Southern Italy Trip: Days 3, 4, and 5

The following three days of our Southern Italy Trip consisted of some more ancient sites, an island visit, and some pizza!

Thursday we travelled to Paestum, an Ancient Greek city that was conquered by the Romans and became a Roman city. Honestly it wasn't one of our favorite days because nothing could follow Pompeii and Herculaneum. The two most notable sites at Paestum are it's two Doric temples dedicated to Hera, which are prime examples of Greek architecture. 

The Tomb of the Diver at Paestum's Archaeological Museum.

Temple of Hera II

Temple of Hera I

Worth mentioning was our dinner this night, for it had a "seafood" theme. The night before when we were at dinner the hotel had a platter with a huge fish and a sign saying, "eat me tomorrow," so all of us were nervous coming into dinner. Our pasta dish consisted of risotto with octopus, and for those of you who know our eating habits know that we are not fish people, let alone crazy types of seafood people! Following the octopus was the fish we were promised the night before. We were adventurous and tried some of each dish, and then, especially for the octopus, we proceeded to eat around it as much as we could. The tentacles were just a little too much for us! 

Friday was another fun and adventurous day visiting the island of Capri, which is off the coast of Sorrento. We were able to take a boat ride around part of the island and to one of Capri's main attractions, "La Grotta Azzura," or the Blue Grotto. In order to get into this secret hideaway, we had to take a small row boat into the opening, which was only a meter high and wide due to the tide! The opening was so small that we had to lie down on the bottom of the boat with a couple of our friends as the man rowing our boat pulled a chain and then ducked as we went into the very small opening. The grotto was absolutely breathtaking, we have never seen anything like it! The man rowing our boat told us stories about the grotto and sang to us, which only added to the ambiance. The grotto gets its color because the sea floor is a white limestone. The outside walls don't go all the way to the floor, which allows light to hit the limestone, illuminating the water within the grotto. While we were only in there for a few short minutes, the experience was totally worth it! 

After our little boat tour we had a wonderful lunch near the docks where the owner of the restaurant, a very nice man named Ivano, had helped us earlier by giving us a map and telling us where to go on the island. He was so surprised we came back for lunch that he gave us free antipasti! We even splurged on some Caprese salad with buffalo mozzarella (we were in Capri, after all)! After lunch we hiked to a part of the island where we had fantastic views. It was definitely one of the most beautiful areas we have seen in Italy so far, and all of the people were extremely cheerful and happy to talk with us. 

Lunch with Ivano!

Another note about dinner: we dubbed Friday night "dairy night." Before the main course, the chef and the manager brought out this beautifully presented table with a tin foil swan and platters full of large pieces of buffalo mozzarella. We didn't quite understand the meaning of this (we just thought he was showing off the quality ingredients he uses) until we received our main course platters, which consisted of potatoes and a huge slab of this high quality cheese. The servings of cheese were bigger than a piece of steak we usually eat! Keep in mind that we had already had three previous courses, one of which being Caprese Salad, so we were already extremely full and wondering how Italians could possibly eat this much on a daily basis. The cheese was delicious, and we struggled to eat as much as we could because we didn't want to dishearten or offend the chef who was so proud of his meal. And, of course, dessert consisted of the ricotta cheese filling of a canoli, which only added to our dairy heavy meal. If we were lacking in Calcium we sure made up for it this night! 

Saturday we traveled to downtown Naples to visit the archaeological museum and, more importantly, to eat some pizza! We saw lots of beautiful ancient statues, Roman wall paintings, and floor mosaics that were found at many of the sites we visited earlier in the week. It was a great conclusion to bring everything together. We made time to try some famous Napoleon pizzas, which were fantastic! We had no problem each finishing our own individual pizzas! 

The Alexander Mosaic

Megan's Pizza: mushrooms, ham, cheese, and a cream sauce.  So good!

We had a quick stop at the site of Cuma, another ancient port city, to take a look at the bay of Naples before heading back to Rome. It was a jam-packed and an exhausting week, but it was a perfect break from classes and a wonderful opportunity to experience another part of Italy. While we enjoyed spending time in Campania, we were definitely getting "Rome-sick!"