vedi napoli a poi muori*

*a note about the title. this is actually a saying. we were told about it in verona but i cant tell you the story because you dont know we went to verona yet.

we arrived at napoli train station and high tailed it out of there. that is really all you need to know about naples. 

we arrived in sorrento and were hit with sun, beach, pebbles and poms. much nicer. we stayed at a campground just out of town overlooking the bay. on the first day the skies were clear and we could see naples, but for the rest of the week it was too hazy. we settled in and headed straight for the beach. we saw, we ran, we - were stopped? 'six euros please'. well that killed the dream a little bit. we refused to pay, claiming it was a natural resource and how could they charge us for something we could get for free by jumping off the jetty and swimming around anyway. they said '6 euros please' and the dream was over. dejected, we headed back and found comfort with the pizza from the nice man at the campsite.

day two saw us backtracking to pompeii. we took my mums advice (for once!) and bought a huge bottle of icy water to take into the ruins with us and walked around for a few hours doing the whole 'woah, look at that, they actually LIVED here' thing. we found out fee was obsessed with mosaics in rome, so i had a new found appreciation of them and saw quite a few in pompeii. when you think about it, they are pretty impressive. 

we found the casts of the human remains they found in pompeii. they were tucked away in a corner behind dirty perspex. that was a bit of a let down, but jess got much delight out of taking photos of the sleeping dogs that were lying next to them. they werent moving when we got there, and they didnt move even when we poked them, made loud noises and scratched their backs. they were definately alive though as one started snoring and the other was running and howling in his sleep. 

day three was recover from pompeii day. we spent the day walking around sorrento, window shopping and looking at the beach. well it wasnt even a real beach. just some silly black sand and a tiny swimming area. stupid beach ... six euros... stupid. 

on day four we took the bus to amalfi. well. how to describe the road. suicidal, maybe? treacherous, perilous? and the bus driver. oh my goodness. even more dangerous than the road. he beeped his horn once before turning the blind corners without slowing down at all! we feared for our lives and got off the bus feeling quite ill. amalfi was pretty. we had the nicest pasta so far in italy and sat on the rocks (again refusing to pay for the beach) over looking the water. 

on the way home we stopped in positano (we werent going to but the bus driver was worse than the first one so we had to get off!) and the beach there was beautiful. the town was full of expensive designer labels but still very pretty to walk around.

the next couple of days in sorrento were great. the only trouble we had was when two guys decided to set up tent next to ours. we did the friendly thing and smiled and said hello, and then went into town. when we got back, they were all set up, but they'd moved the chairs so that they were facing directly towards us, not towards the panoramic view of the ocean.. strange we thought, but she'll be right.

 so we got a woodfired pizza to share and a beer each, and settled on the bench next to our tent for a nice afternoon/evening of playing cards and enjoying the view. you know when you get that feeling someone is watching you? well we got this straight away, because they were just sitting there, not saying anything to anyone, not even each other, and staring at us. we shuffled the bench a bit further away, but it didnt stop them. they made a flower out of sticks and toilet paper and put it on our bench. we looked at them and they just kept staring, so we put it as far away from us as we could without seeming rude. then all of a sudden they both came over with a long strip of toilet paper that they had witten on with the carbon of a burnt stick, and placed it on our bench without saying a word. it read 'to two wonderful girls' so now we were a bit creeped out, and i looked at them and said, thankyou, but no thanks. they didnt get the hint and then came over saying that they were from naples, and that we are very beautiful and tried to get us to go with them in their car to amalfi. needless to say we declined. we got another note not long after that said 'but=bad' got knows what that meant, and ange grabbed it and ripped it up violently. we told the nice british guys on the other side of us what they were doing and they said they had noticed them staring creepily all night and offered to stay up until the creepy guys went to bed. that was very nice of them. all night we heard them saying hilarious british things like 'of ALL things to write to a lady on, WHY toilet paper!'

 we found some time and checked our e-mails and we had one from jon and fee saying that they were in sorrento, and that theyd been staying at the same camp ground since two days ago! we couldnt believe we'd missed them! we finally got in contact and found them staying in a cute little caravan right near us. 

we met up and decided to hire scooters for a day, go up the coast and have a picnic. this was a good idea in theory... except only jon had ever driven a scooter.. so we got them anyway, one between me and ange, and one for jon and fee. jon and i were driving to start, and i took off to a shaky start. we pulled over, and i asked jon where we were going to go. 'lets follow this road' he said. ok, so we set off, and after nearly hitting a few cars, i had the hang of the thing. 

as we started to get further away from sorrento, i realised that the road we were on is the one that we went on the bus to amalfi! it was the amalfi coast. i tried not to spew when i remembered the busses hurtling blindly around the corners, and told myself to relax. we wound around the coast, around the petrifying hairpin turns, and only nearly got hit by buses, so it was going quite well. we stopped off in a little town for a quick swim. then it was anges turn to have a go at driving. 

can i just butt in here and say that jess is THE worst passenger anyone could have on a scooter. second to possibly only my mother. comments like 'YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST!' when i was doing 5kmph and 'OH MY GOD THERES A TURN!' when it was still on the horizon were frequent, as were the crippling and winding digs of jess' fingers in my side.

ok, so i may have overreacted a bit when i got on the back. but i definately know now that i cant handle being a passenger. it is truly terrifying having no control over a machine that could possibly kill us. i dont know how ange didnt need to scream when i was driving, in fact, she was wooping and cheering telling me to drive faster! when i was on the back i was reduced to a blubbering mess and possibly dug my fingers a tad (A TAD??? i still have bruises!) too hard into anges kidneys.

but my fear was warranted, and we did have a slight crash. we were turning a particularly tight corner, like going around a 5 cent piece up a steep hill, and i wasnt helping the situation by saying we were going to crash, and we lost speed, and long story short, i am heavier than ange, i was on the back, and scooters are very painful when they fall on your leg.

in my defence: 

1: the 'particularly tight corner' was unbelievably tight, almost impossibly so. 

2: some words of encouragement wouldnt have gone astray. if someone had been yelling 'you can do it!' as opposed to 'we're going to die!' i might have had a bit more confidence in pulling the throttle to accelerate out of the turn as opposed to shrieking and letting go of the scooter. 

3: if jess hadnt eaten so many crepes in france and knew to lean to counter the weight instead of gripping my sides and hanging on for dear life we might have made it. note i say might. it still was an impossible turn. 

ok, so i've just been ripped to shreds (not by the scooter, by anges defense just now) and i cant say anything but never drive with me as a passenger in anything but a car. but getting back to the story, we got back on the horse, so to speak, and ange drove us all the way to positano. the view along the way was breathtaking. it was clear blue skies, bright blue ocean, and beautiful, frighfully winding roads. but i must say, ange did a really good job of getting us there alive.

when we got to positano we went for a huge swim. the water was awesome! jon and i swam out to a pontoon with some other people, and ange and fee stayed closer to the beach. we spent the afternoon swimming and eating gelati and living the good life. i drove back, following jon and fee, and when we got back, we still had more time on the scooters, so jon and i went off to explore, and ange and fee went back to the caravan park. that night we all sat around eating watermelon, and then got a load of pizzas and sat outside telling stories of our trips.

on our last full day we bid jon and fee farewell and they set off to calabria and we headed out for a day trip to capri. after purchasing the ridiculously expensive ferry tickets ($50 each return for a 20 minute ferry ride) and ranting about how ridiculously expensive it was to no one in particular (ahem. ange ranted to ME) we set off down to the ferry catching place and caught a ferry to capri. the island was very beautiful. we contemplated hiring a scooter for about two seconds before realising how unbelievalbly scary the roads would be and took a boat trip around the island instead. we saw mussolinis old house, sofia loren's mansion and also giorgio armanis. we had the option of going in to the blue grotto but we had run out of cash and surprisingly the men in the little row boats didnt have portable waterproof credit card machines. oh well. those little boats looked dangerous anyway. after the boat cruise we looked in all the shops. if it was linen, they had it. if we'd stayed there longer than half an hour i swear we would have come home with complete linen wardrobes. 

the next day it was time to head up to venice. we caught the dodgy rattly regional train from sorrento to naples. we were both reading our books and didnt realise when the train pulled in. i grabbed all my stuff and yelled at jess to get a move on. we got off the train in plenty of time, and just as it pulled out of the station jess realised we'd left the tent on the train. 

after an 8 hour train ride from naples we arrived in venice and set off to find our hostel. we had the map, i'd drawn a line straight to the hostel and we followed it for two turns and promptly got lost. it took us an hour to find the hostel, but it was a nice one and we were IN venice as opposed to on the mainland, which was a plus. 

we had one full day in venice and we explored/got lost all day. it is an awesome city. its great that there are no cars or scooters around. we went glass shopping and drank coffee and ate gelati. lovely. that night i was a tad sick - chills and a high temperature (no i didnt drink the water from the canals) so we had an early night ready for our last leg: verona.