Down to the Dirty South: Adventures in Napoli and Pompeii

(March 12-14th)

I know I haven't updated in a very, very long time. As in, two months of a long time. As my favorite cousin often says "I am the worst". So here are all those missing blog posts, beginning midway through March. I’ve included dates for the trips to make things easier to follow.

After Conegliano, we hopped a train to Napoli for the weekend. And what a train ride it was. We took an overnight (which lasts about 10 hours) on Thursday night. Finding a car was hard enough. You can fit three people lying down in one car and six sitting, but some people decide to take up an entire car to themselves on the train. We attempted to take over one such car. After turning on the light, laughing loudly, and yodeling (not even kidding) the guy still wouldn’t budge. Eventually we found two rooms to accommodate the six of us and settled in to sleep. Nicole, Kate, and I were in one car, which we quickly realized had a broken thermostat. At one point in the night I remember turning over to Kate and saying “Gah! We’re roasting alive in here.” She agreed: “It’s a human oven. We. Are. Going. To. Die.” At one point during the night, Kate couldn’t stand it anymore and just took off her long johns (which she sometimes wears as if they’re legging...don’t ask). Our friends Alex, Adam, and Becky told us that when they woke up and walked past our car, they immediately spotted a passed-out Kate, showing her underwear off to the world. Ironically, their car had a broken window, so they froze instead of roasted during the ride there. Overnight train=maybe not the strongest choice.

When we finally got there, Napoli proved to be a completely different region of Italy than the northern Veneto (where Padova is located). Everything in Naples is louder, dirtier, and more overwhelming-at least at first. The best way I can describe it is: Napoli is what happens when Italy doesn’t hold back. Traffic is nuts, with vespas zooming through pedestrian-packed streets and some pretty expressive Italians letting you know how they feel with yells or catcalls. Laundry hangs everywhere, which I love. Napoli overwhelms all your senses, including your taste buds. The food there was some of the cheapest and best we had eaten in Italy. Heavenly pizza (it really is the best I’ve ever tasted) costs only one euro, and was invented there. They make it with very little cheese, letting you fully appreciate the amazing tomato sauce and the dough wrapped up into a little pocket. Arancini (fried rice balls full of meat, cheese, etc.) are also cheap and delicious.

We did a little sightseeing, mainly at the archaeological museum and underground in the “subterranean tour”. The underground tour was pretty cheesy, but it was cool to explore the area beneath the city and see some old military stuff. The archeological museum was impressive-lots of statues, Pompeii mosaics, and even the famous “penis room” with all of the naughtier art found in the ash-covered city. At night, we finished up with a big dinner and juice box wine (classy) from the grocery store, enjoyed while exploring the docks and the castle. As my friend Becky loves to say (and did say at the time) “Oh, the places we get drunk in!”

The next day we took a bus to Pompeii and spent several hours exploring the ruins. It really is incredible. So much is preserved, from the structures themselves to mosaics on the floors inside of them. There are still some bodies on display, preserved by the ash. The figures are haunting, twisted in positions of struggle and agony. More than the impressive city itself, those bodies give you a real feel for what happened and what was lost under the ash.

After Pompeii, we ended up eating what might have been the worst pizza ever (ironically in a city which also boasts the best pizza ever). Exhausted, we gave in and stopped at one of the touristy places right outside of Pompeii, only to find out that the pizza was microwaved and...just disgusting. An Italian couple sat down at the table behind us, after we tried to silently communicate to them that they should get the hell out of there before they fell into the same tourist trap. The man took one bite of the pizza, shook his head, and didn’t touch it after that. The worst part is, we paid more for the bad pizza than for the good kind. What a cruel joke.

All in all though, Napoli and Pompeii were incredible and a different atmosphere than the Italy we were used to in the north. And we were about to head even further north to Bolzano...