After leaving BCA at 12:30 EST on a bus, we boarded our ITA airlines flight 4 hours later. Time on the bus was spent playing cards and pointing at landmarks in New York. We arrived in Italy at 7 am local time following a bumpy flight and played some foosball while waiting for our bags to arrive.
We then took a bus to our first destination on our itinerary, Vietri sul Mare. The town is colorful, with ceramics integrated into so many aspects of its landscape like its roads (inlaid with tiles) and buildings (plastered with decorative plates). We put down our bags at our hotel, the Bristol, and had our first taste of authentic Italian cuisine, dining on a two course meal complete with dessert while overlooking the Amalfi coast.
After eating lunch we set off for our ceramics workshop that would teach us how to operate pottery wheels, traditional glazing methods as well as educate us on maiolica (a painted ceramic Vietri sul Mare is known for). Here is us working on our own individual pieces.
While one half of our group went to the ceramics workshop, the other half was getting lost (literally) in quaint alleyways amongst local ceramics shops. We also visited a 20th century ceramics shop that operates today that had unique architecture, being studded with 60,000 pieces of ceramic along its exterior.
Finally when we were given some time to roam on our own, we bought some gelato despite the cold and even took a group picture somewhere above a cliff.
Around 6:00 PM local time we headed to our last activity of the day, a culinary workshop where we would make our own dinner. We made pizza dough from scratch, prepared eggplant parmigiana and even helped prepare our dessert. Chef Antonio had put us to work between all the cutting, dredging, and frying, but it was all worth it when we got to eat. Our handmade dough turned into a saucy appetizer as well as our dessert after being topped with powdered sugar and nutella. Some of us finished the night off with a round of card games (which we may have taken too seriously) before walking back to the hotel to settle in for the night.
That's all for days 1-2!
