Sorrento!

On Thursday, I took the train to Naples and then a train called the Circumvesuviana from Naples to Sorrento to meet up with my mom and her friend, who had gotten there the night before. The Circumvesuviana train is a little interesting, but it took me right to the heart of Sorrento, and it was an easy and BEAUTIFUL walk from the train station to my mom's hotel. They were already back from their day trip to Capri by the time I got there, so we spent a little bit of time relaxing at the hotel before heading out for a little bit of shopping and dinner.

They had already found a favorite cameo shop with a friendly owner who also happened to own an English bulldog... how perfect?! We stopped there on our way, but unfortunately Odie was at home and not at the shop... but he promised that Odie would be back the next day, so we made plans to go back! I also left with a GORGEOUS 7-layer cameo owl necklace (thanks Mom!). We stopped at a few more shops and finally found a cute place to get dinner.

On our way back to our hotel, we ran into a Maundy Thursday procession of people going to church. Sorrento is really famous for a series of Good Friday processions it does, but we weren't expecting this one. It was pretty short. There was another one that night (technically Friday morning) at 3 am which we didn't get up to see, but the concept is that it's a procession of people dressed in white robes and hoods (they actually look like members of the KKK... no joke) with Mary looking for Jesus. Then, on the evening of Good Friday, they do the same procession but dressed all in black, and they carry the crucified Christ through the streets of Sorrento with a distraught Mary following behind.

The next morning, we got up and took the Circumvesuviana train to Herculaneum, which is another Roman city (like Pompeii) that was destroyed by Vesuvius, but in a different way, and in a way that caused it to be much better preserved than Pompeii. It's also a lot smaller, so it's easier to see more. It was absolutely amazing to see how things had been preserved for thousands of years from the volcanic material. Some of the buildings even had their original wooden door frames. After Herculaneum, we took the Circumvesuviana train a few stops back toward Sorrento and went to Pompeii.

Pompeii was a little frustrating a) a lot of the more famous sites are closed right now and b) the vast, vast majority of the artwork has recently been removed from Pompeii and put on display at the Archaeological Museum of Naples. Now, I understand that some things need to be preserved, but in at least one place (the House of the Faun), an incredible floor mosaic had been removed for display in the museum and had been replaced with a replica. We just didn't understand why they couldn't do that in every case where they removed a famous fresco or famous mosaic or statue. At the very least, would it be that hard to display a picture of what the site used to look like? Probably not. Yes, you can see all of those things on display in Naples, but it's not the same to see them in the context of a museum... it's so much more awe-inspiring to see them in their original settings (like they are in Herculaneum). Even without the art, Pompeii was still really cool, and we pretty much stayed until closing time to see everything.

When we got back to Sorrento, we went back to our favorite cameo shop and guess who was there?? Odie! I'm not even ashamed of how excited I was to see an English bulldog in Italy. We stayed there for a bit to say goodbye to our new friend, and then we made our way to find a restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we got some gelato (yum!) and found a place to sit and watch the procession that was coming up (the one I mentioned earlier that happens every year for Good Friday). The procession was super cool... I've never seen anything like it before in my life. It ended up getting to us a lot later than we expected, but the only thing we had to do the next day was make it to Naples by 3 for our train back to Rome, so it was fine.

We took it easy this morning getting back to Naples. Our original plan was to take the Circumvesuviana back to Naples (which my mom and her friend had not had the pleasure of experiencing on their way to Sorrento... they had taken a car), but we ended up taking a cab because we had a driver offer us a pretty great price for one, and it was definitely easier than managing all of their luggage on the tiny and crowded Circumvesuviana train.

We got back to Rome and they dropped off their luggage at their hotel, and then I took them to my apartment to drop off my luggage before dinner. It was raining, so we ended up taking the bus to Trastevere, which is a really cool neighborhood in Rome with lots of great restaurants. The one I had originally wanted to take them to was too busy, so we went across the street to a restaurant that was equally amazing.

Today was their last day in Rome; they leave in the morning on Easter. I had such a great time showing them around the city that has become my home, and it was so great to be able to spend time with my mom... not going to lie, it made me a little homesick! I'm in my final month now, and as much as I love Rome, I know that I'll be ready to go home in May.