Back From Amalfi Coast!

Wow, what a weekend.  That one is right up there with the best weekends of my life.  We arrived at our hostel on the Amalfi Coast on Thursday night (not exactly sure which town it was in), and over the course of the weekend we went to Positano, spent a day at Capri, and spent only a couple of hours in Naples before our train departed back for Florence.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to see Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius, but I will make sure I get down there again to see that before I come home. 

Positano is by far the most beautiful place I've ever seen.  It absolutely blew me away.  Unfortunately the pictures don't really do it justice; I had seen pictures of it before but the beauty of the place didn't really hit me until I got there.  The town is essentially built on the side of a mountain on the coast, the west side of Italy.  We were only there for a few hours but it made a huge impression on me.  The water is incredibly blue and clean... when I swam out into the water a bit, then turned around to see the scenery behind me, it felt like it was the best moment of my life.  I cannot stress this enough... if it is at all possible, you MUST visit Positano.  Here are a few pictures, I did my best to capture it.  The first one is on the walk down the street to get to the beach, and the second is from the boat as we are leaving.

We also visited the island of Capri, which was very nice as well, but after Positano it just wasn't anything special.  It's an extremely mountainous island, so we had to do a lot of climbing.  We walked around the shopping area on the island, where we ran in to Kim Kardashian (lol) and ate another delicious lunch.  Then we just lounged on the beach there for the remainder of the day before taking the boat back to our hostel.

Aside from the other fun stuff we did each night at the hostel with the many American students we met, we finally spent a little time in Naples on Sunday afternoon before catching out train back to Florence.  Naples was definitely a disappointment, the city is sort of trashy.  It's much more modern-looking than Florence, and there seemed to be a lot of sketchy neighborhoods.  The one thing I did like about it, though, was the seafood market we found.  Since Naples is a coastal city, they have all sorts of seafood, I didn't even know what half of the stuff was.  We had some pizza at a very authentic Italian pizzeria (nobody spoke any English), then took the train back home.  And by home I obviously mean Florence.  Florence definitely feels like my home now, and it's a great feeling because I love the place.  But don't worry family, I'm still coming back to my real home in December.  I think...