some friends offered us this delicious looking dessert. She didn't speak a lick of English but insisted we take some, I'm assuming knowing we were tourists. It was delicious! But that's just how everyone in Naples was, sincerely excited to share their city and their food. Everyone was so enthusiastic even though little English was spoken. It all came off so sincere too. People were enthusiastic in other cities, but you could tell it came from a sincere desire to make a sale and not a sincere desire to share something with you.

Okay. Let's talk pizza. Naples is where pizza started. I felt like I was on a pilgrimage to a holy land. We ate SO. MUCH. PIZZA. We actually didn't eat anything else while we were in that city. Oops. But one pizza stands out above the rest. The pizza place we wanted to go to was closed, so we made our way to this other restaurant. Across the street from Trianon da Ciro is La Antica Pizzeria da Michele. The latter was featured in the movie Eat, Pray, Love, so it's lines are always out the door. Reviewers say that Trianon is just as good if not better. The two restaurants are long time rivals. We went to Trianon expecting it to be really good.

It wasn't just good, it was transcendent. With Clayton as my witness, that pizza changed our lives. I'm not even exaggerating when I say it was so good, we almost teared up. Like this pizza actually made us both emotional. I would travel to Naples just to eat that pizza. The crust was thin, but thick enough to give stability to each slice. It was crunchy and chewy all at the same time. It was salty and freshly made and perfectly stretched and kneaded. The tomato sauce was so fresh and sweet. The cheese perfectly melted and the highest quality. And the whole thing was drizzled in the most delicious freshly pressed olive oil. I'm telling you, I left that restaurant a different person than I entered.

I love Naples.

Pizza.

The best pizza on earth.

More pizza.

Mt. Vesuvius! This is what I mean by cool buildings and views at every turn. 

Random fortress on a random street. 

Cool abandoned churches everywhere. 

Dog hot. Lol. 

My first gelato was also the best gelato I had. The gelato shop lady was sooooo sweet. I grabbed a scoop of some local flavor which was basically nutella on steroids. SO GOOD.

A local dessert called sfogliatella. I just called it delicious.

Napoli is where I also finally did laundry! So that was good. 

We went to the archaeological museum to see all the ruins from Pompeii. There were so many giant statues. I don't know why, but I love the gigantic ones. They're just really impressive! 

Impressed.

Impressed.

All these cool sarcophagi were just sitting outside!

My favorite part was the mosaics. So incredible. 

Mosaic pillars.

Just to give you an idea of how insanely detailed these are, check this out:

This is a hoof. Do you see how teeny tiny the tiles are? How many tiles go into making that hoof?

Now it is backed up a little. 

Here's the whole horse scene. 

Here's the whole piece. Can you pot the hoof? On your screen, it'll be about an inch or two left of my head toward the center. Isn't that wild???

Fleeing the storm, arriving in pizza heaven

So Santorini/ the Greek islands was one big storm-induced mess. At some point we decided to cut our losses, forgo our flights from Crete to Rome and book a new flight from Athens to Rome. George helped us get our ferry all squared away and we took an overnight ferry back to the mainland. Between sleeping pills and my eye mask, I manged to ignore the four burly Greek men sitting three inches from me while I slept. Clayton was less lucky. We rolled in at 5 am, walked around Athens until we found somewhere to print our tickets in order to avoid an insane RyanAir charge, and then headed to the airport. Our flight wasn't until like 9 in the pm, but we had already seen Athens.

I worked for 8 hours. Clayton probably wanted to die. Athens only gives you an hour of wifi. AN HOUR.

When we arrived at the airport in Rome, we looked at the location of our hostel. It was right behind the airport, so we decided to walk.

WRONG ANSWER.

The only way to get around the airport was to walk on the FREAKING HIGHWAY at ELEVEN O'CLOCK at night. Which we did not realize until we were on the freeway. (Don't ask questions. Just accept it.) At first it was kind of funny. After AN HOUR it was less funny. With no buildings, wifi, or taxis in sight, we didn't have many other options. A bed has never felt so sweet after the 29 hours of travel we'd just experienced.

The next morning we decided to head to Naples/ Pompeii, because why not. Turned out to be the right answer! We had such a blast. I'll throw those highlights in different posts, because that makes more sense, yeah?

High quality freeway pics.

Just to prove it happened.

This doesn't show it well, but that wall was probably 20 feet above that road.

We had to climb a fence to get on this wall, but as you can see, there's no where to walk on the road. 

In conclusion, this was not a pedestrian and/or stupid American friendly part of town.

I am truly terrible at blogging

My aunt and my cousin met me in Italy! Between our breakneck speed travel, working 20 hours a week, and like... sleeping, updates have been rather low on the priority list. But THEY. ARE. COMING.

Cousin love is real and important.

I'd Call It Santorainy But I Truly Dislike Puns

So as much fun as it was jumping on a plane and heading for Santorini, it was perhaps not the best decision. We were met in Santorini by rain, hail, SNOW, and wind strong enough to knock you over. Seriously. It knocked me over. Multiple times.

On the second day in town, we decided to jog around the island and check things out. 8.3 miles and a brush with hypothermia later, we realized we preferred the indoors. On the third day in town, we made the wise decision to rent a car and see the island from an enclosed space. On the fourth day, we mostly gave up and decided to cut our losses. We're hoping on a ferry in a few hours to head to Athens and then fly to Rome. We both had plane tickets out of Crete but we wouldn't be able to get to Crete for days, we'd be stuck in a tiny hotel room with nothing to do for those days, and once we got to Crete, it'd still be raining. THIS STORM IS RIDICULOUS.

That being said, Santorini has still been fantastic. First of all, we're staying at this little hotel owned by George and Stella. George and Stella are our sunshine when there is none to be found outside. They have taken care of our every need. From tea in the morning to rides from the airport and to the ferry to arranging our car rental, they have made sure that our every need is attended to. We love George and Stella. Their hotel is SO CLEAN too. It's heavenly. Also, Santorini is adorable. We've had a really fun time exploring and have just learned to laugh when the sky decides to pelt us with ice cubes at random.

Day 2:

The black sand beach we ran to.

It was incredibly gorgeous.

And we got 10 minutes of partial sun!

We also made a new best friend.

Sand. Cool.

My face is smiling but my head is asking when this dog is going to stop following us.

HE RAN ALL 4 MILES BACK TO THE HOTEL WITH US.

So loyal.

You maybe can't tell from this picture but we were drenched by the time we got home. It alternated between raining and hailing the whole way. We were also running uphill. The wind was blowing downhill.

We were very, very hungry after this run.

We hadn't eaten since Athens, so we both ordered pasta and pizza.

It was over-ambitious. This picture was taken after eating all I could.

I've never been so disappointed.

But yeah. Still definitely didn't say no to dessert.

Day 3:

The Greek Orthodox Church to person ratio on this island has to be like 1:1.

They're real pretty.

A village that was built around a castle like a thousand years ago.

People still live there.

It looked this unreal in real life too.

Seriously, these views.

I'm giggling in this picture because the wind blew me over during the first attempt.

There are hot springs on one of those islands.

I would do anything for some hot spring access.

Just a girl and her Smart Car.

Also her socks and stocks.

My tennis shoes still aren't dry from that run.

This is a color picture.

Cool 12th century artifacts from one of the castles.

Crawling around a castle.

Freezing to death.

Trying not to be blown into the rocks.

Generally not succeeding.

Dece view from the castle.

More Santorini cuteness.

Winding village streets.