Ciao! We just returned from a fantastic three days on the southern Italian coast in the beautiful town of Sorrento and the island of Capri! I honestly couldn't not have asked for a better group to travel with or a better first independent travel experience. We had an absolute blast and I would give anything to go back and live it over again.
We spent the whole day Monday in route to our southern destination. We caught the very first train to Rome and then from there hopped on the next train to Naples. After that, the trip turned a little sketchy for a few minutes. We had to take the subway from Naples to S. Agnello which is where our hostel was located and waiting in that subway station was not a comfortable feeling, but we stuck together and made it through. When we finally made it to our stop and found our way to our hostel we were thrilled. Somehow SarahBeth's and I's planning skills served us well because this was by far the best hostel we could have possibly stayed at.  It was beautiful. There was a bar and restaurant downstairs that served both American and Italian food, which made us extremely happy; there was a rooftop lounge with the most incredible view you could ever imagine; and the best part of all: we made so many American friends! We quickly dropped our stuff off in our room and rushed back downstairs for dinner which consisted of chicken sandwiches and cheeseburgers and that in itself made our day! After dinner we stayed downstairs in the bar area where we met a group of guys who turned out to be the smartest and nicest group that we could have ever encountered. They were recent graduates of different universities in California and they were backpacking their way through Europe for the summer. We spent the whole evening talking and getting to know them, and it was just so comforting to meet a group that spoke our language and who were experiencing some of the same things we were. Needless to say, we ended up hanging out with them at some point every day that we were there.
Tuessday we decided we were going to venture out to find a local beach and take a personal day to rest, relax and soak up some sunshine. We took the subway to a little town called Meta and then somehow managed to wander our way to the most perfect little beach right off the Sorrento coast. How we found it, I'll never know, but we spent the whole day there. We rented beach chairs to layout in, swam in the incredibly cold water, and climbed the rocks that lined the coast. We ate some delicious fresh fruit, bought some fake Ray Ban sunglasses, and learned to skip stones across the water. After probably taking in way too much sun we headed back to the hostel for showers and another delicious taste of America for dinner. After dinner we hung out with our favorite group of guys. Miles, our favorite one, was seriously our daily dose of entertainment. He's a hospitality major at Cornell and is seriously one of the smartest people I've ever encountered. I learned all about tasting wine and how he recently won a national hostel design contest. Let's just say he better remember me when he's rich and famous. Eliza and I also took on the task of teaching everyone how to do the Wop and the Wobble, and for those of you who don't know what those are, they're dances and they're priceless. I think we laughed until we cried looking at the pictures of us dancing. After a couple hours of socializing and laughing, some of us headed off to bed, while some of the other more adventurous ones took on a party offer at Africana the famous club in a cave!
Wednesday was kicked off with an early start that consisted of our own personal boat tour of the Sorrento coast and the island of Capri. Our boat driver, who looked like Favio, showed us all the significant historical sights, took us to the blue, green and white grottos, we passed Robert De Niro's house, picked out our own future Italy vacation homes :), and then over to the main island. Eliza and I were the only ones brave enough to take the plunge into the green grotto, and boy was it cold. We probably jumped back on the boat just as fast as we jumped off the boat.
When we arrived at the island our first stop was obviously for food, but we didn't hang out long. At the top of our to do list was finding a local store that hand made custom shoes, and believe me, I was in heaven. It was so hard to look around in there and only buy one pair, but it was seriously the coolest thing I've ever seen. They literally went through an entire process of hand making these shoes especially fit to my feet. Loved it! After we got our shoes we just wandered around checking out all the local stores and snapping pictures. It truly felt like we were walking around in a painting. Everything was to beautiful for words.
Once we were back on the boat the adventures through the water started again. We stopped at a natural spring waterfall where I got to swim and taste the fresh spring water, and we went to a natural swimming pool which was gorgeous. You couldn't take the boat in because you had to swim through a cave to get there but it was completely worth it when you laid eyes on the inside. Absolutely incredible. I also got to wear a pair of scuba diving goggles and look under the crystal clear water which was simply breathtaking. There were all kinds of fish and beautiful coral looking structures down there.
After an all day boat adventure we spent our last night at the hostel hanging out on the rooftop lounge with our new friends. We reminisced about the past few days and retold all of our stories, danced to "Call Me Maybe" and "Party in the USA", and simply enjoyed our final few hours on the beautiful coast, and while we were hanging out up there we caught sight of a fire works display at the local beach which was the perfect touch to our final night.
Sadly we had to bid goodbye to our new friends and lovely hostel Thursday morning and make our way back to Sansepolcro for a weekend of classes and homework before turning around and heading off to Rome on Monday. I truly couldn't have pictured this experience going any better and feel so blessed to be on this incredible trip. This is definitely going to be the best summer of my life.

our own little beach

the rooftop lounge of our hostel 

the breathtaking Sorrento sunset

the natural spring waterfall where I went swimming

the girls  

Eliza and I took the plunge into the grotto

swimming in the waterfall

with our boat driver, Favio