Naples, Capri, Pompeii Weekend

Friday, July 30- headed out on the night train to Naples...10 pm-930 am on the train. I was able to sleep a bit and talked to some Italian guy as much as I could using the few Italian phrases I know and trying some Spanish. He didn't really know any English but we could figure out the basics without getting too frustrated--name, age, where from, where traveling to, job, etc. I was surprised I could even understand that much in Italian!

Saturday, July 31- got to Naples and took a taxi to our hotel, then headed to find the ferries to get to island of Capri for the afternoon. We got to ride on the top of the ferry for the hour ride to the island. It ended up being a great day to visit because it was sunny and only about 80 degrees.

When we got there, we just decided to look around a bit at the little shops, took a cable car/bus thing up the steep mountainy part of the island, looked around and then found a beach area

that was free for the public. At one of the little stands there, we were looking at the little souvenirs and jewelry the old, Italian man had, he asked us where we were from...which state and I said Iowa (thinking he wouldn't

know anything about it). He paused and thought for awhile and described some movie he had seen about a guy visiting a family and 'a vehicle for the land'. I got to thinking and asked him more questions and sure enough he had seen 'The Straight Story'!! That was a random small movie filmed across Iowa and some at my aunt's house. So crazy that he had seen it! Anyways, we stopped and got some food before heading back to Naples on the ferry (this time we had to sit below so couldn't see much). We just walked back through Naples a bit on our way back to the hotel for the night.

Sunday, August 1st--We headed out early to get to Pompeii and have time to look around. Pompeii was a neat place to look around...it was an ancient city that was buried when the

nearby volcano, Mt. Vesuvius erupted suddenly. Most of the city walls, streets, and buildings are somewhat intact after all these years because for many, it was covered in ashes I think. They even have casts of the bodies when they found them they were still in the positions they were when suffocated by ash from the volcano! The city was really ahead of it's time because you could see that each house/ building had specific purposes like a bakery, food things, pottery, etc. Their streets were well organized and had built in stepping stones placed so people could cross and wagon wheels could still get through when they flooded/washed the streets each day! It was neat to look around the Pompeii and learn a little while there. Afterwards, we headed out on the train in the afternoon to get back to Vicenza by night.

Italian Cooking Class

A few weeks ago, a bunch of us attended a cooking class on base. We paid to attend and got to help prepare the meal and eat together at the end! It was a lot of fun...

Here we are mixing flour and eggs to make the pasta

Then we made little balls, put them through the press things several times and then through the cut-y part of the press to make strips...this is the end result drying while we worked on dessert and other courses.

Here is most of the finished meal menu:

Homemade Tagliatelle Pasta with Ragu

Prunes Stuffed with Goat Cheese

Chicken Scaloppini

Stuffed Zucchini

Tiramisu (dessert with layers of cream and cookies soaked in coffee)

This is the proud group of Camp Adventure girls with our meal! yum!