Naples and Pompeii

This post is a bit belated and does not mention my current inability to get back to England thanks to Iceland and its stupid volcano! Off to Madrid for a few days and trying to catch a train to Paris then bus to London...ahhh!

For the first time since I've been in Europe, I got off of the train station in Naples and was completely underwhelmed. Not entirely sure why Naples gets built up as such a tourist destination (or how I got the impressions I had of it) but the reality is that the streets are rather dirty, littered with grafitti and there is a complete lack of the charm that has made the rest of Italy so wonderful. The dodgy walk to the hostel kept us all on our toes for what we thought as an imminent attack. Upon our arrival at the acclaimed hostel known as "Giovanni's House" which has recently been rated the world's best hostel, a lot of our perceptions changed. We walked in the door to find a nice old man that greeted us with glasses of water and had us all sit around his small computer desk. We got settled, he pulled out a map, a few books and proceeded to give us a description of everything Naples had to offer complete with history, pictures and crime statistics. Turns out that, contrary to popular perceptions, Naples is actually one of the least dangerous places in Italy due to the prescence of the mafia. Armed with 5 colors of highlighters, Giovanni mapped out a tour and showed us pictures of all the things to see in the city of Naples. We all just sat there with smiles on our faces, unable to believe the wonderful hospitality of the hostel owner when compared to some of the places we have stayed in the past. It was also funny how he didn't hesitate to frown upon many of the places around Naples to attempt to sway us to stay within the city. He called the Amolfi Coast, famous for its gorgeous cliffs, villages and tourism just "water and rocks," which, according to Giovanni you could find anywhere: "Naples is a beautiful city." After his historical presentation, he called and made reservations for us at what he called "the best pizza place in Naples" - it should also be noted that pizza was invented there so we had to go try it! After the pizza and calzones we all had, it was hard to not believe Giovanni about his reccomendations. To top off the evening, he brought chocolate around for all of us before bed..what a guy!

For our first full day in Naples, our group split up with a few people to head to the island of Capri just of the Naples coast and a few of us to make an attempt to do the tour Giovanni had given us. The things he told us to do weren't quite as cool as we had built them up to be after his speech but spending the day outside in gorgeous weather and spending a few hours tanning totally made up for. Not to mention we bought a real cheap little soccer ball and showed off our lack of talent in various public spaces around the city. Coming back to the hostel in early afternoon and spending some time relaxing and reading on Gio's rooftop balcony was just what the doctor ordered for me after a week of hiking and travelling. He even greeting us with home made spaghetti pie when we all returned for our day's explorations! The night concluded with another pizza run and a good night sleep since we had to get up real early to head off to Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii.

After a short train ride, the first thing on our list was to hike up the volcanno infamous for destroying, and in turn, perserving Pompeii. We got a rather unsteady van about 3/4 way up the summit then set off on foot to the crater. Vesuvius isn't really a lava volcanno but looking into an active crater is still a pretty cool experience. More incredible than the mountain itself were the panoramic views of the surrounding area and the deep blues and greens of the Sea. Positively glorious! A barrage of pictures later, we hiked back down, got on the train and headed south towards Pompeii. Keeping pace with our usual quota of 1 travel mishap per city and end up going backwards before we could get there but it was all in good fun and we made the best of it. Pompeii itself isn't much for exciting to blog about however it was really awesome to see. So much of the city is preserved that you can pretty easily imagine what life used to be like for the great Roman city before the infamous volcano. Remains of the entire city are pretty intact instead of just monumental structures like in Rome or Athens so you can distinguish between the different dynamics that make up a city as a whole. With a map in hand and a little book that gives a brief description of each site we made our own sort of walking tour by having someone read the information outloud as we went. Like I said, not much to write about but still a great day.

From Pompeii we headed back to Giovanni's to grab out stuff, bid him farwell and thank him for the wonderful hospitality. To the train station we went where we hopped on a train for Rome! Of course, our train got delayed almost an hour but we were so excited it didn't much matter. We arrived in Rome three hours later, checked in, and immediately went out to check out the city at night passing by Treviso Founain and the Coloseum, both of which were absolutely glorious all lit up! It would only be the beginning of a few wonderful days :)

Just relaxing in my hostel in Athens at the moment, wishing I had another week here or on the islands. It may just be infatuation but I dare say I am in love with this place after only two days! If nothing else, I now have a wonderful excuse to come back when I have a bit more disposable income...if anybody wants in just let me kno :) I also can't believe that I head back to London in a few short days, maybe even before this gets posted. What a trip it has been!

Talk to everyone soon :)

Cheers,
Patrick