Bari and Frascineto

We flew into Bari on Aug  17 and wanted to go south. We have read in so many books that southern Italy was underrated and tourists rarely visited. It sounded like the perfect place to see. We rented a car and Amanda, being the quick learner she is, taught herself to drive stick shift. After stalling out at every red light the first day we decided to shoot a quick email to Riley for pointers. Luckily, he is very good at teaching via text and the next few days went a lot smoother.

From Bari we drove to Frascineto. This very, very small town with only two restaurants in it. Our second day in we decided to do something more adventurous: cave climbing. It was so beautiful, though we got soaking wet! Luckily, we met a very sweet couple from town and they took us out to dinner that night.

Ischia, Italy

After Amanda came back to Naples, we spent one more night in the hostel then left for another ferry to the island of Ischia. We stayed there for a week. There was plenty to keep us busy for that week. The hostel was pretty empty during out stay, but our first night in we were taken to the owners restaurant with a few other guests. The meal was interesting to say the least. For a place that is literally right on the water, this restaurants seafood was quite horrible. Even by Callie's standards. That didn't stop us though. We went back almost every night we were there and had some great food.

On one of the brochures we were given, there was a place that you could cliff jump into the water. We spent a few hours trying to find this seemingly non-existent place. After finally turning around, we came across this incredibly delicious restaurant that had some of the best mussels we've ever had. We also loaded up on bruschetta, a variety of meat, and a caprese salad. We tried numerous times to go back, but in true Italian fashion, they were always closed. We continued to look for the cliff after finishing our meal, and as luck had it, we found it about five minutes later. It was a bit of a struggle to get down to the water so we could swim to the cliff. We ran into two people from our hostel, and one of them filmed us jumping off the cliff. We both jumped off a few times. It was nerve wrecking, but so much fun! We spent the next few hours laying out on the rocks and swimming around.

Another day we took a boat tour around the island. It was a seven hour boat ride filled with gorgeous views and tons of snorkeling! Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of us snorkeling, but it was so much fun! We definitely would want to do that again. Ischia was incredibly beautiful and very relaxing. We had yet to decide what the next part of our trip was, but we found it in Ischia... a farm stay in Sora!

Sicily

From Fracianeto, we drove to Palermo in Sicily. We stayed in a small beach town called Mondello. We stayed in a cute little ten person hostel. Since there was not too much to do in Mondello, we spent a lot of time on the beach. Our first day out in the sun, Callie got a lovely burn. We also found a cute little restaurant that we frequented for most of our time in Mondello. 

One day we decided to explore more of Palermo and drove about fifteen minutes into the city. We immediately found a little cafe and had a great lunch. We were told that there was a huge market place that was great for finding cheap buys, but after getting horrible instructions from four or five different people, we decided to call it quits. Back at the hostel, we met two guys from London that we hung out with for the rest of our stay. We rented a paddle boat one evening and floated around the gorgeous blue waters for a few hours. Afterwards, we walked to a market and made dinner back at our hostel. 

After leaving Palermo, we made our way to a small resort town close to the ferry. We stayed there one night and met a lot of interesting people. The next morning we woke up bright and early to catch the ferry back to the mainland. We spent the day driving to Naples. The next day, unfortunately,  we had to drop off the car, and Callie and Amanda had a say a brief goodbye. Amanda was going to Washington D.C. to see her grandmother, and Callie was going to stay in Naples for a few days.