I'm finally back with the last of our vacation pictures. These are some of my favorite pictures from our trip so I am very excited to be finally sharing them.
When we were done with our tour in Pompeii, everyone decided they wanted to go back to the cruise ship. We had a full day tour planned which included the amazing Sorrento and Amalfi Coast, but they decided they would rather be on the cruise ship. Thankfully we had a van and a car, so everyone headed back in the van while Steve, Stephen and I took off in the car.
We headed to Sorrento. The view from the car was so beautiful so I snapped some pictures as we drove.
We stopped at this point and I got to take some pictures.
Mount Vesuvius
More from the car:
We got to Sorrento and at lunch at this restaurant. We had an amazing meal!
This calamari was so amazing! I'm not usually a huge fan of calamari, but it is one of Stephen's favorite things. This calamari melted in your mouth. It was so good! The three of us devoured this plate and ordered another one.
We also had a caprese salad that was also delicious!
We all had pizza. I had a margarita pizza and it was so good! Every bite was amazing!
Even though I was stuffed, I somehow found room for this lemon gelato. Sorrento is famous for their lemons, which are HUGE, so I had to try this. I am so glad I did because it was amazing! Tart, a little sweet, and just perfect! I really wish I could eat this entire meal again!
Then they brought us each a shot of lemoncello, which Sorrento is famous for. I was the only one brave enough to try this and it was strong!!! Very strong!
They make their pizzas in this wood burning oven. In Italy, people go to school to become certified pizza makers. The pizza maker here is one of the top 10 in Italy.
He was so nice and our waiter insisted I take a picture with him.
We left the restaurant and walked a little through the town. I told you they are famous for lemon trees and they have them growing everywhere, typically up high like this.
This is a main shopping area of Sorrento.
I would have loved to stay here longer, but our driver, Stefan, was ready for us. You can see him here walking towards us.
Sorrento was such a beautiful city!
We got in the car and started to drive the Amalfi Coast towards Positano. These are all taken from the car. There was no where to stop until we got to the next city Positano.
Positano is a city that is literally straight up and down. Look at these stairs.
More stairs.
We arrived in Positano and parked about halfway down the city. There is very limited parking, so our driver found a parking garage and parked there while we went to explore the city.
There were lots of charming, unique shops.
And beautiful flowers.
As we were walking I spotted these aprons outside this shop on the left and had to go inside.
I met the owner of the shop who said she makes all of the aprons herself and was actually working on one right now. I bought an apron for my mom and I and then took this picture of her sewing the one she was working on.
She was so nice and her shop was so cute and unique. I could have spent much more time there!
We were walking down to the beach and as we got lower, there was this beautiful trellis every now and then that I just loved!
It also provided some much needed shade for a little relief from the brutal sun. It was SO hot this day.
We made it to the beach!
The views of the city from the beach were beautiful! I wish we could have spent an entire day here.
We didn't spend long on the beach because we had to head back up to meet back up with our driver. It was HOT, the hottest day on our vacation by far and we were walking straight up. It was tough!
When we got back to the parking garage, our driver showed us this waterfall right behind the parking garage. Beauty was everywhere!
These three islands resemble a woman from this spot.
More pictures from the car as we head back.
Along the Amalfi Coast, there are a bunch of fruit stands with huge lemons. At this point I think our driver thought I was the paparazzi. I was snapping pictures like crazy the entire time we were in the car. It was just so beautiful not to. He was so nice and suggested we stop so I could take a picture of the huge lemons. He even got out with me and held the lemon. All of the tour guides we had were wonderful!
Sadly we had to go back to our cruise ship and leave Italy. I really loved this day and wished we could have spent longer in Positano.
Our last day of vacation was a day at sea on the cruise ship. I didn't take any pictures that day or our day traveling home. But for my memory keeping purposes I wanted to document what all we did.
We were exhausted and so Saturday we slept in and it was wonderful! So wonderful! We got up and had an early lunch at Johnny Rockets. We ran into Steve and Nancy there so we ate with them and then as we were eating Shelley, Mike and Cameron came. Johhny Rockets is like a 50's diner and had great hamburgers and milk shakes. While we ate some incredible food on vacation, we were all missing some good American food and the hamburgers, fries, onion rings, and milk shakes hit the spot!!
After lunch I went back to the room to relax and ended up falling asleep for 3 hours. I was so tired! This was the most amazing trip, but it was exhausting, and espcecially being sick, my body just needed to rest. I got up and went to look for Stephen and found him playing basketball. After lunch he had been entertaining himself and joined a game of basketball with people he didn't even know. This is something I love about him and makes us so different. I would never join in an activity where I didn't know anyone. That is a huge fear of mine. But I love that Stephen can go anywhere and talk to people and fit right in. Everyone that meets him loves him! I guess that's why we work so well together. He is the ying to my yang- or something like that- haha!
We hung out the rest of the day on the ship, packed all of our stuff, and had our last dinner.
Sunday morning we were up bright and early and preparing to disembark the ship. We had to go get our luggage and board busses to get to the airport. We made it to the airport super early for our noon flight. Stephen tried to get us on an earlier flight to no avail. We then tried to get upgraded for our long flight to Toronto, also to no avail. We had a very long hour flight to Toronto, but we made it. Then we had a 4 hour layover that was pretty miserable. We were so tired of traveling and just ready to be home. After traveling for 23 hours, we finally made it home!
This was an absolutely amazing, once in a lifetime trip! We had the most wonderful time and saw some incredible things.
I want to thank everyone who was involved in making this trip possible for us. Thank you Steve and Nancy for this amazing trip! We had a blast! Also, thanks to my mom and dad for keeping Stephen for us. We missed him like crazy, but knew he was in great hands and we knew he was having a great time with Gran E, Papa G, and Mamaw.
