When Life Gives You Lemons...

After Rome, we spent the rest of our Spring Break (three more days) in Sorrento, Italy. Sorrento was VERY different from Rome... it was a small town close to the Amalfi coast, with much fewer tourists but no less charm. Sorrento's primary crop is lemons, and there are lemon trees EVERYWHERE. On these lemon trees are the biggest lemons I have ever seen in my life. In the souvenir shops, everything is lemon-themed. In restaurants, limoncello (lemon liqueur) is poured over your dessert or served to you in a small glass as a post-meal "digestive" (although I'm not sure how much alcohol helps with digestion). In gelaterias, the lemon and limoncello flavors are the most highly recommended.

During one of our says in Sorrento, we went on a tour of a lemon grove run by a family. This was by far my favorite day in Italy -- the mother cooked us lunch. We ate eggs that had been laid that morning by their own chickens, we drank wine that they made in their own home, we tried several different kinds of olive oil that they also made themselves (they had olive trees as well as lemon trees), and we ate traditional Italian cakes after the meal with, of course, limoncello. The lemon grove was incredibly beautiful, and we learned how the entire farming process is carried out. Their farm also had a very friendly dog, an adorable goat, and a few pigs. 

Another highlight was our day trip to Positano, which is on the Amalfi Coast. Positano was very touristy, particularly at that time (there were hundreds of other American college students vacationing there at the time) but for good reason. The views were surreal. The town is somehow built into the mountains, so all of the buildings rest terraced on top of each other, and are painted in dozens of different colors.