Naples: Day 1

This neglect has been preposterous. I should just start writing stuff down.

So, Ayla was already planning to take a trip to Naples and Capri, and since I wanted to go as well we went together- this had the added benefit of me not actually having to plan anything. We hopped on the train early Friday morning and got into Naples with plenty of time, we planned, to check into our hostel, see the Naples art museum, and visit a few castles and the like.

This, of course, never actually worked (and we quickly learned that planning is for people who expect and require everything to go perfectly) For starters, the street we had for the hostel's address appeared to not exist, off of the street it should have been. We asked a few Tabacchi (it means Tabaccho Shop, but they carry all kinds of things) if they knew, but since they had no idea, we tried asking a Farmacia (Pharmacy, that one's easy), thinking maybe they'd live in the area, as they tend to be family-run. The Farmacia actually ended up calling the hostel for us, which we were very grateful for (though we had to take the phone because the guy on the other end didn't speak Italian!) Turned out the road we were given was a side street off a side street, thus our difficulty in finding it off the main road.

Finally, we dumped off our backpacks and got back out to the city. We trekked to the art museum...at the top of a hill...which was fun. But we did not factor into the time we allowed for the musuem that we're two art majors. We spent the rest of the day in the museum. When we finally gave up finding that last painting we knew was there, we trekked down the cliff a bit, found a bus, and got back down to the main city. We wandered around for a bit, found somewhere to get some real Neopolitan Pizza, and then went back to the hostel and crashed.

Verdict on Naples: dirty, loud, not-Rome, but still enjoyable. Very lively.