trains, trains, and more trains

It's 5 am Friday morning. The streets of Siena are uncharacteristically quite, emptied and somewhat creepy. I walk to the corner to meet Austin, Paris and Hannah. We quickly march up to the bus stop to meet the 3 boys also traveling with us this weekend. Since it is so early there are no buses running to the station so we make the 15 minutes hike downhill and outside the city walls to the train station. Once there, we managed to buy round trip tickets to Napoli from the kiosk and wait only a few minutes for the 5:57am train to arrive. As it pulls into the station we hesitate only for a moment as to why on earth we are all awake at such a ridiculous hour and then push the thought aside as we board the train. We make it to Chiusi no problem and have just enough time for a quick cappuccino before boarding a large overnight German train headed for Rome. Unfortunately for us, our tickets weren't quite enough to cover this train ride so we had to pay slightly extra when the ticket lady came around. As we watched the landscape change outside and the the sun slowly rise over the Tuscan hills we became slightly jealous of the other passengers with their fold down beds and private sleeping compartments. Ok so we've made it to Rome and it is now probably around 11. Check the reader board and we hop on a train to Napoli after paying a few more euros for a ticket supplement. Make it to Napoli and as we wander around looking for the Circumvesuviana Train line headed for Sorento, we all clutch tightly to our belongings. Napoli is known for pick-pocketing and even the overhead announcements warned passengers "beware pickpocket". OUr fourth and final train of the day pulls into the station covered in bright, bubbly graffiti and we cram inside with hundreds of others. The 70 minute ride goes by fast and before we know it we arrived in beautiful Sorento. It is now 3pm and although we are exhausted and hungry we catch a bus for what we thought was a 10 or 15 minute ride over to our hotel. 45 minutes later and after surviving the ride along the steep coastal cliffs on tiny winding roads we are dropped off at our hotel. We stayed in tiny, colorful bungalows with 2 bedrooms and a kitchen that had a gorgeous view of the ocean. It was only a short walk down the road to our own private rocky beach. The view as amazing of the coast and as we relaxed on the smooth rocks the Mediterranean ocean lapsed at our feet. Saturday brought beautiful, sunny warm weather and instead of trekking to Pompeii as we originally had planned, we headed to the beach instead. It was a glorious day of sun tanning, skipping rocks and jumping off the dock into the clear, blue ocean. There were hardly any others on the beach and we were able to spend the whole day relaxing and realizing how lucky we were to be spending a saturday on the coast of southern Italy. That night we bought cheap pasta from the market and cooked up a delicious Italian meal that we enjoyed from the comfort of our bungalow porch. We made friends with our neighbors who were from Australia and drank wine as the sun set into the hills.
Sunday we checked out and took the bus into Sorento to tour the streets, admire the palace hotels and smell the orange/lemon trees on every street corner. Sorento is famous for lemons because so many are grown all around that region. Everywhere you look, even in the city, there are orange and lemon groves. That being said we of course had to try the lemon gelato and lemoncello. There were an abundance of lemon products and this just added to the glory of the town.
At 1130 we took the train into Sorento to begin our trek back. In Sorento we were told by what we thought was a trusting authority, that our tickets would allow us to get on the 3pm train to Rome without having to pay extra. We camped our in the station for a few hours and when 3pm rolled around there was no train to be seen. After asking several people what train to get on or what ticket to buy (and of course never getting the same answer) we bought a supplement and boarded a 430 train to Rome. It was standing room only so we spent the next 2 hours standing next to the bathroom in a tiny cramped space. Once in Rome we had to wait in the ticket line for an hour before finding out that there were no more trains to Siena that night and our only option was to stay in Rome until the next morning or travel to Chuisi and get stuck there. We opted to stay in Rome and after eating some dinner, ventured out into the city. We had until 5:45 am so we bought a map and walked to the Fountain of Trevi. It was absolutely gorgeous at night, all lit up and we spent awhile there just basking in the glory of it. We threw a few coins in - which promises a return to Rome, and the more coins you throw, the better your chances are of falling in love with a Roman . We made it over to the Pantheon and sat there while munching on gelato. At 1am we were getting tired and walked back to the station where we found some wall space and curled up to try and sleep. That only worked for a short time as we soon became cold due to the stone floors so we entertained ourselves for the next few hours with word games and people watching as there were hundreds of others also stranded. The volcanic eruption in Iceland had messed up most flights in Europe causing the train system to in turn become a nightmare. Luckily at 6 am we found a train headed north and literally sprinted down the terminal to catch it. In the hurry we forgot to validate our tickets which usually results in hefty fines but the ticket lady took pity on us poor students and we were fine. Made it to Chuisi and somehow in our delirium caught a bus to Siena. Finally made it home at 930 Monday morning...just enough time for a shower and then off to 5 hours of class.
Quite the weekend.
I am somewhat rested now and only one more day of class before we all head to Rome again for 5 days. I suppose this is the life in Italy - travel, trains, no sleep and off to a new city almost everyday. Things could be worse.

Ciao for now!