April 11th, Dayna's 7th birthday and Grandma and Grandpa Treece's 57th Anniversary!! I got up early and headed out for a walk by myself. Lemon and orange trees were loaded with fruit and flowers were beginning in window boxes. The Italian way of life is so different - they eat their meals about 2 hours later than we do. Dinner at 9:00 pm is the norm (after their "stroll"). Even the grocery closes from 2 until 4 for "lunch". That said, the town was dead at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning or any morning for that matter. The only thing happening was an early mass in a gorgeously decorated
small Catholic church sparsely filled with old people.
Dayna started out the day with an Italian Donut (pretty American looking). Today we were taking our last train ride, heading to Paestum, about an hour's ride south along the coast. We took the local Circumvesuvia train to Pompeii where we walked through a volcano exhibit and then found our way through downtown modern Pompeii to a different train line. This train line, the Trenitalia, was much nicer with upholstered seats and no graffiti!
Paestum was a Roman city and has 3 surviving temples that are on par with the Parthenon. It was deserted after a major league malaria outbreak and the temples were not pilfered or demolished or covered by volcanic debris. The pictures speak for themselves. It is one of the best preserved Roman sites in the world without all the tourist crowds!! It was like taking a walk in the countryside - the middle of nowhere and a gorgeous day. The trees were blooming and we appreciated the green grass as opposed to the dusty ruins sites we visited earlier! We enjoyed a picnic lunch and walked around the small site and its museum. Our plan was to get home early and finish the birthday celebration. There was just one little problem....the train we had planned on taking never came (seems it doesn't run on Sundays - ahhhh, when the schedule says it doesn't run on holidays that also means EVERY Sunday!). It took us about an hour and the help of some Americans who read Italian to figure it out!! We waited an hour and a half for the next one (of all places to have to wait - not a thing in site but a lonely train station! Not even a gelato stand.) Finally some other people started to show up and we ended up having a great visit with a couple from Ann Arbor Michigan while we waited. We helped them make the connection at Pompeii by running a mile and standing in the door of the train until they could catch up!! This whole trip was definitely tiring trip due to the crazy transporation system!!
We got back to Sorrento in time for our final Jhonny's pizza, gelato and oceanside sunset complete with birthday candles. Don't worry, we celebrated again when we got back to Tubingen!
The next day, Monday the 19th, we had to say goodbye to the cute little cars and the "mosquito trucks" - glorifed 3 wheel vehicles that buzz all over the narrow streets delivering things, picking up trash, making a horrible noise! We were a little sad to leave our Italian home. We caught the bus back to the Naples Airport for a crazy, curvy hour and fifteen minute drive. We thought we were going to lose a couple of girls on the way! They were glad to get back on flat, straight highways!! From Naples we flew on Air Berlin directly back to Stuttgart and guess what? Caught two buses to get back to Tubingen!! Very exhausting, but very gratifying!
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