Got some catchin up to do!

So this blog is now going to be a bit out of order... I'm pretty lazy about doing this so there are quite a few weekends that have been left out. So since the trip to Assisi and Civita, but obviously before this current trip to Austria I have been quite a few places.... Here they are!

1. Florence

Trip 1: Chocolate Festival (this one was actually before the Assisi trip)
So we found out there was a Chocolate festival in Florence! yay!! We were going on a school trip to Florence the next weekend, but we didn't want to miss chocolate fest.... so of course we had to go! I have to admit, my first impressions of Florence were not good... It was quite a bit dirtier than Rome, it pretty much smelled bad, and there was a good layer of fog that day. So anyway, we make our way through the city to the chocolate festival and bam! protesters. Apparently, the Italians aren't too keen on their President having affairs. Who woulda thought?! So they were banging on their pots and pans, saying "Italy is not a brothel!" So that was pretty exciting. However, chocolate fest was a bit of a let down. There were maybe 8 tents, each with 2-4 vendors. It was just quite a bit smaller than we thought. So anyway, we got there, grabbed some chocolate, ate some food, and made our way back to Orvieto. It felt pretty good to be home. Now this brings us to.....

Trip 2: Back to Florence! And guess what?! Chocolate fest is still going on. Super glad I spent like 6 hours on the train the previous weekend to make it in time. Oh well... I do have to admit that this trip to Florence was significantly better. The city just didn't seem to suck as much as it did the weekend before. This trip, we ended up going to Santa Croce, a church in Florence. It was pretty, but to be honest with you, if it was that great, I would remember a little bit more about it than I do... but Michelangelo and Galileo are buried there so that's pretty cool. Santa Croce really didn't get a fair chance though because the Apse was under renovation so it was completely blocked off and we couldn't see it. That was a huge let down. (Side note: going to everything in the off season is great because there are no lines and whatnot, but almost everything is being worked on during this time so waiting in lines is probably worth it.) After that, we were released from our school duties and we just roamed around Florence. I bought a leather coat from a guy that kept calling me Jennifer Lopez (I apparently have a bubble bum) and a super cute leather bag that got soaked with tea at a later date. No worries though, it made a miraculous recovery. This now brings us to....

2. The South of Italy!

Now, our teacher warned us that the south of Italy is significantly poorer than the north of Italy. This is very true. While I'm sure there are some nicer parts, we did not see them... Everything looked similar to the projects. I kid you not. Nevertheless...

First stop: Ercolano, or as we know it (or maybe not) Herculaneum. This is one of the many sites left in ruins from the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. It was pretty small, but I was really interesting to see. We spent a couple hours there exploring and whatnot. It was really cool to see the old kitchens and living rooms. It was fairly common to have either a biclinium or a triclinium in your living room. Basically it is built in couches. The biclinium is 2 concrete couches facing each other with a pool in between, the triclinium had 3 concrete couches with a pool in the middle. Now what were these pools for you may ask? Why to float platters of food and alcohol on of course! These couches were more like beds and the ancient people or Ercolano and Pompeii pretty much knew how to host a party... haha :)

Next Stop: Pompeii (the town, not the ruins site). This is where our hotel was. I believe it was called Hotel Mystery or something like that. Definitely not a good name... Pompeii was a pretty sketchy town. Lets just say there was a prostitute seen pooping on the train platform. Yup, that sums up Pompeii for you. Lets get to the ruins site now... Amazing. Coolest thing ever. I loved exploring Pompeii. Every time I thought that the city would come to an end, nope! There would be more. It was just never ending. We did find one of the brothels that is still standing. This was pretty interesting... So in ancient Pompeii, there were around 40 brothels. A pretty ridiculous number for a small city. Anyway, in this brothel you will find a menu of services. The menu is comparable to the menu at Mcdonald's. It basically consisted of a series of pictures of different services one could request. To see an example of the images on the menu to a google image search for "Lupanare of Pompeii." I did take photos of the frescoes, but I don't know what facebook's policy is on ancient porn. It was pretty funny though... After that we found where they keep the bodies of the people they were able to recover. That's when it really hit me how incredibly tragic the eruption was. I could see their faces. I could see the look of fright. Some of the bodies were curled up, knees to face. Some were laying down as if they had just accepted what was going to happen. One of the bodies recovered was of a dog, curled up, guarding his face. It was awful to think about what that last day in Pompeii was like. One minute everything is fine, and the next you're an artifact. Something for tourists to take pictures of.

Oplontis: This was the 3rd ruins site we went to. Oplontis is just one large villa that was very well preserved. There are really beautiful frescoes on all the walls that for the most part, are still intact. We really didn't spend too much time here, but it was definitely worth the stop. Also, I'm going to name my next boston terrier Oplontis, but I shall call him Opie. Get ready Dexter... you're going to get a new brother some day...

Casserta: Once a royal palace, now a museum, gardens, and air force barracks. Casserta was really pretty. (google it) First, we went to the gardens and walked down most of the way towards the end. It was verrry long though and we only had 30 minutes before our tour of the palace so we had to cut it short. The palace was beautiful though. Typical palace stuff... (My apologies on the lack of elaboration, I'm so tired of writing at this point.)

Casserta finished up the school trip part of the week. By the way, this trip started on Wednesday and we are now on Friday :) After we were released; Lyndsee, Erin, and I took the train down to Sorrento. Sorrento is a gorgeous coastal town. We got a hostel there with some of the guys from our school and just explored. Our first night there, our group went out to dinner and just went back to the hostel. The boys all snored like bears and it was awful. They are no longer allowed to share hostels with us... The next morning was a little rough due to the hibernating bears, but we managed to get out of bed and make our way towards Vesuvius. We were bound and determined to hike up that beast.  So we took the train to Ercolano (the city, not the ruins site) and went to this little company that takes people to Vesuvius so they can hike up. We got there around 10:00 am and they told us that we would leave at 10:15. Well we were the only 3 people there so they kept waiting for more customers to show up so that they weren't wasting gas on just 3 people. So we waited until 10:45. During that time, man after man after man, showed up to this business exchanged keys, received papers, smoked a couple cigarettes and left. There was one much much older man, and around 30 other men coming and going. One man came up to the business, exchanged newspapers with the guy that ended up being our driver and then left. Now I really didn't think much of this until... We were half way up the mountain and the driver stops in the middle of the road. A random "stranger" on the side of the road, opens up he passenger side door, grabs the newspaper that our driver had received from the previous guy, shuts the door, and our driver just goes on like this is completely normal. Now we weren't sure if they were mafia (keep in mind we are in the south, home of the mafia) or drug dealers. Either way, there was some shady business going on and they have a nice little cover project taking people up to Vesuvius. So anyway, we hiked up Vesuvius. It still smokes. Its was cool, and we had the most amazing view of the sea and all the surrounding towns. After Vesuvius we were all tuckered out and we decided that going back to Orvieto sounded too amazing to pass up. So we made our way to Napoli and grabbed a train that went straight home! Welp, now Levi is on skype so I'm going to jet and I'll finish this later. I still have another trip to Florence to blog about. Stay tuned!