Naples or When To Start Writing Your Obituary

Well 36 hours of travel later... Yeah. That was fun.

Actually it was fun! I settled into my seat and in my row were two Canadian girls (patterns are emerging in my trip... how many pairs of Canadians can I meet? Is there a limit?) and nearby were three American girls who had made the ferry ride the other way a week earlier so they were our resident experts. It was really nice! Shannon and Joanna (the Canadians) and I hung out the whole time, ate spaghetti for dinner and talked about Greece and travelling. The ferry is about 15 hours so there was a lot of talk and a bit of sleep, one of those meetings that wouldn't have happened if I had taken tonight's ferry. When we got to Bari we had 4 hours until our train so we went to McDonalds (it's okay, I didn't eat the food so my rule stands, although I did buy a bottle of water, maybe that counts?)

I swapped books with the last Canadians and had two really horrible historical novels to get through. Truly horrible. One was described on the back as "misery lit" which was a bad sign right away. They both fit that description - how many bad things could happen to a woman between 1900 and 1940? They overlapped with dead parents, abusive guardians, unmarried motherhood and the inevitable rescue being marriage. I read them anyway. Can you believe I gave away Hunchback of Notre Dame for those? Oh well, there's a book swap here so I imagine I'll take advantage of that, and leave behind the one of those books that I kept. Someone else can enjoy the story inspired by Catherine Cookson's mother.

Whenever I told people (especially girls) that I was going to Naples they had some sort of horrible story to tell me about muggings and pickpockets and the Mafia. I wasn't too concerned about the last one, but I met three girls who were so put off by some stories they'd heard that they cancelled their trip to Naples and headed straight to Rome. So I was mildly concerned. Not overwhelmingly so, but enough to wonder whether I should splurge on a taxi and whether I should have bought groceries to make my own dinner. Realistically I travelled alone through Stone Town, Athens and Istanbul so I didn't think it could be too much worse! But I got here safely, and found the hostel without too much bother (okay so the instructions were horrific but once I found the right street it was easy, so I just approached people on the street with "Scuzi? Where?" and the accompanying pointing at the name on my page. Easy as pie!

When I got in the reception guy was out for five minutes but I could not wait to shower so I dumped my stuff in reception (way security concious me) and went to shower. It was magical, except the smallest shower I have ever ever seen, let alone been in. I ended up leaving all my clothes outside (with my wallet and passport - again with the good security) and then heading into the toilet in my towel with my stuff to get dry and dressed! I can't imagine the fun someone bigger than me would have had! Then I checked in and went to find a pizza place called Da Michele, familiar to all those who read Eat, Pray, Love because a group I met on the bus invited me to meet them. Sadly I was half an hour late and had missed them, and the queue was massive so instead I got a sandwich from a deli and wandered the streets. Yeah. I wandered the streets of the most dangerous city in Italy (alleged) after dark on my own. Sorry Mum. But look, I'm fine! People are so dramatic! I didn't feel unsafe at all, though I did keep a hand on my purse at all times. After my sandwich I found gelato (of course) and so I had nutella gelato and vanilla gelato and I'm going back tomorrow for lemon and raspberry! The man wouldn't let me have nutella and lemo together, he said it wouldn't work. I trusted him. So within two hours of Naples I had not had pizza, but I had eaten gelato! It worked for me.

I got back around 8.30 (I've been told that after 9.30 is when it gets a bit dodge) and got chatting to a Kiwi girl in my dorm! It was exciting, there aren't many New Zealanders around. I didn't have to explain where Christchurch was or what Whitcoulls sells (stores here are mostly just books or stationery or DVDs, selling all those is weird apparently.) She left for Rome today but we overlap by a day so might catch up for a walk or coffee or something. I may be travelling alone, but I do appear to be collecting people in Rome this week!

So I got up around 7.30, ate my free breakfast (sub-standard, but apparently standard or better than standard for Itally, they should learn from Istanbul!) I pulled out my map and the hostel owner showed me a good walking route to see the best sites of the city. His English isn't great but we communicated fine, when I got back he made his wife check that I was okay so I guess he's self-concious about his language skills. His English is a lot better than my Italian! Although I learned the word rotto today, broken.

I headed to the Archaeological Museum first because I read that it was kind of disorganised and I though I wouldn't have the energy for it later in the day. It was interesting, really good exhibits in some places and then just old stuff hanging on the wall in other areas! I probably saw some very interesting and important things but I don't know what! They did have a weird let's-educate-kids thing which was conversations between a fictional family. There was a boy who has a lisp, a talking mouse and a ten year old girl who fell in love with an eleven year old boy who lived in the museum. I think I missed some of the story but it didn't make sense at any point.

I need to adjust my head a bit now that I'm in Italy because I kept seeing things from the 1600s and thinking "400 years? That's nothing, if it were dog years I might be impressed!" Greece is just so unbelievably old that I've lost perspective on the rest. So I didn't enjoy the painted ceilings as much as I probably should have but I got big thrills from the mosaics because I saw the Alexander Mosaic! You don't seem excited enough. I saw the ALEXANDER MOSAIC!!!! Yeah, it was a big moment for me!

And the mosaics room is right next to the Gabinetto Segretto (Secret Cabinet) which is wehere they hide all the dirty stuff! Wow is my education complete now... Those Romans (and Greeks and Etruscans) were not prudes. I had a funn moment towards the end of the room when I read the sign first and it said "Goose, hen and duck adorning a herm in the shape of a cock." You are all thinking what I was thinking but it was, in fact, a rooster shaped herm. Yeah. Tricky people, first they show you a room full of frescoes with the kama sutra on them and then they call you dirty minded when poultry aren't your first thought! Ha, turns out those frescoes were really practical. Lots of the prostitutes (pornai in Greek, my etymology lesson for the day) were slaves and lots of the clients were foreign traders so there were frequent language issues, hence the need for visual aids! You just point at what you want, much like me ordering stuff at the patisserie except with more nudity.

After the museum it was time to wander churches for about 2 hours. It was neat, I was surprised at how different they all were. There were the hugely ornate and the really plain and all between too. And a wedding in the Duomo so I felt totally intrusive, I slipped in with a tour group (speaking German so I'm glad they didn't need a password) but it did seem kind of rude. Good reason not to have your wedding in one of the city's biggest tourist draws though. They do love their saints here, each church and area and probably family has their own and for the first two at least you can buy souvenirs of all kinds! I wandered along to the waterfront and saw the Castel d'something, the Palazzo Reale and the Teatro di San Carlo but I didn't go in to any of them because it costs money and I just couldn't be bothered really, I'd just spent a long time looking at the insides of interesting buildings and I was enjoying the sun and the outsides of interesting buildings. I did go to the Teatro museum which was free and saw lots of pretty costumes, now I want to see every ballet ever, starting with Romeo and Juliet in Lyon!

I headed up the hill on the Furniculare (?) and went to Castel Sant'Elmo which is on top of a hill and has a really great view of the city. It was neat, I took the lift up but found a long pathway down so I walked through under the castle and came out at the back so I could walk around the building and get a good look.

That was pretty much it for me, I was tired so I went to the grocery store and headed to the hostel. This hostel has a full kitchen so I made myself some pasta, it was quite exciting to cook for the first time in five weeks! And that's it. Hope life's good with you, it is with me!

Oh how could I forget? I had pizza for lunch, nice and simple and very good, and gelato in the afternoon so with my self-made pasta I'm as Italian as high fashion!