The Grand Finale

The trip is officially over, but I still have the last 3 days to catch everyone up on.

Saturday might have been one of the best, if not the best day we had on our entire trip. We went to the Island of capri today and it was super fun and super expensive. We woke up early to catch a big boat to the island. I don't remember the exact time but I think we left the house at 7:20 to catch a train (we had to sprint to the train again, Rook thought we would be late... we werent, we beat the train by over 10 mintues to his defense the train was a little late) to Sorrento. Then from Sorrento we got on the big boat. The boat can hold cars and trucks and all kinds of stuff in the hull, the upstairs is where everyone sat and it kind of felt like an airplane. Rook and I experienced first hand why many foreign countries hate americans. It is because of the young american tourist groups, like the smart kids doing a foreign exchange or something. We had to sit through (well we watched because it was funny) 20 minutes of a two 14 year old girls with ipods acting like they were playing dance dance revolution. No joke. They were dancing around and acting like they were stomping on lit up arrows on the ground while everyone gawked at how dumb some people can act. It was hilarious and Rook and I looked at each other and said "this just got real". I was pretty tired so I went and rested a little bit in my seat and Rook stayed out on the deck filming and ended up making friends with a nice couple, Franco and I don't remember his wive's name. When we get to the island we walk around with the couple looking for stuff to do and we all decide to rent scooters! Rook and I didn't want to pay 80 dollars to rent a scooter for a day and I didn't want to have to ride on the back (gay style) with Rook driving and I'm sure he didn't want to do that either. We ended up getting 2 for one on the scooter and we were happy about that.

We took off on the scooters and were driving around too fast and teh owner came up behind us and said Rook was a good driver and I was bad because he said I was wobbling (I was doing it on purpose to make things fun, weaving in and out and such) we ended up having to wait for them to bring us gas when i realized my scooter didn't have any. We rode around some very narrow streets dodging buses and other cars and scooters. It was so much fun! Our first destination was the Grotta Azure or the blue cave. The blue cave was supposedly on the list to be considered one fo the natural wonders of the world. It is way cool. You get on a row boat for 10 euros a person (rip off, but worth it) and he rows you up to the mouth of the cave and there is a chain that he grabs onto and pulls you into the cave really fast when the waves go down... it is pretty intense. The opening is so small that you have to lay down on the bottom of the boat to not hit you head on the rocks. When you get in you kind of ask yourself, "self, what is the big deal" and then you look back at the entrance and at the water below and your jaw hits the floor. It is the craziest blue color you have ever seen! It looks like they filled the cave with blue powerade or something. Its quite a site to see and very shortlived, we were probably in the cave for 5-7 minutes and that was longer than most people get from what we hear. We circled around a bit and got some really cool pictures. I got a really good one of Rook and the boatmen got a good one of the two of us, unfortunately I didn't get a good one of me (they all came out blurry) and I was not happy about that, so Rook and I got into a little tiff. Everything was better when we got back on the scooters and started having fun again. We rode over to the other side of the island to eat some lunch at a pizza place the scooter guy recommended to us. It turned out to be really good, I got a pizza called the Zingara or Gypsy that is just onions and sausage and Rook got a seasonal veggie pizza that had carrots, tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant. Mine was way better! We had to ask the waiter for the check like 1,000 times. It took them about an hour to bring it to us, check that Rook just went up and paid. We didn't really mind waiting, we were right on the water and the sun was shining so we just relaxed and talked for a bit.

we went down to the beach, if you can call it that. The beach consisted of a bunch of big rocks, no sand at all, just river rock type rocks... not fun to walk on with bare feet. When we were about to leave the couple we had meet was coming down to eat lunch on the beach and we sat and talked with them for a bit. Rook joked about getting in the water and the guy said you are on vacation you have to do it, you can't be on an island and at the beach and not go swimming. We were hesitant, Franco kept insisting and insisting (I think he might have just wanted to see Rook with his shirt off) untill we all decided to do it. We got our little toes in the watter and immediately said screw this, the water was way too cold. It was funny when Franco started making up our excuses for us, he said "well we did it, lets just get our faces wet and say we did it... its too dangerous... they are probably sharks"... and anything else he could come up with. It was pretty funny. We got dressed again, jumped on our hogs and rode up to a ski chair lift that Franco really wanted us to go see he said it was super beautiful. Franco was right, it was way cool we could see little islands and we watched the sea gulls hovering around and catching the hot air currents or pockets or whatever they are and gliding around... it was really cool. We climbed a tree and took some sweet pictures.

It was getting late so we wanted to see one more spot on the island and we went up to a cool look out point and got some really good drinks since we were both super thirsty. The drinks were awesome, it was 1/2 frozen leomonade and 1/2 fresh squeezed orange juice with a bunch of different kinds of oranges, mostly blood oranges. It was pretty tart but really good and hit the spot. We wanted to get another but the guy had closed his stand before we got back from taking more pictures.

The day came to an end and we had a fun scooter ride back to the pier. We had some time before the boat would take us back so we got some aranchinis (fried rice balls with tomatoe sauce and mozarella inside) that were pretty good and a saltimboca sandwich (proschuito and mozarella), it is amazing how many different names they have for what seems to be the same sandwhich. We sat on the boat and rode back watching an episode of how I met your mother on the ipod that was pretty funny.

we got back into Sorrento and had a bit of a walk to get into the town, we had to walk up a bunch of steps. It took us a lot longer than it would have taken two healthy individuals. Rook is hobbled by his knee that is hurting him quite a bit and I have blisters on my feet and have rubbed wholes in two pairs of jeans... do the math! So we finally get into the city and walk around looking for souveniers and stuff to buy you guys, long story short we went shopping for us. We were walking down the street when I saw Luigi Borelli 60 % off out of the corner of my eye. I said Rook we have to go in and he said ok. I have always wanted a luigi borelli dress shirt, they are hand sown by pasta mama's in napoli and are the it shirt in italy right now. We asked the guy if we bought a couple to give us a deal and he did so I ended up getting 2 shirts and 2 ties for less than 1 shirt would have cost me. Rook got 2 shirts for less than one as well. In the end it was like 70 % off. So I am very exicted about the deal we got, especially on something that was on my list of things I wanted to buy in Italy. After that we hopped on a train went back to the Iacarino's house and went to bed. After our first experience going to the Iacarino's via trian I always find myself a little more alert and looking people up and down to make sure that nothing is going to happen.

We got up the next morning and went to a town called pisatano that is supposed to be one of the prettiest towns on the amalfi coast. It was a ghost town. none of the shops were really open. So we spent most of our time which ended up being a couple of hours just walking around taking pictures, watching random people fishing on the pier and taking a little nap while listening to the ocean. We got there around 8:30 and when we were leaving at 11 people were still getting their shops up and running. There was nothing for us to do there. We had lunch planned with the Iacarino's at 1:30 and we didn't want to miss that. So we set out to catch the 11:15 bus back to Sorrento. Turns out that because it was raining and the roads to get there are on a bunch of cliffs, the bus company was afraid of landslides and there were some bus delays... just a few ;) So we had to wait in the rain for an hour and a bit with no idea whether a bus was coming or not. We had some small talk with a nice middle-age couple from west virginia (I think) and also and nice kid from Mexico that was studying abroad in spain. For some reason he wanted to go around Italy by himself on his winter break. Pretty brave. Even with the bus delay we were able to get back to the Iacarino's at exactly 1:30. They made us a very nice dinner, some penne pasta and bread, which was really good, they had it cooking all day the day before and it turned out tasty. Also Hermione the eldest daughter made us a bunch of cream puffs. Yummy! I was also able to get some blogging done and get us a hotel for rome that night, which is our last night :( We ended up staying there a lot later than we wanted to and if memory serves we didn't get out of there till 5 or 6 and we still wanted to do some souvenier shopping so we were up against the 8 ball.

After blogging, eating, and talking at the Iacarino's we got on a train to go back to Napoli and did some shopping. I wanted to see if the iphone guys were there and also wanted to get some fake glasses for everyone. Rook and I mulled over whether we should take the same route as we did last time in Napoli or if we should check our bags. I didn't want to pay 15 dollars to check our bags for 2 hours. So we risked the dangers of Napoli and treked out to find stolen/fake treasures. We also really wanted to eat at Pizzeria da Michelle again and have the best pizza in the world be our final meal in Italy. As luck would have it, Pizzeria da Michelle is closed on sundays so we had to eat at another ancient pizzeria across the street. I don't remember the name and I prob wouldn't go back there, it was decent but it just didn't compare to the classic margherita at Michelle's. Rook got a calzone and I got a proscuitto margherita pizza with mozzarella di bufala. Not anything to write home about, (I know I am writing about it) but that is probably since we had our hopes set on Michelle's. After that we had to run fast to hop on the train to Rome and we had to buy a ticket upgrade real fast before we could get on. We ended up lucking out and getting a good sleeper cabing that we could actually sleep in, since there weren't many people in it. I watched some Aqua teen and listened to some music and got a little shut eye. It was relaxing.

We got into Rome around 11 and we needed to take a bus to our hotel, (might I add we got a 4 star hotel for 40 dollars) the only problem was that the only train that went to that hotel or close to it did not run on sundays. At least that is what the schedule said. So we asked around and nobody knew if it was running or not. Some said yes, some said no, some said I don't know. Mostly they said yes and that they don't post the times since it doesn't run as often as it normally would. So we waited around for an hour and asked every bus that came by if it was heading in the right direction. Turns out none were and everyone we asked was in a foul mood and didn't want to answer our questions. We ran into some people from spain who were having the same problems. In the end we hoped on a bus who made a stop that wasn't on his route to drop us off as close as possible. Turns out that it wasn't very close at all and we had to walk around for 45 minutes to find the hotel. It was quite a walk with 40 or so pounds on our backs and we had to walk through a bunch of alleys and back streets. Couldn't find the street we were looking for so we ended up asking some thugs on the street, we were a little nervous because of what happened before but it ended up being a good move since they told us how to get there and were nice. We walked through an apartment/condo development where it was pitch black and I ended up rolling my ankle, lucky for me it wasn't bad and it was our last day so it won't really affect me much. We got into the hotel finally around 1:30 if memory serves and it was really nice. Everything looked brand new. We were in there and the lights kept going off every 5 minutes. So we called the front desk and we had to leave our key card in this slot by the door to keep the lights on, its some new "green" function that makes it so you can't leave the lights on all day and waste electricity. Pretty cool. Well we showered and packed up and got to bed around 3 am and our last day came to an end.