More Rome then onto Napoli, Pompeii and Sorrento! (Days 4 & 5)

We have been having SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much fun we have not had time to update the blog!!!! We only get internet in one room of the ENTIRE hotel so we run out of battery!

Day 4
Rome It was another free day! We saw TONS!!!!!
-The Mouth of Truth
-The area of Trastevere
-The Sistine Chapel
(just to name the highlights)

We began our day with the hopes of me finding shoes as we wandered the streets of Trastevere. We stopped just before the bridge to Trastevere so we could go to the church of Santa Maria where the Bocca della Verita (Mouth of Truth) is home to. And no D - we did not re-enact Roman Holiday... there is a time and photo limit to keep the line moving and a guy there to make sure...
We crossed the river and saw some cool ruins which were part of Tiber Island. We made our way through Trastevere. Beautiful area!! We saw a cool fountain and went to take a picture if it with Katya's horse. We were stopped by some guys who were clearly NOT sober. They were really nice and wanted to talk soccer with Joe as he was wearing the wrong kind of jersey for their liking. They wanted us to come back at 2 to smoke some dope! lol! We told them our religion so they invited us back to have drinks. lol! Yah we didn't find them again. We went into a bunch of stores adn stopped at all the street vendors. No shoes... got some cute tights though! Tried one last store. It was a department type store and found these cute gray heels for 7.50 Euro! We looked around a bit more. Went to check out and the lady rung them up then said oh I'm sorry wrong price and she rung them up full price! Now had the tag been shoved in the shoe I would not have objected but it was attached to the security tag! The manager came out and said the same thing so I left them. Sad huh?! We had lunch (more pizza) one had anchovies hidden by zucchini flowers! GROSS! We got more gelato to take the yuck out of our mouth and bumped into more friends from our group! We left them and made our way to the Vatican. We got off the bus and promptly went the wrong way to the Sistine Chapel. Turned around and went the right way. After an hour or so of wandering the surrounding buildings (not by choice) which were filled with the most amazing art work of paintings, stone ect... we found ourselves inside the Sistine Chapel. It was so much to take in! We starred at all the paintings of the stories from the Bible. It was crazy! To think someone laid on their back to paint all of them... it was... yah.... We made our way through the maze the other way and headed outside. I had wanted to make it to St Peters Bascilla but it was getting late and I wasn't sure we would make it. Plus there was a pyramid to see too! We went to find a bus ticket. No luck. We wandered 2 blocks and finally found one. As we made our way back to the stop our bus passed us. We figured no big. We had been taking the buses and there is always another near by. 30 MINUTES LATER our bus comes again! Needless to say we didn't see the pyramid. We headed back to town to finish the souvenir shopping we had begun the day before. We stopped to have dinner at an outdoor seated restaurant. We were placed next to an older German couple. We had a great time talking about traveling ect.. Dinner was yet again wonderful. We walked slowly back to the hotel to take in more of the sites at night and to delay the packing of the bags... We came to a square where each corner of the buildings on each corner had a huge carving. They were beautiful!

Day 5
We headed south to Sorrento going through Napoli (Naples) and Pompeii. The country side is so beautiful! You see villages far of on the rolling hillsides in the colored stucco everywhere. Our tour guide had a really thick accent and apparently never bothered to find out how English words were really pronounced. She would speak them how they would phonetically sound. So not only did we need to translate that but it was heavily accented too! It was hard to take in what information she was offering. Once in Napoli CRAZY took on a whole new meaning! There were cars and people everywhere you looked just going. Not really watching where they were going but somehow no one was dying! Roads that in the US would be for 2 cars were filled with 6 plus scooters! The lights (we were told) were more like guidelines. You only stopped if you had to. We were headed to the capitol center when we were stopped by a political demonstration! We were redirected and missed capitol center... We climbed the hillside and stopped for a picturesque view of Napoli. It looked just like a travel magazine!

We made our way back down and headed to Pompeii. There we saw the ruins from 79 AD. 79AD!!! It was unreal!*Taken from Wikipedia - Pompeii is a ruined and partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples. Pompeii was destroyed, and completely buried, during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning two days in 79 AD. The volcano collapsed higher roof-lines and buried Pompeii under 60 feet of ash and pumice, and it was lost for nearly 1,700 years before its accidental rediscovery in 1748. Since then, its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire.*
Go see the pictures! Truely amazing. Actual hollowed out molds of real people were discovered and plaster was poured in to make replicas of how people were when they died.

We finished heading south, got to our hotel and it is amazing! We have an ocean front view!!!!!!!!!! So beautiful!!!!!! Because we filled their hotel they thanked us by a free welcome dinner that night. They served fish... luckily we were sitting with our friends Riina and Justin and he doesn't eat fish either. So they special made us pork! The staff at this hotel were so wonderful and accommodating.

Joe was getting more bold in our friendship with Justin and Riina. Riina was an exchange student from Finland. She returned and married her host brother. They divorced years later and she is now dating Justin. She is 3 yrs older then him. He asked Justin - "So how long have you been interested in older European women Justin?" Riina gasped and immediately threw her napkin then her fork at Joe!!! It was great!!!! We sat and talked with them the rest of the evening. She vowed to get him back at the end of the night.