First Day in Italy

It's now 8:20 a.m. in Castellammare de Stabia, Italy, the morning of my second day here. Yesterday we finally arrived after a long flight from D.C. to Paris that left on Wednesday night, a two hour flight from Paris to Naples that left an hour late because of bad weather in Paris, and a 20 minute bus ride to the Vesuvian Institute, where we're staying in Castellammare. I was hoping to sleep on the plane, but all in all I only got about 45 minutes of sleep the entire time.

When we arrived, everyone was already exhausted but excited. We were also quite hungry (airline food is..um..not good), so it was a welcome to be told to immediately go eat lunch. It was about 2:30 p.m. at this point, or 8:30 a.m. back home on the time we were accustomed to. We walked into the dining hall and saw that sitting right outside the window behind some trees was the Bay of Naples! Quite a sight for lunch. We also learned we are the only group staying in this whole place. Pretty cool to have to place to ourselves, and we're also all on the third floor.

Lunch was very good, though there were three courses! First we had pasta with some kind of tomato sauce, then we had a small salad with I think pork. It was so tender and tasted amazing. Our last course was fruit. Oh, and there was bread on the table too. We were all stuffed! Then our professor told us that at 5 p.m. we were going to go out and take an orientating walk in town. It was about 3:35 at this point, so many of us were thinking we could catch a quick nap since we were fading fast. But then we finally got our room keys, and made our way to the third floor. My roommate Serena and I went to the window of our small room first, and figured out how to open up the heavy blinds. What we saw was breathtaking. Our room looked out right onto the town and the Bay of Naples! Then we realized people in our group were on a balcony down the hall, and we ran out to that. This was our view:

That's Mt. Vesuvius in the background!

The whole group still can't get over the views we have right from where we're staying! Also, needless to say, no one got the nap they were planning. Soon enough 5 p.m. came around and by 5:30 we were off to take our walk. The sun was quickly setting at this point and it was soon nighttime. Leaving the Institute meant going down the big hill it's on, which means going down extremely narrow roads and turns, which we soon learned we have to share with cars and motorcycles that fly down it out of nowhere. Even when we got to the bottom, we still had to share narrow roads with cars that pushed their way through. I thought driving in New York City was bad, but this is way worse! But the narrow streets are gorgeous, and once we got into the town area there were blue lights set up for the Epiphany, (the Italian Christmas), which is on Sunday. Our professors showed us where to go for the supermarket and ATM and we walked down to the grassy area before the water and Professor Scholten told us about how Pliny the Elder died there after he wanted to get a closer look when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79.

We then went back to the Vesuvian Institute, and by this point we were physically and mentally exhausted. The hike back up the hill was brutal. We then had to wait about 45 minutes for dinner (they don't eat until 8 p.m. here -- fine by me!). Dinner was a different kind of pasta and sauce, turkey, and fruit again. And of course bread. After dinner, I showered and was in bed by 9:30. I think I fell asleep in about two minutes - the quickest I've ever fallen asleep in my life! I was out like a light.

We woke up at 7 a.m. for breakfast, which was good. Now it's nearly 8:45 and we're about to head to Pompeii for the day!