Pompeii & Naples

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Friday (14/11)

It's not traveling on the weekends if we don't have to get up ridiculously early. So following this such pattern, we awoke at 3:30 am in order to catch our early morning train to Naples. We would have caught a much later one like we had planned to, but there was a national transportation strike that threatened to thwart our weekend adventure. But the early morning train was guaranteed to run even during strikes. Sean was rather dubious though that we'd be able to make it to the train station using public buses. It took a little while for the first bus to come, with Sean contemplating his alternative plans, but eventually we did make it on the train to Naples. To pass the time on this two and half hour train ride, we each read The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, a required reading for our honors class, which we would have to lead the discussion on the following week. The book started off innocent enough, but very quickly entered the realm of strange and fucked up. But any who, we made it to the Naples central station and made the connection on to the train to Pompeii, another 45 minute ride.
I initially wanted to check out Vesuvius first, because it knew it closed early than the site to the ruins of Pompeii, but the next bus up the mountain wouldn't be for an hour and a half, so we went to explore the ruins first for three hours. First upon entering, we saw the temple of Jupiter and the old forum of the Roman Empire. We then saw a very small building that housed some artifacts from the ruins behind some metal bars. Mostly just vases and pots, but there were a few preserved humans, some that were standing up and one who was kneeling. There was also a preserved curled up dog inside of a glass case. What a poor doggie. We then wandered around the ruins for quite a while, and I got some nice action shots with the volcano looming over the background. There are a surprising amount of preserved frescos painted on the walls inside some buildings. The restoration process however touches up the paint on certain frescos to better visualize how they are supposed to look. Eventually Sean refilled his water bottle at one of the public fountains; this was a very informative event. Sean asked be to taste the water, with a perplexed look on his face after he already took a drink. It tasted like blood. I'm used to well water, which had iron and other minerals in it giving it a metallic taste. This was not that. This straight up tasted like blood. And even stranger, it smelled like death. Quite put off by the fact that we had just drank the souls of a thousand dead Pompeii citizens, Sean decided to save some for his girlfriend to try. When we returned to Rome though, the water had lost its taste of blood. There was still something slightly off about it, and there was a faint smell of death to it, but we were completely confused as to how the taste of blood could disappear.
After exploring the necropolis and the ampitheater, we left the site of the ruins to catch the two o' clock bus to the top of Mt. Vesuvius. A simple shuttle bus took us about halfway, and then we had to transfer to a large 4x4 bus with very comfy seats, making the next part quite enjoyable. The road up the mountain was bumpy as hell. We were bouncing all over and we had a blast! I would love to outfit the inside of the same truck with a bouncy house and travel up the same road again! It took us most of the way up the volcano, but we still had to walk about twenty minutes to the actual rim of the crater. The view from here was simply amazing. The city of Pompeii below looked so miniscule. And the crater was quite deep, and to my surprise, it was still smoking in one spot, even though I had read online that it had stopped smoking decades ago. The smoke had the exact same sulfur smell as fireworks, which was pretty neat. Along the walkway of the rim, there were two small souvenir shops, where Sean and I picked up a couple of trinkets made from lava rock. I also bought a cup of wine to really soak up and enjoy the stunning view from the crater of Mt. Vesuvius.
When we finally made it back to Naples, we took the metro subway to reach the home of our host Simona for the weekend, (it took a little while to figure out which exact building was hers). After introductions and such, she invited us to go along with her to her capoeira practice that evening and out to eat with her friends after. Being rather interested in this Brazilian musical performing martial art, Sean and I agreed to come with. We were then informed that it would last two and a half hours. The drills they worked on were quite peculiar, as they have rotating members always playing four different instruments, while a pair in the center of the circle of people sort of non contact sparred each other, but with a nice fluid flow of movement. It was practically nonstop for the two and a half hours, which almost lulled us to sleep, given how long our day had been. But around eleven o' clock we went out to eat with her and her capoeira friends at a local Irish pub. There were a total of ten of us, so it took almost an hour for us to be seated, but they brought us out chips while we waited. And oh my, these were the best potato chips I have ever tasted! They just kept bringing out more, and Sean and I even ordered more with our food. We ended up splitting an order of Napoleon ragu meatballs because we wanted to save money. We didn't even order drinks, and turned down multiple offers from her friends to order us shots. This plan backfired when the 270 euro bill came and they decided to split it ten ways. Our host Simona covered one of ours, so together we only paid 27 euros, which was still ridiculous, but we were so out of it at that point. It was super late and we were beyond tired. We felt sort of bad for not really participating in the conversation too much, but they were speaking in Italian most of the time and we were too tired. We were so glad to finally hit the hay when we returned to her apartment at 2 am.





Saturday (15/11)

Having been quite sleep deprived, we slept in a bit late the next day. We finally went out a little before one, when we walked to the historic center of Naples. We happened to walk along this road down the hill that gave a wonderful view overlooking the city. Our first stop was to get some pizza for lunch. I googled to find the best pizza places, and picked the second best place to go to, where we bought a large fried pizza for only a euro, after pushing through the large crowd standing in front of the busy restaurant. It only had ricotta cheese inside of it but it was quite good. Sean also got a fried mac and cheese ball that had beef in the center, which he loved. Having some time to kill before the meeting for the pillow fight that day, we wandered down the famous "presepi" street, which has many many shops and vendors selling small figurines for nativity scenes. But they don't only sell the traditional figures, but also more modern pop culture stars, like Lady Gaga, Barack Obama, and even the Pope. It was rather neat to see. This Christmas themed street also sold a lot of ornaments, many with a jester like figure or what looked like a red pepper. I later found out that the jester is called Pulcinella and is sort of a mascot for the city of Naples. The red pepper is actually a called luck horn called corno which is supposed to ward off the "evil eye" of bad luck.
After purchasing some cheap three euro pillows, we then headed to the piazza where we were meeting the other couchsurfers for the pillow fight. At first it was just us and one other guy who showed up at the same time. After about a half hour, a few others showed up, some CS hosts and a couple of guests (one guy was from Hong Kong), and then we walked to a different piazza where the fight was actually taking place. Here we saw a large group of at least 150 people waiting with their pillows for the fight to commence. It was a huge event, with a dj playing music, a Redbull car giving out free redbull, and some police keeping an eye on the situation. There was a basketball scoreboard that was used to count down to the beginning of the fight at 4 o' clock. At that time, we all began smashing our pillows into each other. It was a big mosh pit with pillows for 25 minutes straight; it was so exhausting. After about 15 minutes a good amount of people just stopped fighting and danced to the music. A few girls got on the shoulders of some guys, but that just made them clearer targets to hit. Our host for the weekend Simona eventually meet up with us at the pillow fight but by that point it had mostly died down. There was such a mess of stuffing left on the ground from the massacre of the pillows involved. But the organizers of the event swept it up into garbage bags, which I would like to think would make for excellent makeshift beanbags chairs.
After the fight, Sean and I headed to the southern end of the city, to walk near the sea and catch a glimpse at the few castles in Naples. We also stumbled upon a small carnival which had some neat attractions, like this astronaut-like gyro spinning ride and this four person game where you shoot rubberballs at each other. It looked like a lot of fun, and I'm curious as to why our carnivals don't have such cool attractions. We then wandered to get some pizza and a couple of beers and just chilled in a piazza for a while, watching the people around us. We had such a long past couple days it was nice to just relax. That night we just returned to the apartment for the rest of the evening, even though our host was nice enough to invite us to go out with her friends, but they weren't meeting until 11 and we didn't feel like another long night out. But it was quite nice catching up with her and telling her everything we did that day.





Sunday (16/11)

That morning I woke up a bit early, around 9 o' clock, to head to the National Archaeological museum, which houses artifacts and things from Pompeii. The reviews online said it was a large museum and you could easily get lost in it. I thought it wasn't that ridiculous, but maybe that's because it seemed like much of it was closed off for maintenance. It was rather neat to see a lot of old statues from the 4th century and beyond. There was also a weird room that had a lot of phallic depictions, in the form of paintings and sculptures. There was one display case that was just full of flying dick ornaments. Hanging clay sculptures of penises with wings and tails. Easily one of the strangest things I have ever seen. And it came from Ancient Romans. I was a bit disappointed with the museum, since they only had frescos and small artifacts from Pompeii, no mummified people that I was really interested in seeing. I'm thinking they must all be in some museum in Pompei (one "i" refers to the modern city of Pompeii).
So I left the museum and tried to figure out with Sean where to meet up for lunch. The best pizzeria in Naples which I was planning on eating at that day was closed on Sundays which I wish I knew earlier. And so we tried to find some other highly rated pizzerias and choose one that had decently cheap pizza. The margherita pizza we had there was pretty good, and they undercharged us, so we went back to the same place we had gone the day before to get some of the fried mac and cheese balls Sean had tried. He was right. They were amazing. Naples just has the best food ever. We had some time to kill before our train and just relaxed in a piazza nearby the station for a while. But on our way to the train. we made a stop at the best pastry shop in Naples to try some of the famous sfogliatelle, a flaky pastry filled with ricotta cheese and some sort of fruit flavoring. It was hot fresh out of the fire oven and it was simply amazing. So delicious, and a great send off from Naples. I fell in love with the food and people of Naples, but I didn't have the strong regret of having to return to Rome like I tended to have on my earlier trips of the semester. Possibly because I have a strong love for Rome now as well.

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