Day 84 May 19th 2009 En route to Rome, Italy

Arose to clean up and pack up the rest of the apartment by the sea. Pina, the caretaker arrived at 10 to check everything out and we were off at 10:30. But we didn’t make it very far. 100 meters down the road a stop to grab a load of painted pottery. Another 100m and a stop for group picture. And so on it went. Finally we were traveling up and and through the mountain towards Sorrento because we had decided it might be cool to stop in Pompeii to see the ruins. But this was not to be as we took a democratic vote and wanted to spend a bit more time in Rome so we bypassed Pompeii and shot straight up on the A1 autostrada back to Rome. Dropped the car back at Avis with a big thanks to Guida who we couldn’t have made it without. Got into our room at the hotel Holiday Inn then proceeded to take one sweaty train, one double-sweaty metro and one triple-sweaty bus over towards piazza Navona. After getting out of the sweaty mass that is Rome public transportation during summer, we made it to the elongated piazza of fountains and artists. We sat down for an overpriced dinner, but hey it’s a nice location right?, then the girls went strolling around for some art shopping. A quick cab back to the Holiday ended the evening.

Day 81 May 16th 2009 Praiano, Italy

Everyone slept in this morning after our stressful day of traveling and driving yesterday. The weather was partly cloudy but we went down the 240 steps to the rocks below to check out the water. Everyone laid out in the sun for awhile and I napped on the rocks. We went into Amalfi to walk around and browse for a bit. Took the drive back to the apartment and just relaxed at the apartment until bedtime.

Day 80 May 15th 2009 En route to Praiano, Italy

Arose and packed up my remaining items. Gathered up a bunch of the food in the fridge and brought it out to one of the resident homeless people and dogs that live around the corner, doing a good deed. Met up with mother and Cara once more to head to Fiumicino to pick up the rental car. Haha our car is a Fiat Qubo, but we nicknamed it the “Blue Marshmallow” because its big and vibrant blue! Thinking ahead I also leased a GPS unit from AVIS to make sure we didn’t end up totally lost on the Amalfi coast. Man did this thing save our trip at some points. We nicknamed her “Guida” which is actually quite humorous considering the word guida is the third person conjugation of the verb guidare, to drive; so guida also stands for “It drives.” We jumped on the A1 autostrada and off we went for an adventure south. Things started to get very interesting when we got to the part of the trip where the road starts winding along the hillsides of Amalfi and the other coastal towns. The drivers are crazier than Rome! Obviously there are less intersections and all that city driving stuff but these Italians drive at 50mph along a 1 1/2 lane road still talking on the cell phone while eating and putting on makeup! It was all my mother could do to keep us from sideswiping the tourists walking on the right and the cars blazing by on the left! We finally found the entrance gate to the apartment and descended a steep San Francisco-like turny driveway down to our new residence. The charming little apartment with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths is an excellent fit for our party of 4, but what has your mouth wide open is the view of the gulf and terraced towns to the left and right. On our way to the apartment we had stopped in the town of Amalfi to grab some groceries and we ended up just cooking up some pasta and drinking delicious local Campania wine to celebrate our arrival in paradise.