Day 19...The joy of being back on the ship and the picturesque island of Capri!

Day 19, July 3rd:

Italy Day 5 (not as exciting as Day 4…)!

After a long night of transportation shenanigans, we all woke up at 7:00 to head back to the ship.  We couldn’t wait to see the ship and be back in our own rooms with nice large/small showers.  Elan told me about this from his trip, but you don’t know what it feels like until it happens.  I really can’t express how much joy each of us had when we were walking down the street and we saw the ship for the first time!  We were so excited!  We weren’t paying attention to what we were passing or what roads we were on, we just walked all the way to the ship based on how we thought we could get there.  We all were so excited to be able to show our SAS ID card and say “yes it’s good to be home” to the ship’s security team that welcomed us onboard.  I think we all wanted to fall to our knees and kiss the floor. 

Once we finally became unwound ourselves from all of our experiences over the last 4 days, we all took a nap and woke up in time for lunch on the ship.  At lunch we decided that we would take a day to relax on the island of Capri, rather than explore Pompeii.  We took the 14:40 ferry to Capri for 16 euro along with Jenna, Jeff, Kylie and Megan.  We had a blast singing and dancing in our seats to “Party in the USA” on the way to Capri.  I am sure that everyone else thought we were completely nuts, but that’s okay because we were!  The ferry took about one hour to get there.  Once we pulled up, it was AMORE again!!!  It was absolutely stunning!  The hills, houses and beach were so awesome!  It was picturesque! 

We immediately decided to climb up the mountain to take some pictures and we just kept on exploring.  The higher we climbed the better the view so we just kept going and going.  It was so relaxing.  We started to get hungry so we explored looking for a restaurant, but they were non-existent.  We climbed back down the island and went in search of a place to eat.  We ended up at a touristy place on the shore filled with SASers.  I had one of the best meals in Italy at this restaurant!  I had gnocchi with a tomato sauce that had so much cheese in it that it stuck to the plate.  It was scrumptious!!!!! After dinner, we all headed to the beach to go for a swim.  Why not, we are in Capri right? 

The beach was not sand…it was made of rocks of all sizes.  The water was so blue that you could see through it like glass.  It was incredible.  After we all changed into our swimsuits, we went for a dip.  While we were playing around in the water, we meet some other SASers and two US military guys doing work in Italy for a few weeks.  It was fun talking to all of them.  Once we got tired of swimming, we got out, changed back into clothes and headed in search of a gelato shop before taking the ferry back to the ship.  We met up with my roommate Nick, two of his friends, Dr. Daneshyar (my econ professor), his wife and some other SASers while waiting for the last ferry of the night to arrive at 19:55.  We watched the sunset from the ferry.  Aren’t you jealous?  Once we reached land again, we went walking in search of some Wi-Fi.  We walked just up the block to a McD’s to see if they had Wi-Fi, but it didn’t work.  We then headed back to the ship for a good night’s rest.  We went to bed around 22:30. What a great way to relax and recuperate from all of out excursions around Italy!  It was a lot of fun!  I wish I could do that everyday!