Three Cheeses | Europe 2026

BY ALEXIS·8:22 AM

Pompeii and Mt Vesuvius

Mónica and I went on a tour of the city of Pompeii. Our tour guide wasnt as great as Gabriel from the previous day, but our bus driver was an amazing singer. He sung traditional Italian songs. When we got to Pompeii we had a different tour guide take us around. The city is huge and takes many days to go through. We learned a lot about the city and got to go through the red light district where the brothels were. There were even penises on the street and on walls to show people where to go. After our tour we went to Mt Vesuvius and ate a Marguerita pizza for lunch. We got to taste test limonchellos before our hike up Vesuvius. When we got to the start of the hike, it was cloudy and lightly raining. When we got to the top, it was really foggy and we couldn’t see the crater. It then started to rain and hail on our way down. The rain was raining sideways and we ended up buying ponchos. When we got back to the bottom, our guide told us that they closed the park 30 minutes after we went in due to the weather.

Alexis

8:22 AM

BY SERENA·8:51 AM

Rome wasn't built in a day....

If you're following along there aren't going to be pics of Amalfi Coast for a bit because I took like 5,000 to make sure I caught all the cool things. I will have to weed thru later! Today Monica and Alexis went on to Pompeii and Vesuvius and the four of us plus Kevin went on to Rome. We got a taxi at 645am to the Naples Centrale train station. We took it to Roma Termani where we had a little difficulty finding the right train and had to ask for help. She said ignore the locations on our ticket and just look for our number. It's like the subway in New York where it shows the next destination not final! Once landing in Rome we took a taxi to the Pantheon. We had some issues with our "1 World tour" which was just an audio guide but we had to stand in a line that wasn't a line at all and fight for the attention of the attendant to get a whatsapp copy of our ticket and audio guide. It was an Indian man, but i think Italy is just not organized in general and very laid back in timing. The Pantheon was pretty impressive and had sculptures and art all over the very tall walls. The height of most architecture in Rome is ridiculous!! How did they make such large columns and tall ceilings. Works of marvel for sure. There was an opening at the top that was made in such a way to let very little rain in. The audio tour was cool but unnecessary if you had read some stuff ahead about it. After viewing the building, we walked across the street to La Casa de Caffe. Very good coffee and several baristas working so it was quick! Then, we walked 30 min to the colosseum seeing cool stuff along way like ruins and some huge monuments. The Colosseum was also super tall and interesting to see how it was built. We didn't get any special tours but it was OK with us because we still very much enjoyed walking the areas we could and imaging the fighters coming out to the main section. From the top of the Colosseum we could see the Roman Forum and Pallestine hill, which had THE longest line of people waiting! All of our skip the line tickets were by far worth the money! We had some time to kill before our church tour so we took the public bus back near the Pantheon for lunch at La Salumeria where I got the Milanese. They had the best sandwiches, however there seating area wasn't great and as usual in Italy they don't believe in AC. After sweating during lunch, we split from Kevin and walked to the Piazza Navona to see cool Fountains. Justin navigated us to the bus just in time to once again miss the rain. Then we took the bus to St. Peter's Basilica square where we got drinks and I got a popsicle cause the heat is killer! We met back up with Kevin then took our skip the line perk to get in quickly at St. Peter's Basilica. This was by far my favorite part of Rome besides just seeing the amazing marvels of architecture. They really were light-years ahead of everyone. St. Peter's is by far the largest church I've ever visited and definitely the most ornate. I recorded it because every time I thought I found the end....another hallway or corner was there. The bad thing about this church is there is alot of statues of pope's and we weren't sure any of us ever saw a statue of Jesus. It was pope's with two woman beside him and sometimes cherubs. The pictures don't do this place justice. The height alone was amazing and even the flooring and different color marble or limestone just alone was beautiful. We had to rush to our next place which was Vatican Museum. After seeing St. Peter's this place just wasn't so cool. I think at this point we were also getting tired of walking. Jeremy and I stopped to find our return trian times to make sure we didn't stay here too long then decided we didn't really care about statues of things and tried to skip rooms and head straight for the Sistine Chapel. Apparently this is nearly impossible since they have you hearded like sheep THEIR way. It became a joke because the maps would say almost to the exit. BUT they lied! We finally jumped a rope and was ALMOST there lol. It was also funny because we thought the gift shop was the end. But there were like 5 gift shops before the last, so when the last one said "last gift shop" we didn't believe them. Justin seemed to really enjoy this stop but the rest of us had enough. After finally finding the actual exit, I walked across the street to get iced coffee and a dessert called Maritozzo, which was delicious. We took another taxi to the Roma Termini to hop on a train back to a taxi in Naples to get to our airbnb. Jeremy and I had to stop at the ATM to have enough cash for our taxi the next day. Then we went home and discussed our next adventure. Based on how many pics I took there may not be pics uploaded for a while either lol.

Serena

8:51 AM