This past weekend, one of my roommates and I decided to take a trip to the Amalfi Coast. This had been our first entire weekend away from Florence since we arrived in August. We decided to travel with the company, Florence for Fun, in order to go on tours and have direction on the best things to see.
My roommate and I finished class on Thursday at 5:35, went to our apartment, grabbed our luggage and headed to the Santa Maria Novella train station. We met our tour leaders, Gavin and Callie, inside the train station. It was my second time at the train station so I knew my whereabouts. Once everyone gathered up, we walked 5 minutes down the road to get onto our private bus. Once we reached the bus, we loaded our bags and went to find a seat. Since we were traveling with a smaller group, everyone was able to have 2 seats to themselves, rather than sitting right next to someone. I definitely took advantage of the extra space and sprawled out.
The journey from Florence to the Amalfi Coast was about 7 hours long. We stopped for dinner about 3-4 hours in and then continued our travels. The bus driver was having a hard time maneuvering the bus in and out of parking lots and ended up backing into another bus full of tourists. The people that were sitting in the back of the bus were yelling at the driver to stop as he was backing up but he must of not heard them. Everyone was looking around to see what the driver was going to do but he didn’t seem to worried about it as he recorrected himself and then drove off. We all laughed it off and went back to sleep. The tour leaders informed us that this kind of thing happens all the time and that this was apart of the Italian driving culture. They told us that people who drive in Italy are all aware that their bumpers will be hit at some point.
The bus ride felt like forever. I was starting to feel a little car sick by the end of the journey and was counting down the minutes until I could get off the bus and get some sleep. Just as we were about to arrive at our accommodation, the bus driver was lost. He had a GPS but was not following the directions that it was giving him because he said that the bus couldn’t fit down those streets. After trying to figure out his own way around, and failing, he decided to follow the GPS and we arrived in no time. The bus was fairly big and the streets were narrow but it all worked out in the end.
We arrived to our accommodation around 3am and everyone was exhausted. It had been a long drive. We quickly unloaded our luggage from the bus and headed inside to check into the hotel. We each had rooms consisting of 3 people. Luckily, my roommate and I were assigned the same room. Others were not so lucky and were split up from their friends. We only stayed at this accommodation for one night so none of us had to worry about unpacking. We all threw our luggage on the floor, claimed a bed and went right to sleep.
The journey to the Amalfi Coast was definitely a bumpy one but the views that we were able to see made it 100% worth it.
Jenelle's Journey 
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