Italy - Napoli

Naples, Napoli, a city that lies somewhere around the upper shin of Italy. In the shadow of Vesuvius, by the water, and one of the top 10 most dangerous cites in Europe. Apparently a huuuge amount of Cocaine is pushed through the Napoli port and almost all businesses are owned by the Camorra (Napoli's own Mafia). Weeeeeeee.

I was still quite noticeably sick from my time in Barcelona so I wasn't really in the mood to be sociable in the slightest. Not that the people at the hostel were overly interesting but I kind of largely kept to myself and did my own thing. In spite of this however I found myself being drawn to Napoli's maelstrom of a city. There's this sense that people have carved out a living in the streets of Napoli and over time the city has just evolved into this functional, if haphazard, mess. Mopeds are everywhere and they do whatever the hell they want to. It's like a crazy game of Frogger just crossing the street.

(It's pretty ... until you want to cross a road)

Napoli is of course famous for supposedly being the birthplace of pizza and this has been a fact I've used to justify my over consumption of the food stuff. Which brings me to my next observation. Restaurants in Napoli only seem to serve Italian food. Almost every restaurant will be serving you pizza or pasta with some antipasti or basic meat dishes. Every restaurant! Lots of carbs. Carbtopia. Too many carbs. I've been craving some kind of Indian or Chinese food just to have something else on my palette.

(hnnnggggg why do you do this to me pizza?)

Somewhere amongst my snivelling, coughing, and obvious unpleasantness I had a 'day of death' wherein I visited two catacombs then a graveyard. The catacombs were a bit boron and as an English speaker I was sheepishly presented with a pamphlet that explained all the information in English that the guide was saying in Italian. Fair enough. English shouldn't be spoken everywhere! Afterwards I wandered through a really seedy neighbourhood to find this graveyard and it was fascinating! It's off a regular road, has free entry, is completely empty of people, and has rows upon rows of human skulls and bones in this big cavern built into a cliff. That jarring sense of walking along a street with people busy on mopeds then to be thrown into this quiet place of death was really, amazingly, bizarre.

(The Flintstones)

A few days in I met up with some Australians I had met previously in my travels. They chose to stay at the same hostel; thus breaking my antisocial streak. Our game plan was to rent a car and go for a drive along the Amalfi coast which was achieved to great success. Dom was the only one with the international driver's license but I was the only 25 year old which we needed to get the cheaper price. We were fortunate to get a nice guy who just pushed it through the system without many questions.

(Dom driving in pure whiteness)

On the way we stopped in at Pompeii which as we all know was devoured by Vesuvius way back when (79AD for those playing at home). It was interesting to wander around the streets but it was just essentially a ruin and I've been to many a ruin so far. There were a lot of areas we couldn't access even though that's probably where all the interesting things are... We only spent maybe two hours there then headed for the coast. A lot of that time we lay in the Colosseum talking about the movies Gladiator and Troy. TAKE IT! IT'S YOURS!

(We lay pretty much right there. For quite a while)

The coast itself though was stunning. It's absolutely beautiful and it greatly exceeded my expectations. The villages that have been built into the sheer mountains that cascade down to the bluest water at the base were fantastic. It was a delight to follow the winding roads that took us through the townscapes and through the hills only to have another beautiful sight behold with each turn. How's that for a positive collection of adjectives! I've never written such nice things without sarcasm or cynicism. I'm exhausted.

(I look pretty grim. Didn't realise the photo was actually being taken right then)

We had organised to stay in a bed and breakfast in Agerola (just inland a bit from the coast. Old town. Nothing there). It was without a doubt one of the strangest nights I've encountered yet on my trip. We were the only people there in this big building (this includes no owners being present). We couldn't find the light switches, the phone didn't work, the breakfast hadn't been cleaned up from the morning before. The place in general was just creepy.

We decided to counter our fear by drinking (we just took some wine from their bar) and then pretty much shat our pants when all of a sudden the lights came on around 1:30am and the two owners rocked up. No real reason to their absence and no real apologies either? Turns out that breakfast that wasn't cleaned up was just sort of the breakfast buffet... As in the next morning when we went down it was unchanged and that was it. No cereal, no bread or anything like that ... just a bowl of old fruit, some juice that had been sitting there for days, this strange kind of old jam slice and some packaged fried bread stuff. We complained to them and didn't have to pay the 20 euro on the wine we stole/drank. A small victory.

Had some amazing pizza in Agerola though! Best so far!

Next is Rome!