Napoli, Italy

When I was in Rome, a guy from Los Angeles, named Eric, and a girl from Taiwan, named Claire, stayed at the same hostel as me... After going around with them for a couple of days in Rome, Eric and I decided to venture out to Napoli, because I had heard such great things about it from the girls who I met my first night in Rome. My original plan was to go to Florence from Rome, but I figured a few days out of the schedule couldn't hurt.

And it was the best decision!

However, it was rough waters in the beginning. Eric and I took the 2.5 hour train ride from Roma to Napoli. As we got off the train station, though, I felt like I had just landed in a bad part of Istanbul. We didn't yet have a place to stay and Napoli is not like Rome, where there are 5 hostels in every block. We were tired and unsure, and I really didn't want to walk around with the heavy backpack on my back for too long, so we picked a place... Not my first choice because the room only had a double-bed... But whatever! I was also really cranky because of the hostel situation and was totally doubting myself for coming all this way with a guy I've only known for 2 days!!! Anyhow, once we settled in, Eric decided to venture out but I stayed in and just went to bed. That night I don't know how neither one of us didn't fall off the bed because you could have fit another two people in between us, or a really large person... Whatever! And there was so much noise coming from the outside!!! People were talking and singing in the streets... Dogs howling... ambulances going off...

Finally morning came... I told Eric that we were not leaving Napoli until we had the pizza. It's supposed to have the best pizza in the world!!! So we go out, looking for a pizza place, at 10AM!!! Everyone we asked told us it was too early. But we met a nice kid, who told us where to go for some sight-seeing and where we can find some good pizza. So we went back to the hotel, got our bags (as check out time is 11AM) and headed towards the city center.

We walked about 30 minutes to get to a nice safe area where we could do our sight-seeing. I asked Eric to take a picture of me since I felt like a pregnant turtle carrying both my backpacks.

We waited about 30 minutes or so for the pizza places to open up. As we were sitting on a bench, munching on some raisins I had bought from the store back in Rome, a homeless man (at least I think he was homeless) came up to me and opened up his palm... for some raisins... I gave him some, and he then walked away... It was one of the oddest and most heart-warming experiences of my life! I don't think I will ever forget his face.

Finally Eric and I picked a pizza place, because Eric thought it looked like an authentic mom-'n-pop place... Very nice little restaurant. Nice host/owner.. not sure which..

Before we sit down, I asked the guy "could you please tell me what is the best vegetarian pizza you have? one with a lot of veggies?" He points to one on the menu, which is Italian, but someone else has the English menu, and he'll give it to us once she's done. Finally we get the English menu, and we're comparing, and same pizza has different number of ingredients on the Italian menu compared to the English menu. So I ask him again... "this one is the vegetarian one, right?" "Si si si!!!" "OK, I'll take this one." The pizza comes... I'm like "what's this?" And Eric tells me it's anchovies!!! So much for vegetarian, but since I eat fish, I'm OK. Looks good, smells fishy, but OK. I've never had anchovies on my pizza before... makes me think of an 80's movie with Patrick Dempsey, named "Loverboy"... But I digress... The whole pizza tasted like anchovies!!! It wasn't bad, but needless to say, it wasn't the best pizza in the world. Eric got one with artichoke hearts and that looked much better. I think they brought me something other than what I picked... the list I saw did not include anchovies!!!

Then it turns out, as we talk to the pizza guys, it's not really a small mom-'n-pop pizza place at all. They have something like 200 of these places all over, even some in Miami!!! WHAT??? Anyways, I found this out after I took a picture with the pizza guys... You can probably buy these shirts on e-bay or something... Oh wellsky!

We left the pizza place because we could see this castle from the area, and we walked towards it. It looks like something out of a princess story book! This is Castel Nuovo!!! We didn't go inside, but outside was so magical, I'm sure the inside was another world. According to wikipedia, Castel Nuovo was "the nucleus of the historical center of the city." Fantastic!

Never judge a book by its cover... Napoli is a beautiful city, along the coast... once you get past the train station area. The walk along the coast was so wonderful, I forgot how heavy my bags were. We came upon another castle, and Eric went inside, but I just wanted to sit outside and look at the Mediterranean... There were people swimming and sun-bathing right below my feet... There were people getting their wedding pictures taken in front of and inside the castles... It was just really breath-taking! I wish that we could have spent more time there, but we decided to keep moving... And see other even more exciting places!!!

Coming up -- Pompei!!!