orvieto a tutti: south trip: four cities in three days

we had one of our two longer trips of the semester about a week ago. this one was in southern italy and we all go to northern italy mid march. our grueling school schedule consisted of class monday and tuesday then we all left for our trip on wednesday. we had to get up early and meet the bus down in the piazza cahen. this was the first day of actual bad weather we have been very lucky and thankfully what was supposed to be rain for 3 days was only 1. the bus ride was about 4 hours before our first stop in herculaneum. herculaneum, like pompeii, was destroyed by the eruption of mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and was buried with ash and debris. they have slowly been excavating the site and expanding. however herculaneum is much smaller than pompeii and thanks to that and the rain we didn't spend to much time there. we then drove to pompeii where we checked into our hotel, the villa of mysteries, which was located across the street from the ruins of the ancient city. the day was done and some of us went to explore the modern city of pompeii which was a major let down. due to it being a tourist city not in tourist season the town was dirty and didn't have much to do other than hang out with the stray dogs ( at the end of our walk we managed to attract about 7 stray dogs ). they followed us everywhere and even when we would go into a building they would wait outside for us. after we got back to the hotel ( an made sure no dogs followed us in ) we had a nice catered dinner in the hotel with everyone. the next morning we had breakfast in the hotel and left to explore pompeii. which was awesome. we got there pretty early and it was still relatively empty. the size of pompeii was incredible. the had two amphitheaters, a stadium, countless gardens, and even fast food. besides sanitation ( and the whole volcano thing ) the inhabitants of the city seemed to have a basic form of every luxury we have now. after seeing everything I could in pompeii I grabbed some lunch and a bunch of us took a train to sorrento ( made famous by the kia sorrento ). Sorrento was on the coast and was amazingly gorgeous. we looked onto the ocean overlooking orange and lemon groves to see the island of capri in the distance. we then caught the train back to pompeii and returned to the hotel. the next day we went to the palace of casserta. this palace was constructed for the king of naples. it is far away from the city to be safe from mount Vesuvius. the palace and garden were huge and took over 45 min just to walk to the end of the garden that once seemed so close. we had a quick tour of the palace which began and ended at an amazing staircase that was the set for a couple of the starwars movies. in episode one when the queen is being escorted out of her palace they are walking down the stairs in the palace of casserta ( look for the lion statue ).

after the palace we headed back to orvieto and got up early saturday to get to the market.

more on pisa, lucca, and flourence take 2 later

caio!