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.

Roma: a stolen glance

So, here we are, arriving in Roma on the morning of Saturday, November 1st. We have Napoli behind us, that is a start. We intended to take the first treni toward home when we got there. Turns out we are stuck there until 17:00, the earliest we can get a connection to Wien.
Stuck in Roma! Are you kidding me? Bring it On! We first stopped for a little refreshment - a coffee and pastry shop. While we were there some 8 or 9 nuns came in for a shot of bean juice to jumpstart their day. That was the first thing I noticed about Rome: it is infested with nuns. I should have kept a tally.
Then we started walking - walked all day - saw a huge amount of Rome on foot. Later we traced our routes and we snaked all over the city.
It was a great preview: we are going there as a school next Friday anyway - spending 4 days there, so we felt like we were sneaking a look at a Christmas present early. Walking out of Roma termini, we agreed that we would at very least save the Coloseum and St. Peter's for when we all go together. We just had to save that much as a suprise. There ought to be plenty in Rome to look at without going there.

Caesar

Art booths in Piazza Nuova, what used to be the site of Chariot races

Castel Sant' Angelo

All Saint's Day Mass in the Gesu. My favorite church in all of Europa this far, and that is saying a lot.

They had a mirror set up so you could look at the magificent ceiling for as long as you liked without getting a crook in your neck.

Noon, November 1st, 2008 - Feast of All the Holy Saints in Heaven. This is my view: the Holy Father Benedict XVI, direct sucessor of St. Peter. I tried to stay away from the Vatican until Thursday, but St. Peter's pulls you like a magnet (or attracts like a bug-light) and there is no resisting. We realized afterwards that without intending to we walked almost straight to it from the Roma Termini.

We got there at ten minutes till the angelus. They were just throwing the rug out the window: could it really be? Is the Holy Father really about to meet us here? Yeah, on a morning that I had planned to be on a train going home, I was standing in St. Peter's square looking up at Papa Benedict!

(I did not zoom in with this picture, so this is how close we actually were.)

The crowd of some 140 saints, the church tirumphant, in marble, all unique, crowded around the church militant in the square below on their collective feast day.

A 5 kilo jar of Nutella. That is 11 pounds. But I wouldn't put it past Andrea and Liz.

Coming out of Mass at the Gesu, there was a marathon being run, and one of the older guys was singing Italian love songs as he ran and stopping to dance with pretty women!

The Egyptian Obelisk is Vatican Square

The view from Ponte St. Angelo

Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II

St. Peter

Yep, that's the Pantheon!!!! It was locked at the moment- I will go to Mass there next week though - Mass in what was built to be Roman temple to all the gods!!!

Trevi fountain

A candid shot of a metal man street performer taking a cigarette break and counting his change. (Kyle, he has a water bottle just like the one you used to have)

Santa Maria degli Angeli. Michelangelo's last work. It is in the Ruins of Diocletian's public Bathhouse.

In the Bath/Santa Maria degli Angeli, there was this cool calendar of the constellations that stretched diagonally across the whole floor.

There was a free organ concert on this thing that we just missed.

Piazza della Republica as the sun was setting.

MMMMmmm!!!!!!!

The picture is dark, but we saw a little baby girl being baptized in Santa Maria degli Angeli

Probably one of the most beautiful Icons I have ever laid eyes on.

This morning, we checked off the last day on our Eurail pass. I am a little glad of it, although also saddened. I walked back in the gorgeous November beauty the 3 km. from the Kienberg-gaming trainstation, comparing stories with other students about their weekend adventures and watching them stick out their thumbs and get picked up a couple at a time. I wanted to walk this one last time, taking it all in: the feeling of a shrunken stomach, three days without a shower, two without a bed, sun on my face, blisters on my feet, camera full of pictures, my little bag that I thought I packed so lightly and yet at this moment feeling so ridiculously heavy, and a heart full of memories: walking back to this beautiful Kartause that I call home.