Naples

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Having heard mixed reviews about Naples, I was intrigued at what would greet us as we go off the train. The graffiti covered industrial station was bz far the most un attractive in italy. We wandered out of the station to find the bus station with the sign posts being bloody confusing, and me getting told that i was to beautiful to some thing by a strange old bloke who followed us for a while.

Eventually we found the R2 bus, and dispite the trollies best efforts to foil our no back pack carrying plan we all made it on to the bus and a freindly driver told us where to get off for the hostel. Hostel of the Sun (HOS) was located near the harbour which made next mornings trip to Capri easy.

We spent the day doing personal admin before heading out to dinner with Lucy and a few of the people from her hostel for dinner, it was dissapointing conisderiong naples pizza is suposed to be the best, but then I can't say i've been that impressed with pizza in Italz atal.

P.s From that day missed out essential information.... We met a hot German guy working for the civil service... we were sitting in our dorm and he came in and said hi and we said hi back open mouthed, he just looked at us strangly and said "do you speak english?" to which we felt a tad daft....

Next morning we woke up easly and really annoyed a grumpy canadian guy who dispite warning him that we were leaving early still got arsey as we moved our stuff out of the dorm room. We walked down to the harbour with Lucy, Nelli, and Jo and boarded the cheap ferry over to Capri. The ferry over was lovely, dispite being hawked at by a group of guys as the 5 of us put on sun cream. We posed for photo, taken by a couple that the digital generation forgot, new fangled camera's are a mystery to them.

As soon as we hit shore it was off to the cool waters lapping the stoney costline. The stones were a bitch, when I rule the world all beaches will be stone free. We messed about in the water for a while using an underwater didgital camera to film us sumasauting and the fish underneath us.


A boat trip around the island got us out of the mid day sun, and was a great way to see parts of the island not accesable by foot, although it did get me when I was feeling the early morning wake up and so spent the time in a grump. From the big boat we got into a tiny owing boat (i was not impressed) to be charged 10 euros a person to see some blue glowing water in a cave, prettz yes, worth 10E and a tip? NO, it barely lasted 2 mins inside the cave and aour rower didn't even sing. Don't bother with it leave it to the idiot tourists.

We had lunch at a resutant near the shore, Capri fish made a pleasent change from pizza and pasta continually for the past 10 days. We hopped onto the Funicular Railway to get up and over the mountain, and headed down to the beach on the other side, it was far more packed than the other and the sea was full of mini jelly fish, I didn't like those at all. We soon gve up with this side of the island, and headed into the centre for ice cream with the pretty cow parade.

We waited for our ferry and had a bottle of wine and a rather loud game of "shit" which had all the locals staring at us, before boarding our ferry back to main land and heading off into our dorms for a well required shower.

We met one of the most ignorant americans in our new dorm, he had been travelling around eastern europe, but it wasn't up to scratch with america so he hated it (the people are 'rude' 'slow' 'unhelpful' they don't do this that or the other..... the food was shit.... blah. blah. blah.) Did make me wonder why he spent so much time there if he hated it, he was one of those people that customs just should not let out of the country.

We woke up late next morning despite planning to get up early and beat the heat at Pompeii, instead we moved into out private air con room for our final night in Italy. We went off for a wander to the post office to get a box so as we could put our back packs on a diet, sheading about 7kgs in total, they are so light now its fantastic!!

That evening we headed off to Pompeii and spent a pleasant couple of hours strolling around in a near empty tourist attration, there were no sheep herding americans to be seen, it was bliss. Much to my disapointment the childhood phantom Pompeii dog (i swear I saw it on a video in primary school) could not be found, and I resigned to the fact that I did probably make this image up in my head. We did however see mumified bodies in plaster casts and lots of ruins of houses and baths. It was a realy interesting place, and it was so much better doing it in the evening when it was largely just us and it was lovely and cool.

We ended out last night in Naples with take away pasta, beer, and a film in our room, realising we needed to wake early to get across to Bari to collect our tickets for Albania.

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