Napoli * Sorrento * Pompeii

Headed down south for the weekend. It was a toss-up between Swizterland and S. Italy. I didn't make up my mind till the last minute. I shall have to save the mountains and snow some later date, because I boarded a train for Napoli. And what a train ride: what was scheduled to be 18 hours ended up being 24+. The Italiano Treini are deplorable. Always late and unreliable and poorly maintained. But it was an interesting trip: we rode half of it talking to Jan, a Romanian bouncer who warned us that we would most certainly be mugged, possibly wake up in an ice-bath without half our organs in the morning, and possibly be murdered in the city of Napoli, based on the fact that we were blondes and American. He also said some things about O'Bama that are not safe enough to be repeated online. But he was amusing, and he liked us, and gave us each a few lei as a souveneir to remember him by.
Contrary to the warnings, we had a wonderful time in Naples, although we spent little time actually in Naples. We stayed at a great Australian hostel, ate some incredible margherita pizza which was fired right in front of us, went to Mass friday morning at the Carmina Cathedral, made our way to Pompeii, found Phil, went to Sorrento and had a fabulous afternoon and evening in that Mediteranean city, ate some more incredible food, and made it safely out of the city with all our members and money. Pompeii was absolutely incredible and so worth it. We spent almost 4 hours there, still didn't see everything. It was so cool.

Ancient crosswalk, with wagon weel rut marks in the stone street.

That is me, with Mt. Vesuvius in the background, sitting on a wall that was built over two thousand years ago.

Workers at the excavation site

A Pompeiian fastfood stall

An orange tree that provided us with our lunch

Mars

A rather sloppy but still very striking and well preserved Venus that has survived an earthquake, a volcano, millions of tourists, and 1939 years

These British boys were so funny. They had the stongest accents and we were imitating them all weekend afterwards (Hey, that's not fair - he got one and I didn't!). The one kid was posing like a gladiator, or so he thinks, for his friend.

the Ampitheater

Sorrento waterfront - kind of out of place...pictures got out of order.

A rather unfortunate sombody who was in the wrong place at the wrong time August 24th, 79 A.D. It is incredible. Michelangelo sculpted a statue of a man out of raw Marble. Mt. Vesuvius made a raw man into a statue.

I will always remember Napoli for its homeless dogs. They are everywhere. 9 of them kept us company and entertained us the whole night in the Napoli train station.

But my favorite dog was not wild, but a German shepherd at Phil's hostel. She wanted people to throw large rocks for her like Mindy used to. She was quite smart too - by the time I left, after playing with her for half an hour while Phil and Jon laid in the hammocks on the lawn, she had learned three words in English: come, and down and sit. Thats more than I can say I learned in that amount of time in Italian.

Phil eating tentacle! But wait, where did Phil come from? We knew Phil was going to be in Capri and Naples for the weekend. He had set out the night before us. But I didn't really think there was any hope of seeing him. Napoli is gigantic, and we had no plans to meet him. Boarding a train from Pompeii, there he was. The poor guy had been through the ringer: he had left his passport and Eurail and other important stuff on a train, and had quite a time of it for the past 24 hours when we found him. But at that point, things were starting to look up for him and he was getting things ironed out. After the afternoon and evening with us, he went on to Capri and had a wonderful time, for which I was very glad. And I was very happy to have bumped into him - it was quite fun.

My first taste of authentic Neapolitan seafood: a calamari pasta dish at a little private restarant in Sorrento. Clams and squid and tomatoes and herbs and pasta drenched in olive oil. Very strong local red wine, served from the tap in a flask. Italian music. A little old man waiter, Luigi, who was like an Italian version of Chuck, who tried to trick me into drinking balsamic vinegar.