Southern Italy

Last week we did a group travel to southern Italy.  We spent one day in Naples, stayed in Sorrento, did a day at Pompei, hiked the top part of Mt. Vesuvius, spent a free day on the island of Capri, a day in Amalfi, and a day at Caserta a massive palace.
Naples was the worst place ive been in all of Italy.  It was a landfill, the streets were covered in trash as well as heaps of trash piled everywhere, the buildings were old and decrepid, it smell like urine, there were more street hustlers than ive ever seen, and the view of the sea was blocked by storage containers and large boats. I felt unsafe there for the first time here and didnt really want to take my camera out.  We did however have some good thick crust pizza and the hottest cup of coffe in the world.  I wouldnt recommend Naples to anyone though. Just head south to nicer places.

More stories coming soon.

Enjoy the photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/59481748@N03/

Rome with my parents and Lago di Vico/Faggeta

Some photos from Rome when my parents were here theres the inside of the colosseum, and some shots of Bernini's Elephant and 4 Rivers fountain in Piazza Navona.  Then last tuesday we were suppose to go to a horse race for carnivale in a next town over called Ronciglione funny thing about that place probably not appropriate so ask me personally if your interested hahaha but they had to cancel the race on tuesday because the race on sunday ended fatally.  The story in my interpretation as I heard many different versions in translated english from a few different Italians was that a horse in the race, the horses race jockeyless through the main street in the town, somehow impaled or collided with one of the metal barrier partitions to protect the crowd and sliced its underside open and spilled blood and guts all over the road and viewers and was then trampled by the remaining horses. Very brutal and due to that the animal rights activists persuaded the town to shut the event down for tuesday too bad I was really hoping to see the race and get some pics.  Anyway we went into town just over the mountains from Viterbo, and talked to some locals, got coffee and some typical carnivale pastries.  On the way out and back we explored some of the mountain area and the lake.  Lago di Vico was real cold up in the mountains and is apparently a popular spot when the warm weather hits but was pretty dead when we arrived.  We then went to the top of Mt. Chimina to the Faggeta, which in Italian means beach wood.  The whole forest consisted of only beach trees and this is actually a very rare occurrence because this specific type of beach tree is only supposed to grow at much higher altitudes but the forest has thrived here at much lower altitudes for a very long time. It was real nice up there to get into the woods and out of the hustle bustle inside the walls.  We watched the sun set and saw some wild boar tracks which is the most common predator in the area.

Link for photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/59481748@N03/

Pienza and Acquapendente

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59481748@N03/

Link for photos above:  We went to two small towns called Acquapendente and Pienza in the first town we went to a church with a fully original basement where the capitals of the columns were all very intricately carved, we also had lunch in that town which was a set menu and really good.  We then went north into the Tuscany region to the small town of Pienza which has the oldest renaissance garden in Italy, the garden was really small and so was the town but there I had some of the best cheese ive eaten here mostly sheep cheese and very sharp.