This post is long overdue, but here are pictures from spring break!
Mary and I had been planning on going to Italy for spring break with our Eurail passes since January, and a few weeks before we left we found out our friends Meg and Nora wanted to come too! This was really exciting because we love traveling with our friends.
First on the itinerary was Naples! We flew Easyjet from Orly into Naples on Saturday, March 23. Our flight left in the afternoon, but Meg and Nora's left early in the morning so they were already at the hostel when we arrived.
Getting excited!!
Made it!!
To get to the hostel, we had to take a bus from the airport to the train station, then take the metro, then walk up a giant hill. It was tough and we may have sounded like irritated contestants on the Amazing Race, but we did it. We stayed at a hostel called Giovanni's House, which was a big apartment on the 3rd floor of a building. Giovanni was wicked nice and sat down with us for almost an hour to give us recommendations, safety tips and a brief history of Napoli. After checking in, we found Meg and Nora and went to dinner at Gino's which, according to Giovanni, is the best pizza in the world. Gino's was right down the street, so we walked over, made our way through the giant crowd outside, put our name in, and waited..
and waited....
and waited.........
and waited...............
Two hours later, we were called. About an hour into the wait we were wondering if the pizza was worth it, and after two hours we were so hungry that we weren't hungry anymore.
And then the pizza arrived.
This whole thing cost €3.30!
I've literally never had anything more delicious in my life. The two hour wait was so worth it its not even funny. Gino's is so good that we spent the rest of our trip rating pizza on a scale of 1 to Ginos. I would definitely make a trip back to Napoli just to have another one of those pies.
After devouring 4 pizzas, we rolled ourselves back to Giovanni's and into bed.
The next morning, we woke up and tried to catch the 9AM ferry to Capri. Shockingly, we didn't make it.
Sad day
We then tried to get the 10AM ferry to Capri.
We didn't make that either.
Finally, we bought tickets on the noon ferry. We spent the 2 hour wait walking around the coast and eating coconut.
Cute coconut lady who wanted to be in our picture
Mount Vesuvius!
Mary, Meg and Nora
Reppin' Carolina Gamecocks
Some beautiful architecture
Mt. V again
KKΓ
Mary and Me
Currently wishing I could sail around Mt. V in one of those boats.
When we got on the boat to Capri, we thought it would be a fun idea to sit in the front. Huge mistake. I've never been seasick before and I never want to be again. They were handing out vomit bags to people near us because the water was so choppy. Thankfully none of us needed one, but it was rough going for a while. I still felt really nauseous after the ride, and then we realized that Capri is a mountain. That we had to climb.
Yup, we climbed that. Barely.
After lots of "let me stop to take a picture" breaks which were really "I'm gonna pass out if we don't stop" breaks in disguise, we reached the center of town.
Just casually eating a Caprese sandwich on Capri
One thing I didn't know until a couple days before going to Italy, was that Capri is really known for its Limoncello. They have giant lemons that they grow in order to make it, and lemon flavored things are everywhere.
Gelateria decorated with lemons
The lemons are bigger than the grapefruits they're next to
Limoncello!
We spent the entire day walking around the island and seeing its breathtaking views.
We were exhausted when we got back to Napoli, and didn't feel like going anywhere for dinner. Luckily, Giovanni made pasta for everyone in the hostel! It was seriously so good, and he even taught us an italian song!
The next morning we got coffee at a little cafe and went to see the Veiled Christ at the Museo Cappella Sansevero. Definitely one of my favorite pieces of art. They don't allow pictures, but here's one from Google:
Pictures can't capture the level of detail in this sculpture
I encourage anyone going to Napoli to see this. It was then time for lunch, so obviously we went back to Ginos. We got there 10 minutes before it opened and there wasn't any crowd. 10 minutes later, though, the restaurant was packed and there were still people who didn't get in.
Nommmmmmmmmmm
After a delicious lunch, we walked down to the Piazza for some sightseeing
We then hiked up to one of the tallest points in Napoli to see the Castel Sant'elmo.The hike was tough but worth it- the Castel was amazing!
At first, we stopped for "photo-op breaks"
Then we dropped any pretenses and just stopped for breaks
So worth it though!
Me and my fave saint, Francis of Assisi
We made our way down the hill and back to the hostel for a rest, then went to find some dinner. We decided to go to Di Matteo for pizza fritta, or fried pizza. It looked like a giant calzone, except the dough wasn't pizza dough, it was more like fried dough. Delicious!
We ended our trip the only way we knew how:
