Viva Italia Part 3: What I can remember from Sorrento/The Amalfi Coast.

I am eating Donuts for dinner.

So. A really long time ago I was kind of in the middle of telling you about my Italian trip and then I just stopped. I'm going to finish now. Partly because Jenny hassles me to blog and I have nothing else to talk about, partly because I want to remember it and if I write it here that might make it easier.

I had told you about Pompeii, so I shall now move on.

On this map you can see all of the places we went:

We stayed for a night in Sorrento (A) and then drove across to the opposite coast. The Amalfi coast is basically a whole lot of small/pretty towns on the edge of the sea/cliffs. It's pretty spectacular. And I am not easily impressed. Sadly I have discovered I took very few useful pictures of this spectacularness.

My cousin Dave managed to skilfully manoeuvre our tiny car along the even tinier roads, all while remembering to drive on the right (wrong) side of the road. The place we had found to stay was in Furore and "off the beaten track" or something according to our guidebook. Oh man, they were right.
We were only lost for a short time though, and only got stranded at the bottom of a strange driveway once so that's a success in my book.

Agriturismo Serafina is on a family farm. All the food they fed us was grown there, and also delicious. The family were super friendly and full of stories. Unfortunately they pretty much only spoke Italian. Amelia and Dave also speak Italian. I do not. Luckily, with my limited knowledge of French and Spanish and vague memories of 3 years of Latin, if I concentrated REALLY hard I could figure out about a third of what they were talking about. It could have been worse.

We stayed there for 3 nights and used the days to visit the surrounding towns, Domenico gave us the low down on the best places to go.

I THINK these pics are from Praiano, but it is entirely possible I am making that up. I hope I'm not:

Parking was often a problem, but this town had a parking building in the hill!
And a tunnel to walk through to the town!

This is almost certainly taken in Ravello.

This is definitely Fiordo di Furore.

Roberto Rossellini made a movie there.

Next stop Capri! (via Sorrento).

All of my socks have holes in them.

I don't know where to go to buy new ones.

I was sposed to blog tonight properly but I went to see this movie instead:

It was ok. It seemed like maybe it was trying a bit too hard. And Paul Giamatti (sp?) was kind of gross.
Melanie Lynsky was actually real good I thought, different than anything I've seen her in. Her part was pretty small though.

CHALLENGE2: ALSO COMPLETED.

So Jenny sent me another hat.

My workmates were particularly impressed with her choice this time, and they even contributed something sparkly to 'Jazz' it up.

When I saw it I immediately got a picture of Edie Beale from Grey Gardens in my head. But it turns out she actually wore a scarf.

Luckily Amelia was willing to drop everything and suffer a sweaty tube ride to the other side of town to meet me at the Queen's house and take many silly photos of me wearing a silly hat.

And then this happened:

Going in the right direction, good start!

Happily oblivious to how long I am going to be wearing this hat.

Getting kind of bored of standing in a public place with this on my head/catching up on the news.

This is why I don't let people close to me.

Are we done yet?

Following orders.

This guy knows all about silly hat wearing.

Unfortunately the sparkle was just a loan but at least this one has no ears to accidentally rip off right? Right.

One day I will get round to finishing Italy blogging. Maybe not until after I have been there again though. I JUST BOOKED TICKETS TO GO TO VENICE ON THE 3RD OF JUNE. YAY.

Also Kanitha/Clare visit real soon and these are great things to look forward to.

Oi with the poodles already.

I am officially a year older and no longer in that coveted 18-25 age bracket.

Every year I expect adulthood to officially kick in. It hasn't yet.

I feel like it maybe never will.

I feel more like a child than I did when I was a child. When I was young I felt like I knew everything and adults didn't listen to me just because I was a kid. I felt like if they bothered to hear me properly that they would realise I knew what I was talking about. I was full of shit.

I am still. Probably more so even.


So I haven't blogged for awhile and I never did finish telling you about Italy. I will get back to that, even if you don't care any more, but not today.
It is almost the end of my 2nd long weekend in a row. Thanks Christianity and the Monarchy! Pretty bummed about going back to work tomorrow.

I basically did nothing of note during these extended periods away from work. Mostly because I never got round to booking a trip anywhere. Plus it was super expensive because the whole of England was holidaying.
Instead I sat in the sun a bit and watched a lot of Gilmore Girls. Pretty much the best use of my time if you think about it.

I also attended the wedding of the century.

By attended I mean watched it on a big screen in Hyde Park with thousands of other people. At one point the MC said there were 120,000 people there. I'm unsure if that's accurate.
Now I wouldn't exactly call myself a Royalist, and I don't usually care that much about the antics of the Windsors (except when Prince Harry dresses up as a Nazi or something) but I have to say, it was worth experiencing. I mean, it's not something that happens every day. And they seem like a nice couple? And everyone in London was pretty happy. All the drinking probably helped. Also, John Key drove past us and waved which was real exciting.

I was pretty hungover/sleep deprived from the night before because we had gone out for dinner for my Birthday and somehow ended up quite intoxicated. I'm pretty sure I took a few photos of both occasions on my other camera but we will have to wait until I get the films developed to see if this is the case. In the meantime I found a couple on my phone.

The bar we went to had really got into the spirit and there was bunting and Will and Kate masks all over the show. Much fun was had by all. For some reason I was fond of this Deer? Reindeer?

At the park we had a pretty good spot near the screens and concentrated mainly on drinking Pimms and waving flags. I had a great flag with Will and Kate on it but some bastard stole it. I'm pretty mad about this.

I have no doubt that this post will not satisfy a certain person who shall remain nameless, so I shall try and blog some Italy tomorrow maybe.