Following the Dream

Christian October 2nd, 2008

     Upon arriving at the Naples train station we were greeted by a red eyed crackhead when trying to buy tickets for the local train.  We assumed he wanted money, or Casey.  He was talking very fast and not making any sense.  We shrugged him off and continued to wait for our train to our hostel.  While waiting, we noticed there were many “shady” characters around.  It did not help our feelings about the place when there are “watch for pickpockets” signs and an audio announcement in english every five minutes saying the same.  Our hostel was located only a 10 minute train ride away.  As we got off the train, we were stuck behind these two older men.  Something shiny caught my eye when walking behind them.  As soon as I figured out what it was, I was not surprised but received confirmation about the safety in Naples.  The men passed the shiny 9mm handgun between them, inspecting it, and putting an admiring finger on the trigger.  As soon as they noticed I was looking, they quickly put it away.  On the way to the hostel, we passed some panhandlers and got some rough looks.  Our hostel ended up being nicer than we were expecting after our journey to get there.  Unfortunately our room was not ready, so we spent some time going through some of the information the hostel had on local sights to get a gameplan for our time in Naples.  After our room was made up, we hauled up our stuff in the elevator and were surprised by the room.  It looked like a hotel room and was spacious.  We relaxed for a little while before deciding to go to Pompeii.

     Pompeii is a ancient Roman town that was covered with meters of ash when the Vesuvias volcano erupted way back when.  This allowed for the preservation of the buildings, streets, and people.  It was only a 20 minute train ride from the hostel.  We were blown away with the sheer size of the site.  It was much larger than we expected.  Pompeii really is the complete town as it was in the olden days.  We tried to complete the recommended 2-3 hour tour of the ruins, but got sidetracked (lost) and took our own tour as we usually end up doing.  It was amazing seeing these houses that the people lived in, still intact.  In some of the rooms, there were original fresco paintings on the walls.  Its crazy that these are the same paintings that the people who lived there would have saw on a daily basis. 

As we were walking, we noticed that there was a dog that was on display, that was covered in ash.  It was erie, but was even more erie when we found a spot where there was a group of people (adults and children) that were turned into ash mummies.  Some of these people were covering their faces, others hands up in the air as if they were trying to prevent the ash from landing on them.  It was unreal to see these people that suffered this horrible tragedy frozen in that moment. 

Apparently, many of the people who lived in the town, especially, the rich had dogs.  They were used as guard dogs.  We passed a few houses that had mosaics of dogs on the front steps, we were told that one even translated directly to “Beware of Dog”.  To this day, dogs still wander the ruins.  Some of them are very cute, and most look well fed.  We sat on a bench for a while watching a few of them chasing a lizard around. 

After that, we stopped at a lookout over the town.  On the way out of the ruins, we walked through a few mansions with fountains, gardens, and detailed fresco paintings.  It was really a great site to see.  The last building that we stumbled upon was actually a brothel.  We did not realize until we were inside staring up at paintings of all kinds of different sexual positions.  There were six or so tiny rooms, each fitted with a bed.  It was a little comical that this was one of the best preserved buildings that we had seen.  We left the ruins just as it started raining, perfect timing.
     We were starving by that point, but no restaurants were open until 8PM.  We were forced to go to the grocey store to buy junk food to hold us over (no kitchen at the hostel).  We pigged out in the hostel room, taking showers and relaxing after our long day.  Naples is known as the home of Pizza.  It is almost a sin to visit Naples without sampling a traditional pizza from Naples.  There was a place that was recommended by the hostel as well as a couple of people over the internet.  We walked the three blocks from our hostel to the pizza place to get a couple of pizzas.  It was 8:02 when we ordered our pizza to-go.  The place was packed with people, waiting around for their pizzas.  In the small kitchen, there is one guy who works the dough, another that puts toppings on, another that puts the pizzas in the brick oven fueled by wood, and one final one who boxes them up and hands them out.  The guys call out the order number that is coming up and you have to step up to get your pizza.  We must have fit in a little, locals would keep asking us in Italian what number it was up to.  The guys were super backed up, locals were even growing impatient.  After waiting on the sidewalk loaded with people for what seemed like forever, we had our pizza.  Even if it was now after 9:30, we were still hungry.  The walk back to the hostel was a tease, the aroma sneaking out of the box.  It smelled so good.  We were not dissapointed at all, sitting on our bed we devoured the two pizzas that we had bought for $9 in no time.  Shortly after, we fell asleep full of pizza.

   The second day we had plans to visit the Almalfi coast, but mother nature had something else in mind.  We awoke to pouring rain.  That did not bode well for a day walking around a beach town, so we decided to just relax for the day and work on the website, sleep, and go grocery shopping for the early train ride to Venice the next day.  One thing that we were not expecting was that all grocery stores were closed all day on Sundays.  To top it off we left our hostel at 1 PM to find somewhere to eat, and there was not a single restaurant open.  We walked up and down streets scouring for something to eat.  Nothing.  I saw a homeless guy with a bag of chips and was jealous.  Luckily, the little shop he was lying in front of had bags of chips for sale, so we loaded up.  Once we were completely sure no restaurant would open until 8PM, we went to the one place that was open for lunch, the ice cream place.  We each got a cone to hold us over until 8PM.  It was delicious.  The bad weather forced us to retreat to the hostel for the majority of the day, not doing much of anything.  It was a great change after the fast paced traveling that we have been doing.  Right when the pizza place opened, we headed there.  This time we were number 5 instead of 76.  We had our pizza within 20 minutes.  When waiting on the sidewalk we noticed that there were “kid gangs”.  These are groups of teenagers that walk up and down the sidewalk all night.  When they pass another “kid gang” they tend to throw an elbow as they pass.  It was quite comical to watch.  Heading back to the hostel with our Margarita (plain cheese) and Lasagna (cheese, meat, ricotta cheese) pizzas we were overwelmed with joy to have real food to eat (first food besides ice cream all day).  We ate in the lounge of the hostel, watching “The Incredibles” movie with a few other people. 

    We found Naples itself, especially the area we were staying in to not be that nice of a place.  It had great pizza, but it honestly felt like we were in Guatemala again.  The grafitti, trash, smells, and shady people did not make you feel great about walking around at night.  For a supposed first world country, we felt like this city was almost third world.  However, Pompeii made the trip for us.

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