It’s been a minute since I’ve posted, but that is because we have been super busy!

Last weekend we flew up to Naples for our first trip to mainland Europe. It was very fast paced, as I had a whole list of things I wanted to see and places I wanted to go, and we only had three days.  After we returned from that trip, Jordan started working nights. If you or a family member have never worked nights before, the best way I can describe it is… confusing. Ha. He doesn’t work every night, and when he does work, he sleeps before he goes to work and then when he gets home. So, we are always confused about what day it is, and when he is supposed to work, and when we should sleep, and what we need to eat, and when. Bleh. It’s just exhausting to type out.

So, other than our trip to Naples and Jordan’s new schedule, we also got our household goods!! This means I now have a couch and clothes and alllll the other things I have missed so much. However, after living out of a few suitcases for the last few months, I now feel quite overwhelmed with all of our “stuff.” It literally just feels like a lot of “stuff” and not things we need. So, I’ve decided to purge a bunch of things just to clear out our home and feel like I can breathe again. As we are putting things away, we are tossing things we don’t use frequently into the “goodbye” box(es), and they will go on craigslist ASAP.

So, that has been us for the last two weeks.

As for our trip to Naples (and surrounding area)….. it was a blast!! We had three main stops we wanted to make while in the area:

1. Pompeii – Who doesn’t want to see Pompeii?!
2. The Amalfi Coast – Probably one of the most popular places on Instagram (if I were to guess)
3. Naples – Duh!

Thanks to our amazing friends (from Virginia that now live in Naples), Amber and Jon, we were able to see everything we wanted to see and more! We can’t thank them enough for hosting us. They really went out of their way while we were there and we can’t wait to host them in Sicily!

When I uploaded photos from our trip, I had 900+!! So, that means each of the three main stops get’s it’s own post.

First up, Pompeii!

Beautiful right?!

There’s a lot I can say about Pompeii, just as there is a lot to see in Pompeii. Pompeii is around 25km (15ish miles) from Naples, so Jon and Amber drove us there early on Friday morning. You could definitely spend the entire day there, walking around and exploring the city. But, because I also really wanted to see the Amalfi Coast, and there was supposed to be only one solid day of our trip without any rain (Friday), we decided to conquer BOTH in one day, What a task.

Like many of the places we have previously visited, Pompeii has a couple large amphitheaters. The weather was perfect that day, so Pompeii was slammed with tourists (like myself, obvi). Here is the first one:

Pompeii is famous because the massive volcano in which the town sits at the foot of, Mt. Vesuvius, erupted in 79 AD, destroying the city (along with Herculaneum and other nearby towns) by submerging them under volcanic debris, and killing t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d-s. It really is a site to behold considering the eruption wiped such a big city off the map.

We got to walk around and explore some of the homes that had been unearthed, along with shops and streets and squares.

Don’t worry – he didn’t actually drink from this “street” fountain.

 

Apparently these holes were for “fast food”: terra-cotta bowls went into the holes and contained snacks for the locals.

 

We got to tour the inside of homes – some still had original frescos and mosaics!!! Some were also quite large.

 

During our exploration, we got to check out the city center which was overwhelmingly impressive.

 

Mt. Vesuvius in the background.

 

 

There were also casts of people (and animals – also seen here is a dog in the elevated clear box. Sad.) that were taken from their bodies of those unearthed there. We were told that the volcanic eruption was so hot, it sucked the moisture out of the bodies of the people there before the volcanic debris ever reached them.

Incredibly tragic.

I did tell Jordan, that based on the number of terra-cotta pots that survived, they look like a rather safe place to crawl into…

Here is some actual bread (charred, ofc) from 79 AD. Wow! Still actually looks kinda good.

 

They also had some lovely gardens, in which I got to capture Jordan and Jon twinning it up. Just observe.

 

I am also incredibly bad at selfies. Oh well.

 

The second amphitheater was HUGE, but missing most stairs, and unlike most of the others we have visited, you could not enter (or climb to) the top.

 

We did not get to see the Villa of the Mysteries or Herculaneum (which is apparently better preserved), but I was satisfied with what we did see.

Just standing on the streets and thinking of all of those who walked there before me…. It was quite surreal.

 

After Pompeii, we journeyed to Sorrento and then Positano…. Which is a post for another day! 😉