There are times when you feel you shouldn't have read something about a place before you got there. Something that gets you almost anxious about being there. Naples was one such place. Soon after we had completed our bookings and started talking to people about our plans, we were repeatedly asked about why we had chosen Naples and not Florence. Actually, we don't know. Anyway, we were told to be careful about getting mugged and basically got us worried about being there. Moreover, we read 2 books about Italy on our flight and during our train journeys and both told us how Naples was a place to be careful about. So naturally, we made sure we didn't have any shoulder bags hanging behind us and made sure we did all that one can do to make sure nobody picked our pockets.
We were all settled in the nice train and were wondering why we ever worried when it stopped at a station and something was announced in Italian and a lot of people started fetching their luggage and getting off the train. As we heard Napoli mentioned somewhere, after asking people sitting next to us, we kind of figured out that we needed to get off. After waiting at the platform where everybody else was, a second train came along and when we asked around and said Napoli they told us we should get on it. While the previous train was a tourist train, this was a local one. With our sunglasses, backpacks and shorts, we must have looked like tourists and got more attention that we would have liked. After getting thoroughly creeped out with people staring and seemingly talking about us, we finally reached Naples long after we were supposed to and not feeling much better about it.
I think it being late in the evening added to our nervousness during our journey to Naples as the whole place looked much more pleasant in the light of the day the next morning. We set off to see Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii on a train. From the station, we took a bus service that would take us up to the closest vehicle access point to the crater and bring us back after 2 hours or so. The view from the top was amazing with the clouds scudding by below us. One thing to remember is that it is a good idea to visit a restroom before you catch the bus as there are no toilets anywhere close to the Mount Vesuvius crater. There is actually a sign that tells you to go behind the bushes beyond the car park. They have souvenir shops around the top of the crater that sell little things made of what they claim to be volcanic rock. I was hoping to walk around it but as luck would have it, there was some strike that day, the reason for which we were not able to find out. Even the halfway around the crater gave us a good view of the crater and the land around it that it must have destroyed.
After visiting the crater, we went to visit the ruins of Pompeii. The facial expressions of the body casts show the horror that must have played out. The ruins of Pompeii don't fail to impress although the body casts bring to mind that it ended a lot of lives.
You get a glimpse of colour here and there. Make sure you buy an audio guide as it will explain a lot of things like where the market used to be and how they figured out from finding fish bones that it was a fish market, etc.
Although we didn't do much, walking around the ruins tired us out. Being the last day of our stay in Italy, we decided to have a hearty authentic Napoli pizza for dinner. I couldn't decide on the toppings and had one with a different one in each quarter. It was in Naples that we found out that authentic Italian pizzas don't have chicken toppings. Who would have known!
With that ended a successful 9 day trip and none of us lost anything! For a while after my memory card started getting filled up, I was almost paranoid about losing my pictures.
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