The Pompei and Sorrento Post

Pompei and Sorrento.. blog style

so another school trip, and the last one for that matter, checked off my list. We had to be at the bus station at 6:30 AM, AM.. a.m.? The point is that it was really early, and my roommates decided it was a good idea to not sleep at all and then sleep at the bus. I am a morning person, so I had to sleep a little bit because I knew I would be bright and shiny in the morning no matter how much I sleep. And in case you are wondering, yes it is a lonely world in morning person land.  So 9 hours and 2 ridiculously expensive "rest stops" later we finally made it to Pompei.

AND let me tell you that the only good thing these "rest stops" had to offer were grisbi cookies. Please see below to see full enjoyment of these cookies:

(yes I chose the large format for this picture because it needs that much emphasis)

also.. I dedicate this picture to Allison and also Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez because allison also loves these cookies and thank you to chavez for making sure these cookies are imported from Italy to Venezuela consistently. Maybe I will write Obama about doing the same.  Oh if only every president were as good and generous as Chavez..... ha :) smiley face ha

LASTLY, and sorry to carry on about these cookies for so long, but they are made in Italy and I have not seen them anywhere except for this janky rest stop. 

 

Ok so we got to Pompei, waited around for our tour guide whose name I don't remember but Marie told me it was Rosalina so I'm gonna go with that.. Also let me point out this story before we begin our travels through the ancient ruins of a town, Pompei. So when we got there, there were a ton of little stands selling nick nacks and such, and this was our first realization that Pompei must have been a huge sex town. It makes sense why it was destroyed, and kind of reminds me of the Noah story.. Don't ask okay. Below is a perfect example of what kind of place Pompei was when it was up and running. Also! Hannah told me I could not miss going to Pompei, and now I am wondering what kind of person Hannah really is! dun dun dunnnn

 See!

I forgot to mention that our tour guide, Rosey, was a true European and didn't shave her armpits. I am not really that grossed out about it actually, she can do whatever she wants... So stop judging her...

This is a bed in the local "red light district"... Now I am asking myself, this town that would take 5 minutes to walk across, comparable to the size of Northwestern College (in Iowa of Course), is it really possible to have room for a red light district? Anyway, the picture above is one of the.. lets call it escorts, beds.... enough said.

Marie and I being good escorts.. I am the small spoon.. which makes marie the man. I am clearly uninterested and just in it for the money... or chickens? 

Probably the most worth while thing to see while in Pompei. The people whose bodies were preserved by the ashes. Just to make this clear, for some reason I was too distracted to even see any of this. So don't be mislead by this photo, I did not take it because I didn't even see this man. Thank you digital cameras and my friends who have an attention span.

Marie and I were not impressed by Pompei after a while, so we decided to take very necessary pictures. In retrospect, I think it fits the overall theme of Pompei, so not completely unproductive on our part.
 

Marie working it (ps. what does that even mean.. working "it" )

Amphitheater... Supposedly women and men were to always be separated. I think a town that has a red light district should just not waste its time with this separation rule. I know they were just passing notes the whole time anyway and booking times to meet in the stone bedroom.

Pretty amazing picture. 

Class photo. No one ever wants to take these, but AGAIN I know secretly everyone is thanking me because they wanted one but didn't want to be THAT person who had to ask for one; HOWEVER, I will be that person if necessary because I would rather be that person than not have this picture. Your grandkids can facebook me when you are 80 years old to thank me for this picture of their grandmother/father. Think about it.

This was sad. This dog was cute, but clearly had a lot of diseases. I really wanted to pet it, but when it came down to it I didn't want to come home with more fleas.

Below you can see an actual picture of Pompei. I apologize for maybe not giving a clear idea of what pompei looks like, but at least you can see a great collection of photos of me!

Also. Willy's girlfriend and her step-brother Chris came to visit for two weeks and they hopped on the Pompei/Sorrento trip. 
 .

I wish I had this for my street photography class. I think simone would really like it. 

Below is a picture, which at the time, I think is when everyone else saw the ash bodies. So I think I may have solved my mystery.

Now becoming a standard picture. I think I like the other one better.

Anyway, so the hotel we stayed at was extremely nice. I mean maybe I have low standards or maybe any hotel that had this location would be considered amazing no matter what it looked like. There was also a wedding going when we arrived, which is why below you can see flower and fabric decorations.

 

Some more pictures of the hotel. The second picture is a view from our hotel room, which by the way had two balconies. 
  

Lobby of the hotel

That night we just hung out in our hotel room and luckily Becca is a professional tarot card reader. I still think she should sit on the corner and read cards for people and charge them 80 euro... everyone else is doing it.

Hotel pool.. The first I didn't bring my swim suit. Geez. 

Another story:  So we were supposed to leave at 10ish for Sorrento, but we ended up sitting by this pool for a good 2 hours because there was a big ordeal with some of the Rome students (they joined the trip also) and the hotel. Okay, so supposedly some of the rome kids stole some of the flower decorations and got some of the dirt in their hotel room. Then the management was really mad so they started searching the other rooms for traces of dirt. I guess some other girl ate something that had a lot of crumbs so they thought she also stole flowers. The other funny thing to mention is that Marie, Vivi and I were getting ready and looked out our balcony and willy was telling us to hurry up because everyone was waiting on us; HOWEVER, when we got down there this whole situation was going on so we ended up sitting by the pool for 2 hours. Which I didn't mind.

So we finally made it Sorrento, but we only had around 2 hours. It was really sad because I actually liked Sorrento a lot better than Pompei. Plus on top of that it was really nice outside and was pretty much the last nice weekend I have seen since. Which is only one weekend, so I guess that isn't a very good point to make.

We walked around the town and tasted different flavors of cello. The most well known is limon cello. It is disgusting. Everyone thinks so, not just me, but for some reason vivi, marie, becca, and niki still bought some. See.. Alcohol is drug.

If we would've stayed the night I' sure we would have definitely checked out Daniele's dancing and Karaoke. Here you can see me imagining what the night would've been like. For all of you who don't know, this is my signature dance move and if you are lucky, in 42 days and 45 minutes I will show you this in person. 

If you didn't catch that, it was the official count on how much time I have left here! AHH
  

Sweet convertible bus.

Hidden castle. I wonder if this is Sorrento's red light district. Well at least they are more private about it.

So that is finally the end of my post, and I am extremely sorry that it took me so long to put up words to go along with it. I'm sure the post is just that much more entertaining.

And I am also sure that I am the only one reading this right now. 

Still got luvs 4 u,

McKed