damn

So... I wanted to take this 5 minute stretch to upload some pictures, but uploading pictures is taking waaaaay too long. My appologies. When I get another chance, I'll write again.

Okay...

Okay. First post. And I'm sorry to say that this is going to be short and cryptic for now. European key boards are quite different from American ones, and I'm desperatealy trying to get used to them, so bear with me.
We arrive in Italy, rent a car, and immidately proceed to drive, yes, drive to the Amalfi Coast. The driving wasn't bad. I was appointed navagator for some strange reason (strange because I can get lost in my own home town...), but much to my chagrin everything turns out fine, and the motto "Trust the navagator. The navagator, she is good, the navagator, she is wise" pops right into existence. The italian country side is breathtaking. Mountains pop out of the horizon much like paper out of a pop up book. A few hours after leaving Rome, we're passing right by Naples, and under the looming presence of Mount Vesuvius. It's huge. Thats all I can say for now. Passing through the town of Meta, we almost get lost, but reach some very high mountains of which Arlo Gutherie's "Pickle Song" describes perfectly ("On one side of the mountain, there was a mountain. On the other side there was nothing, just a cliff in the air"). After about half an hour of winding around the hills, there lies Positano, little buildings rivering their way down the mountain side to the sea.
Eddie Izzard was right about the motor scooters. To paraphrase, "the italians are groovy, mostly scotting around on a motor scooter saying, "Ciiaooo". He's compeltely right, because if I had a euro for every time mom flinched and dad slammed on the brakes a little each time someone on a scooter passed us in the car, Id have rnough euros not to come home for a while. The roads, though windy and small, are in great condition, and its actually quite teeth gnashing to see how on earth one dude pnas to creep his bus around a corner at the same time a fruit cart comes by, but after a while, it's no big deal.
The Positano art festival was going on the week we were there, so every night there'd be music on the beach.
While we were in Positano, we got the chance to take day trips to Capri, Paestum, and Pompeii, of which I'll write more about when I can get some pictures up.
Long story short, POsitano is pretty much the perfect little getaway.
I will tak ethis time now to say that Naples is not the nicest or friendliest city, and we found out just waht it was like to be discriminatied against for being American. I'm damn sure there are parts of teh city worth seeing, but the cental city is not something I'd want to spend more than five minutes in.


We arrive in Rome after a very pleasant train ride (squeee!!), and the city is a-buzz with helicopters, armored cars, armed police, and so forth. Bushie, just so happens to be in town and the protests are crowding up the city. I really honestly couldn't say that I blamed them. I really didn't want him around either. Not to mention the fact that we were a little apprehenive about going back out after being warned that there were theives around that were specifically looking out for Americans. But, we chilled and went out a bit latedr after everything had died down.
So far Rome has been amazing, hot, but amazing..


And my time is up. So, I will try to post some more tomorrow, with pictures. Yay!