Napoli + Pompei + Amalfi

Thursday morning I went and met Mama and Papa at Termini. Kim came with me because she had to pick up a friend who was visiting. Unfortunately on the bus, I realized I had forgotten my passport and had to go back and get it. Oh well, we ended up getting a taxi there but we saw lots of 150th celebrators on the way to the Gianicolo.

The train to Napoli was amazingly fast and fancy first class! We got there in about and hour and the second we got off the train there were some sketch guys offering taxis to Pompei. We did not go with them and instead got an actual cab to our hotel. The hotel was amazing and really modern on the inside even though it was very old on the outside. We stop at a caffe for lunch that was really disgusting. The first bad food since I have had in Italy. We then went to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli. It was probably one of the best museums I've ever been too. They had all of the Farnese pieces that had been missing from the palazzo Farnese in Rome (where I went the week before). After the museum we went down to the bay and saw the Castel Nuovo and the Palazzo Reale. We also got coffee at the oldest caffe in Naples which was also one of the oldest in Italy. For dinner we went to this great place pretty close to our hotel. The food was amazing! Right when we were finishing, a big group of about 15 young people came in and Mama and Papa bought them around of champagne or something to help celebrate the holiday.

The next morning, we got up early and had breakfast at the hotel. There we met Caroline and Valerie who were from Northern Canada. Caroline came up to us to ask us if we knew where in Napoli she could buy some electric hair rollers since she broke hers plugging them without the adaptor. We found out they were going on our tour as well. The rest of our tour group was a german couple who were very quiet and did not really speak English or Italian and a very stylish Italian couple. Our first van driver was named Mario and an ex-Carabinieri and he talked like Chico Marx. When describing the problems with Napoli he said "Yooh hava da stupida mah-ther end da stupida fa-ther anda yooh make-a da stupida keedsa." He had so much energy and was so loud but was able to convince us to switch our afternoon tour from Vesuvius to Amalfi because then he would get to drive us. Fortunately, our afternoon driver turned out to be Michele who was friendly, calm, and spoke good English like a person not a cartoon character. 

Pompei was really amazing even though it was raining the whole time. A cool thing about the streets was that they had raised curbs and raised stones for crossing. Designed to avoid stepping the the nastiness in the streets, but useful in the rain. Also because of the clouds, we really couldn't see Vesuvius at all. Lunch was funny because it was at this huge restaurant just outside Pompei that was completely designed to get tour tourists. To get in you walk down a long hall that had all souvenir tables. We ate in the huge banquet sized room filled with four person tables. There was also a huge group of around 50 Asian tourists. The waiters came in with huge platters of pasta and just went down the line. It was really funny to watch. After lunch, we had to wait just inside the restaurant a bit for our driver to come back for the Amalfi coast part. While we were waiting, we kept watching this stray dog try to sneak in and he got in about three times. He would come up to us happy and wagging his tail and then the waiter would come and shout "Isci, Isci!!" (which we guess is a Napoli dialect of "esci" for "go out") and the dog looked sad and ran out. I wonder how many times a day the dog comes in and gets chased out because both him and the waiter seemed used to it. There were stray dogs all over Napoli, both outside by the souvenirs and restaurants and also in the ruins. We saw one just chillin' inside the baths. There was also one eating a big plastic bag full of spaghetti on the ground. 

The Amalfi drive was beautiful even in the rain. Right away we were really glad not to be climbing to the top of Vesuvius (especially since we learned that it is over due for a very violent explosion). The drive went from about Sorrento to Salermo. We stopped a bunch of times to take pictures. The mountains went straight down into the water and there were all these little houses built right on the edge. They all had about 700 stairs from the road to the water. It would be terrible to have to do anything there because nothing is close or convenient. The mountains were covered in fog and looked like something out of national geographic. It would be amazing (but probably crazy crowded) to go back an see it on a Sunny spring/summer day. In Amalfi, Papa and I went in the church (Saint Andrew, I think). The outside was guilded gold but the inside was all white and marble. We got there about 10 minutes before it closed though and did not have too much time to walk around it. It turned out that it was the church out bus driver had gotten married in. That night, we went back to city and had dinner at the same place from the night before. The waiter remembered us and sat us at "our table." The food was delicious again and he kept bringing/recommending house specialties.