Amalfi Coast, Italy

As I began to tell people I would be studying in Italy for the semester, almost every person mentioned the Amalfi Coast as a necessary stop on my itinerary. After this last weekend, I can admit that everyone was right.

This past weekend was one of my favorite trips and favorite spots of the entire semester. Because there are so many cities and a lot of places to visit, we decided to go with a travel company that would help get us from city to city.

Our trip with Bus2Alps started with a nice relaxing beach day in Positano. Positano is the picturesque city that will most likely pop up on google images when you type in Amalfi Coast or even just Italy. Known for their black beaches and beautiful cliffs of houses, we laid out almost the entire day while drinking mojitos and tequila sunrises.

After hours in the hot sun, we decided cliff jumping would be a good idea...and it was. The cliche abroad moment was definitely one of the most fun times this semester. Following our adventurous moment, we went back to laying out before heading back to Sorrento.

Sorrento is a cute little town bordering the Amalfi Coast. The trip leaders walked us to a restaurant for dinner where I ordered a giant plate of the best shrimp I've ever had. Following dinner, we headed to the "beer garden". Upon hearing this name, I expected a quite pub known for their beer. Instead, we walked through a set of gates and up the stairs to an outdoor DJ/bar area...definitely not what I expected, but it was still really fun.

The fun soon ended though when we got home and 2am and had to be up at 5:45am for our ferry to Capri. After almost missing our trip's departure, we hopped on a bus to the port and got on a boat that took us to the island.

When we arrived we got on another boat (small boat) and were given a full island tour. We passed houses such as Mariah Carey's and Leonardo DiCaprio's, the white, green and blue grottos, the second most important lighthouse in the world and more.

On our tour we had the chance to stop and go into the blue grotto. While I had seen pictures, it was different than what I was expecting. The blue grotto is one of the seven natural wonders of the world, and I now know why. We hopped onto small row boats fit for 3-4 people and entered a hole tinier than the boat. In order to get into the caves, the leaders at the blue grotto had to wait to the exact moment at low tide to enter so that we don't crash into the cliffs.

When we made it safely into the grotto, the entire place was illuminated with beautiful blue reflections and lights from the sun. We rowed around the caves and the leader would sing, making it a typical Italian moment.

Following the caves, we continued our island tour before returning to the main port. We then hiked up to a higher point of the island, got blood orange slushies and hopped on a bus to go to Anacapri, a higher point on the island of Capri with shops and restaurants.
 
In Anacapri we were able to customize our own sandals and have them made right in front of us. We were sized, picked a leather we wanted, a color and then told them how we wanted the shoes to look. You could take bits and parts from certain sandal designs and make them as unique as you wanted.

While the sandals were being made, we went to a restaurant for lunch overlooking the sea and took a chair lift to the top of the island. The chair lift (gondola) is a 15 minute ride to the top of the mountain on the island that gives you a full 360 view of beautiful Capri. Once at the top, we were completely immersed in the clouds and we could not see anything but white around us. It was an amazingly, weird experience...just completely surrounded by white clouds with no idea what is around you.
 
After we returned to the ground and grabbed our sandals, we headed back to the ferry to go to the mainland. Luckily Bus2Alps was hosting a BBQ at our hotel and we didn't have to go far for dinner.

Our last day was a trip to Pompei in Naples. Even though it was insanely windy and there was dust every where including my eyes, it was still amazing to see Pompei. We spent a couple hours walking around and taking it all in.

The trip to Amalfi was definitely one of our favorites (I say that every time, but still). Everything was beautiful and was a perfect way to start wrapping up our semester (sadly).