Why I believe in karma

What a few days it has been. Sorry for no update yesterday (for those of you vigilantly following this exciting blog) but it was a long and sort of frustrating day. It started like any other day, a long bus ride down the mountain and then a walk to the train station. This time we were helped by these four Italian school girls who are learning English in school but only know "hello" and "what is your name," so they like listening to us. We got on a metro in Castllemare headed to Pompeii and we got there just fine. But we somehow missed the map station so we wandered from one end of Pompeii to the other getting completley lost before finding another entrance that had a map, which didn't really help very much. Pompeii is amazing, don't get me wrong, but its not signed very well and so we didn't have much of a clue what we were seeing. So, for future reference, pay a little extra and do the tour. After spending a few hours wandering the ruins and being amazed by how cool the preservation is, we had a nice lunch of pasta and then started the epic journey home. I'm not sure if I want to relive every detail, so to summarize: we walked forever to find tickets and then waited over an hour for a bus that never came so we had to find a train station to take us to an out of the way city so we could take a bus to get us to a city near here (Amalfi). Once we got to Amalfi we called Pino and he came and picked us up and that was so incredibly nice. Throughout all our troubles I must say that everyone has been so very helpful and friendly.

Today, however, was so much better! Our plan was to go to Capri, a beautiful island. To get there you must take a ferry from Sorrento; but of course we underestimated the time it would take to get to Sorrento because of a road closure. When we got the ferry port we realized that if we got on the next boat we'd only have an hour or so in Capri and that wasn't worth it, so we scrapped that plan and decided to spend the afternoon in Sorrento. Best decision ever. We shopped, ate some incredible pizza, shopped some more. We found a little shop that made custom-fit sandals in 5 minutes, so of course we got some! Then we went and found the best gelato yet and went to catch our bus back here. The bus could only take us as far as Priano because of the road construction, and then we were going to have to wait an hour before another bus to Amalfi was going to come. There was a couple from San Fransisco there in the same boat and we decided just to walk and see where the bus caught up with us. It was really nice walking along the cliff road with the sun setting at our backs and the beautiful water below. We talked to this couple and found out they have been backpacking around Europe since mid-Feburary and are getting ready to move into an apartment in Italy...how cool! So today was a really good day, which made up for the less than stellar ending to yesterday.

Okay one more story then I promise I'm done. The other day we were waiting for a bus (surprise surprise) and this man started talking to us. He was Italian but had been in London for some time years ago etc etc. This morning we actually saw him again and he helped us figure out what bus to get on. Then tonight we were hanging out in the little snack shop opposite the bus parking lot and he came in again! We talked to him some more and it was such a nice way to pass the time. Italians are so friendly and its nice to see a friendly and familiar face in a place like Amalfi. I will miss that when we go back to London.