Sometimes the journey is just as awesome as the destination

Well today has been another great day, but a different one. Jordan and I got up earlyish and had another fabulous breakfast (I know I mention this everyday, but its just the best way to start your day. two warm pastries, some citrus juice and a cappuccino! so good). Today instead of catching the bus in Amalfi, which is done by the coast we went up the mountain to Agerola to get our bus to Naples. Agerola is much different from Amalfi or Furore because you can't see the water and so its more of a mountain community than a coastal one, or at least thats what I gathered as Jordan and I sat at the bus stop. The bus ride to Naples took about an hour and a half, down the curvy mountain roads; but we got some different yet equally incredible views of snow capped mountains in the distance and the cute towns we passed through. We arrived in Naples and caught a metro that took us to Vesuvius...or so we thought.

Before going to Mt. Vesuvius we thought that we would spend the day hiking around some trails and get to the top. We knew it was going to be a workout but we were excited about this. However, we, probably stupidly, completley underestimated the enormity of this mountain. Holy crap it is steep and tall and massive. So we caught a shuttle up close to the crater and then hiked the 800 meters to the top. This was enough of a workout for me! As we slowly huffed our way to the top we could see the city of Naples sprawled out and the water and some more cliffs, but when we finally arrived at the top we then focused on the crater. It was just so cool to walk around it and peer in it. At one point we got off the trail and climbed up a little rock wall to get a better view, which was equally scary and amazing. It was just so weird to stand on top of this volcano and peer down at Pompeii in the distance and think that this large rock we were sitting on caused so much damage so far away. Because really thats all Mt. Vesuvius is, a big 'ol massively huge rock that seems quite harmless. We couldn't spend much time up on Mt. Vesuvius itself because we had to catch our shuttle back, but it was really fun to do and we had a good time.

The rest of our day was spent traveling back here. We caught the metro to Naples and then had to wait for a while in Naples for a bus. The bus that did come took us a different way back; OVER A MOUNTAIN. The mountains here aren't like the little ones we have in N.C. either...they are taller and steeper and the roads are so much curvier. But we did it, and it was incredibly scary and exhilarating. Jordan and I were talking about how much time we spend traveling and realized that, while it might seem annoying because proportionally we do much more traveling than we do actual sight-seeing. But it provides for the much needed down-time and keeps us from being completley exhausted because, after all this is our break!