It can’t possibly rain for another weekend in Amalfi. Or so I thought. What a naive little tour guide I was, to blindly accept the stats from Google weather telling me that this weekend would be sunny in Sorrento. Weather internet report of LIES!!
The weekend started out well enough. Well, after sitting for 2 hours on the side of a highway at 1:45am because our shitty little bus broke down 15 minutes from the hotel in Sorrento. After waving down not one, not two, not three but FOUR other tourist buses (who shall not be named, but suffice it to say, what goes around comes around, assholes) who refused to come back and rescue us from the side of the road and take us to our hotel in Sorrento, we FINALLY got someone to come back for us and got into the hotel at a sprightly 4:30 in the morning. When the last of the grumbling students had stomped up to bed, me and my co-worker flopped down onto our beds and took a power nap for 2 hours before waking up to get everything ready for the ferry to Capri the next morning.
After a relatively stress-free ferryride to Capri on Friday morning, we hopped on Gianluca’s boat tour to check out the island. Shout-out to LaserCapri’s boating captains for making sure we didn’t capsize or run into the rocks Titanic-style like the boat tour from hell that we took 4 weeks ago. Another story for another time, folks.
Anyways, the sun was shining in Capri, the birds were chirping, the Italians were making inappropriate sexual innuendos to the American girls…all was right in the world. After stopping in the Blue Grotto, we headed up to the center of Capri and made our way down Via Krupp to the beach at Marina Piccola, where my favorite jewelry man Paolo lives, and so does the seafood deliciousness of La Gioa.
We said the usual hellos to the main man of La Gioa, who promptly brought us to a table with white wine chilling beside it (yes, I come here quite often. They know my order.) I made sure all the students were seated and gave my usual food recommendations before sitting my ass down to a gigantic plate of spaghetti with mussels, arugula and slivers of Parmesan cheese. Insert drool here. I’d walk back to Capri for another plate of those juicy sea-dwelling nuggets.
While I was basking in my food coma, I failed to notice that the sun was, in fact, pretty damn hot. Hot enough that by the time I got back to the hotel at 8 pm, I had received a pretty epic farmer tan on my arms and legs, not to mention a ghostly-white watch tan (which is ironic since my real watch is actually white as well. At least we match now!). I hopped my way into the shower and poured buckets of lotion onto my burns, but alas, I am now a tomato-red shadow of my former pale self.
Saturday arrived, and so did the clouds. Big, surly looking gray clouds of doom. Of course it WOULD be cloudy in Positano, making me look like an asshole for enthusiastically telling all of the students that Positano is “my absolute favorite place ever! We’re gonna swim and get tan all day long!” Insert foot in mouth here. To make up for a rather uninspiring day at the cloudy beach, I went out to the English Inn that night with a group of students, an outside bar/dance club in the center of Sorrento even though at this point I had acquired a cold that meant I was snotting big globs of mucus every 15 minutes. Sexy, I know. After 45 minutes, I had to call it a night, and my co-worker and I started the walk back up the giant hill to our hotel.
Unfortunately, us Americans stick out like polar bears in Africa. Walking up the narrow road of death that led back to our hotel, we were victims of a ruthless water-balloon bombing from some rowdy Italian boys driving by that left us looking like drowned rats, and feeling pretty sorry for ourselves. If you have any information on the whereabouts of these hooligans, please dial 1-800-AVENGE-ME-NOW.
By Sunday, the clouds turned to rain, a confusing scenario in which the sun was actually shining through a cloud cover in Pompeii, yet big fat raindrops were still falling steadily. After sending my entire group into the ruins of Pompeii, I collapsed at a table underneath a cafe owned by a rather lecherous Napolitani who is pretty much the Mayor of Pompeii, and nursed my orange juice. Exhausted, I slept on the way up to Mount Vesuvius, ate an icy smoothie thing from some crappy cafe to soothe my throat while the students hiked up the volcano, and praised the lord that the rain had stopped to reveal a beautiful sunny view of the Bay of Naples, therefore ensuring that no more bitching about the weather would continue on the bus ride back to Florence.
All in all, this was one of the more trying weekends in my young tour guiding career. A broken bus, lobster sunburn, head cold, crazy students, bizarre weather=one exhausted tour guide who couldn’t wait to jump into her bed on Sunday night and fall fast asleep.
The Florence Diaries 