Naples & Pompeii

This past weekend some of my roommates and I took a little two day trip to Naples and Pompeii, the latter being the main purpose for the excursion. We'd heard that Napoli had very little to offer apart from pizza and thus weren't surprised to arrive after a 3 hour train (7 am! start time) in a dingy city covered in dirt, dog poop, and graffiti.  We were still in Italy but might as well have been in a completely different city compared to Florence. Upon arrival at the address for the "hotel" we found ourselves in a dingy residential courtyard, completely confused. My roommate Juhea called the owner who let us know that we surprisingly WERE in the right place and that if we took the elevator to the 4th floor the maid would meet us in 10 minutes. Not exactly the hotel experience I was used to.

When the non-English speaking maid arrived she spoke rapid Italian to us despite our pleas of "NON PARLO!" "PARLO UN PO PO PO". The only word we were able to make out was "cancellation". Luckily she pulled up google translator and the issue was resolved. SHE thought we had cancelled but the owner (who luckily was in charge of booking the rooms) was expecting us. Also luckily, the interior of the bed and breakfast turned out to be really nice- clean and new with large rooms. The owner arrived soon after and cleared up any confusion. We put our stuff down and quickly grabbed our stuff to find the station to go to Pompeii. Next problem: the owner informed us that we shouldn't carry ANY bags with us in Naples, let alone any cameras. I showed him my cross body bag which is pretty much as secure as a bag could be and he still told me that it would get snatched off me. Comforting, no? I could only imagine what my mom's reaction would be if she had heard his warnings about how easily we would get mugged (Hi Mom).  Then we maneuvered our stuff to be inside of our jackets- essentially making us all look like expectant mothers.

Hiding our cameras

The owner was much happier with this option and informed us cheerily that the guys in Naples wouldn't try to steal from pregnant people....(so who reading my blog wants to book a trip to Naples???)  The owner also informed us several times over the trip that we should rate him a 9.3 OR HIGHER on the travel site, the first time he said this was right after we were  told that our room was canceled by the maid...

We set off to grab a quick lunch and I was surprised to actually really really enjoy walking around the city. Naples is essentially what you imagine when thinking of a classic Italian city-- clotheslines strung between buildings, people lowering stuff to the grown in buckets our of their windows (okay, maybe that's not a classic Italian concept), bakeries and pizzerias EVERYWHERE, and lots of Italians crowding the streets speaking rapid Italian in loud voices. The culture and energy was really cool to be in, and the pizzeria we went to for lunch was delicious- not too mention really really inexpensive. We stopped for the most amazing/delicious/scrumptious little fruit pastries from a street vendor for dessert and finally set off for Pompeii.

yummmm

Pizza from Naples!

Naples

Pompeii was AMAZING. For anybody who didn't know this (or couldn't tell from all my previous dorky posts) I'm pretty into history of places and Pompeii has always been on my list of places to go. A quick half hour train ride from the center of Naples and we were at one of the best preserved ancient Italian cities. It was colder than we expected and seemed like it was going to pour at any moment but the weather held our for our entire 3 hour trip through the city. First of all, Pompeii has one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. Every way you turn there are beautiful cloud covered mountains- including Mt. Vesuvius.

View from Pompeii

  The complex was huge with a lot of connecting houses, social structures, what seemed to be temples, and passageways. There were so many preserved frescoes from before 79 AD (when Mt. Vesuvius erupted), especially in the Villa of the Mysteries which I had studied several times in Art History classes.

Villa of the Mysteries- Pompeii

Unfortunately there weren't that many information plaques and we didn't get the audio tour so we were pretty much on our own for information but walking through the streets alone was amazing enough.  There were only a few places to see the ash-casts of people made when the city was covered (most have been moved to museums) but they left a couple in their original places and it was weird to think that they had been there since the first century.  The saddest things were the forms of some children clearly trying to crawl away to escape the ash.  We explored the city until around 5 pm and then got on the train back to Naples. 

We wanted to go to a restaurant that we had read good reviews about for dinner. However, when we tried to find our way there we got really lost and ended up in a not-so-nice area. We ducked into a cellphone store and asked for directions; we were promptly told that we should under NO circumstances go down that street at night because we would get mugged.. or worse. (Hi mom and dad). The people working at the store found us a new restaurant in a nicer area for dinner which turned out to be really good and the restaurant owners were incredibly nice giving us recommendations and discounts on our wine and dessert. The dessert was interesting though- almost everything had rum in it. This ended up being a theme in Naples as I found out when trying a pastry for breakfast the next day. In the morning we tried to find the Bay of Naples but ended up at some shipping yard-- we still got to see the water and smell the ocean though! We really wanted to try the restaurant from the night before so we abandoned our search for the Bay and headed in that direction. The restaurant's neighborhood was perfectly fine in the daylight but I could definitely see why the men advised us not to go there at night. However, the food was SO. EXTREMELY. GOOD.  Definitely worth the visit-- it's called "Da Donato" if anybody happens to be in Naples and is brave enough to venture there.

Overall, I'm glad we went down to Naples because it was definitely an experience and Pompeii alone was worth the visit. We ended up having a really good time and I think our 2 day trip was the perfect amount of time. Naples is probably not the best destination for an extended visit though...

Next Friday I travel to Rome for a day trip for my Etruscan Art class and then am spending the rest of the weekend in Florence "studying for midterms". Ciao i miei amici!