Italy: Monday

We arrived in Naples, aka Napoli, around 11:30am. We boarded our two busses and drove to our hotel in Sorrento, which took about one-and-a-half-hours. We were all awestruck by the scenery the the drive really didn't feel that long. Italy is really unlike any other country that I have visited. You can at least say that it is unlike any part of the United States. They have this gorgeous species of trees there that people call umbrella trees because, well, they look like umbrellas. I feel like they would fit right in in the african grasslands, but that's just me and my imagination. Anyway, we got to the the Hotel Parco del Sol and settled in. I of course had to be in the room that was the farthest away from everything.

By this time we were all really hungry, and decided to look for a place to eat, but first we had to find bank, because of course, none of us had any Euros. (The exchange rate really sucked by the way.) It took us about 45 minutes to actually get money and find a place to eat, but a group of eight of us ended up at this small pizzaria where we all got some very yummy pizza. The pizza, which is served individual style, only cost like 4 or 6 euro, but in Italy you have to pay for water, because they don't really do the tap water thing. There's also this "sitting fee," but don't ask me to explain that one to you because I think it's dumb.

At 4:15, a walking tour of Sorrento was supposed to leave from our hotel. We didn't have time to make it back to the hotel, but we figured that we were almost to the center of town, so we could just walk the rest of the way there and just meet up with everyone. We walked a few more block to what we thought was the "center of town," and 4:30 comes and goes, and still no busload of American college students. After a while we figured out that we weren't actually in the middle of town, and just walked back to the hotel.

Our last arranged activity for the night was a group dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was really nice. I sat with Ivan, Diana and Laura, and we had a nice convo over a good bottle of wine and dinner. It's nice to be able to do that by the way. To drink tastefully without people making a big deal of it.

I ended the night by taking a walk around our part of Sorrento with Steve, Maggie and Becca. We ended up finding this little terrace on the edge of the cliff that overlooked the sea. It was absolutely gorgeous. Of course it was night, and a litte hazy (it was hazy our entire stay in Italy), but the weather was so nice, and what we could see was beautiful, so I'm not complaining.

End of day one.