Day 2 in Naples

Nathan and I started our day early on Friday with a train ride: my first! I was expecting a little more "Hogwarts Express", but since we got cheap tickets it was more like a really long subway ride outside. The views from the train were beatiful though! Lots of mountains, fields, vineyards, and olive trees. We could even see the sea for a bit! We knew we were getting close to Napoli when we could see *dun dun duuuuun* VESUVIUS!

We met up with the Scotts at the train station and roamed around the cool galleria while Chris and Yuki took off briefly to give some gifts they had brought for family members. I drug Nathan into Sephora to look at the make-up (I left my purse at home, but one of the cards I DID bring was my Sephora beauty card lol). I didn't get anything more than a sample of perfume, but it's cool to see stores I love from America are the same everywhere. And it's cool when the sales staff recognizes that you don't speak their language because they don't bother you. Anyway, so we bought some Baci candy (chocolates with hazelnuts in them that I got all the time in EPCOT), which was one of the things I was MOST looking forward to on this trip, believe it or not!

We met up with the Scotts again and Chris took us to this pizza place recommened to him by his uncle. I wish I'd met his uncle so I could've given him a BIG FAT KISS. The pizza was AAAAmazing! Naples is the capitol of pizza. It was invented there, so they know how to do it right. Perfect crust, perfect sauce, big slabs of fresh mozzerella, basil, and olive oil. So good. I mean, I still love me some Papa John's, but the pizza I had in Naples doesn't even belong in the same category. So yeah, good pizza.

We then took a walk down to the water (it smelled like home! Mix the pine-y smell of the Salisbury park with the salty Ocean City air... I closed my eyes and pretended I was home for a couple of seconds). The view of the Mediterranian Sea and Mount Vesuvius was beautiful! And we walked around the sea-side castle. I don't know anything about the castle, but it did have a cool blast mark from a cannon still visible on the side.

We caught a bus back to the train terminal so we could catch a metro to Pompei. Yuki can attest to this: the bus experience in Naples is not fun. Luckily, we were the first ones on the bus the first time we used it, so we got seats. Actually, the first time was pretty cool because this old guy had an equally old Scottish Terrier with him that sat at my feet and poked his head up between my knees so I could pet him. The second time, however, we were not the first ones, so we were jammed in like sardines. You can only say "Mi scusi" so many times before you just give up and accept the fact that you WILL be touching strangers for long periods of time. I think personal space is a very American thing. Just look at those videos of Japanese trains where they shove people in. Yuki hates them, so I think she was really meant to be American :) Oh! And I had my first Gypsy experience! While buying the metro ticket, this old lady straight out of a fairy tale (think of the beginning of Beauty and the Beast, BEFORE the witch turned beautiful) had a cup she was shoving in our faces for coins. I reached into my pocket and dropped in 20 cents, then she moved on to Chris. Chris gave her something too, then she said to him some thing about "tredici", which is 13 in Italian. She told him to remember the number 13. Spooooky.

So we got off the metro and followed our short and hairy tour guide to Pompei. No, not Danny DeVito, a cute little puppy. One of the many dogs just roaming around the ancient city. Pompei was cool because it's very immersive. You can walk down the ancient streets, into peoples' homes, touch their walls, and almost see what it was like over a thousand years ago. I could see why they'd want to live there. The views of the volcano and sea were great (maybe a little too great). Seeing the bodies was really sad. Since it was so long ago, the tragedy seems more like just a story. To the Italians back then, it was like Katrina or the tsunami or Haiti's earthquake. To be honest, though, it was kind of cool how they were able to pour the plaster into ash and fill the negative space where there bodies had decomposed so we could see the position they were in when they died. Anyway, sad/morbid things aside, this random group of workers wanted to take their pictures with Yuki and me. At first we thought they wanted us to take a picture OF them, but then they had us hop in the picture WITH them. Yuki, if you're reading this, did they ever e-mail you the picture? Haha, random.

So we split from the Scotts because we were heading back to Rome and they were staying in Naples another night. Our train ride back was less than pleasant. We could have spent the extra 30 Euros to get a faster, better train, but I was still sour about the 70 we had lost to the cab driver the night before so I got the 10 Euro-a-piece tickets. It was the same exact train, but for some reason it was an hour longer (more stops I guess). It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't FREEZING. We slept a little at first, but then it was just too cold so we cuddled up and played 20 questions. 3 hours later, we got McDonalds dollar menu dinners (Euro menu, I guess) and scurried back to the hotel to our nice warm beds.