Day 12: Naples

I woke up feeling much better. And I woke pretty late, too, 7:30 AM (considering I had gone to bed before 9:00 PM, that was a long sleep). With no plans today, we could afford to be a bit more leisurely. We got breakfast items at a nearby grocery store and pastry shop, and ate them back at the apartment.

Our apartment entryway is smaller than it looks.

We decided not to go to Capri or any other day-trip adventures after all. While they sounded nice, we wanted to avoid the hassle and expense of extra planning. Today the itinerary would be to do the walking tour of Naples. And a long walking tour it was: with over 90 minutes of audio, we were in for a long walk. We made sure to have the audio guide downloaded on each of our phones so we wouldn’t have to share a headset.

Ruins in the middle of the city

Specialty pastries of Naples

The tour took us from the archeological museum to all corners of central Naples. It included a gallery mall, a student district with bookstores, a rare quiet park where you can’t hear much of the usual hubbub, a fish market, several churches, and the most well-known pedestrian drag: Spacca Napoli. Of the churches, we liked the one with the waffle-iron exterior the most (Gesu Nuovo Church). It was sited next to a plague column, the only one we saw on the trip.

The Spacca Napoli is kind of a crazy street. It is packed, and it is narrow. There’s all kinds of stores lining it. One particular street is filled with vendors selling decorations and novelty items, including a lot of Christmas decorations. Liz bought a nativity for her mom that was charming and delightful. An Italian nativity is a smaller scale than a typical American one, and tends to be more tall than wide. The one we bought had some fun Italian touches to it, including a pizza chef on the back.

Very large-scale example of an Italian nativity

The vendors on this street also sell figurines. There’s many varieties, but sports figures tend to be the most popular. Diego Maradona is the most common among them (more on him later). My personal favorite was the one of Luis Suarez biting an Italian player in the 2014 world cup. There’s also political figures, musicians, some Italians I don’t recognize, and various other pop culture icons.

You can be a major international footballer for years, but if you bite one guy...

Maradona is worshipped here like a god. No, seriously: I saw some memorabilia featuring his face and the word “dios.” There’s also a bar that includes a shrine to Maradona with a lock of his hair. You can’t take a picture without buying something in the bar, so I didn’t. Personally, I think Messi is better, but Messi never played for SSC Napoli.

We tried a pastry on the tour but to our dismay, it was soaked in alcohol. I couldn’t get past two bites. On the other hand, we got more pizza from the other famous pizzeria in Naples: this time Liz got one with egg, and I got one with salami. They were still margherita, just with additional ingredients. They were yummy, and I have to say the pizza in Naples was by far the best on the whole trip.

Pizza dough nativities

After taking a break in the apartment, we decided to go to the archeological museum. It had quite an impressive collection of artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum. It included statues, mosaics, a scale model of ancient Pompeii, and much more. We were dismayed by some of the closures and missing items, though: the battle of Alexander mosaic was undergoing restoration (we saw a copy in Pompeii), as was the dancing faun. Venus of the Perfect Buttocks was on loan to the Kunsthistorischemuseum in Vienna, and the erotic art wing and Egyptian wing were both closed off. Still worth the visit, though.

Alas, no Venus of the Perfect Buttocks

We were not hungry enough for dinner, but we decided to get one last gelato on the Spacca Napoli. On the way, we picked up a cookbook for Dale in the student district. I decided to just stick with the classics: straciatella and hazelnut. Liz got ricotta pear and some mix of pistachio with other spices. She raved about the ricotta pear gelato.

We returned to the apartment and got ready to depart the next day. We finished our leftover pizza from Pizzeria da Michele, and called it a trip.

Observations:

• Neapolitans don’t like to finish their pizza crusts. We were surprised to see plates with crusts piled on it like the remains of chicken wings. Sure, the crusts are a bit burned, but they’re still good food.

Day 11 Rome/Naples/Pompeii

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

We didn't have time to do anything in Rome before our train to Naples aside from getting some breakfast in the station. What did we eat? You guessed it, pastries again! It's very difficult in the cities we have visited to find a place that serves eggs for breakfast - even McDonalds didn't have the option! Our train to Naples was a regional train rather than one of the super speedy ones so our journey took about 2 hours.

Our first impression of Naples was... interesting. The city is pretty dirty - overflowing trash cans, garbage and cigarette butts littering the sidewalks, and graffiti everywhere. As we walked to our hotel, we learned you have to be very assertive when crossing the street. Cars will not stop for you and there are Vespas everywhere weaving in and out of traffic which can easily blindside you. We followed in the shadow of locals at first but then got the hang of it. Naples has even more of a South American vibe to it than Rome did. There are little family run shops lining the streets, specializing in everything from household goods to video games to frozen foods.

Our hotel is actually an apartment and it's giant. We have a slight view of Mt Vesuvius off in the distance from the bedroom balcony. Yet with all this space they still decided to make the shower only about six square feet. Anyway, we were fortunate enough to be able to check in early and then we immediately headed back to the train station to spend our afternoon in the ancient city of Pompeii. We rode on the cheap local train to get there - the Circumvesuviana. Finding the platform, acquiring the tickets, and surviving the ridiculously crowded train cars was quite the ordeal, but it was a fun adventure and it got us to Pompeii from Naples for just under 3 Euros each!

The city of Pompeii thrived from around 500 BC until 79 AD, when Mt Vesuvius erupted and covered the city in 30 feet of ash. The city was rediscovered in 1599, and excavations began in the mid-1700s. I didn't really know what to expect before our arrival, but my first impression was that it reminded me of a European version of Machu Picchu. Pompeii was so advanced for its time - they even had running water through their aqueducts. The walls of Pompeiians' homes were covered in frescoes (some still visible, many more extracted and preserved in the archaeological museum in Naples) and the floors were covered in mosaics. Just how much has been preserved is astounding. We saw fancy houses, the bakery, baths, toilets, the basilica, so much pottery!, theatres, and even a brothel including faded frescoes depicting the "services" offered therein. 

Good thing this isn't a Zelda game

I'm a star!

Ancient fast food restaurant

The only place we hit awful crowds was at the brothel - we somehow ended up smushed in the middle of several giant cruise ship tour groups - boooo! 

A couple other things stood out to me. First, the stone paving of the roads in Pompeii has not been replaced. As a result, there are many places where you can see deep grooves in the roads, worn down by the chariots driving through. 

Second, archaeologists were able to create plaster molds of several  of the Pompeiians who fell victim to the volcanic ash - seeing them in their death positions was a harrowing sight. 

Okay, on to happier things like pizza! We took the train back to Naples after finishing in Pompeii. Pizza was at the top of our agenda for dinner. Naples is the home of pizza and we went to the home of pizza within the home of pizza, L'antica Pizzeria da Michele. It's featured in the Michelin guide and claims to be the original pizza. There are only two options: pizza marinara (basically, pizza crust and marinara sauce, no cheese) and pizza margherita (tomato sauce and mozzarella with a touch of basil). Mark and I both opted for the margherita and brought it back to our apartment to eat for dinner. Naples pizza is more similar to U.S. pizza than in other parts of Italy - the crust is thick and chewy rather than crispy. We really enjoyed our pizza and the basil added a lovely touch!

Mark was pooped so we called it a day. We took our COVID tests with a certified guide online with the kits we had brought along (thanks, Abbott!) and are now officially cleared to fly back home in a couple days!

Day 10: Rome

We weren't expecting rain today, but we got it. Our day started early, with a trip to the Vatican. While this is technically a different country, it doesn't feel noticeably different from Italy. Well, except for the massive basilica. We decided to go very early, before we had eaten breakfast. We didn't see any of the basilica until we rounded the corner and then boom! There it was in front of us, golden in the morning sunrise, with a rainbow overhead. It was an amazing sight. 

We listened to the Rick Steves audio tour throughout the visit, mostly from the shelter of the colonnade to start with. We entered through the security gate, checked our backpack, and entered the basilica. All I can say is: wow. The Basilica of Saint Peter is awe-inspiring. By most measures, it is the world's largest church. The floor is marked with the names of several other churches around the world, and where they would end if placed inside this basilica. The capstone of the church is Michelangelo's dome, which is breathtaking. It also contains the (alleged) tomb of Saint Peter himself, as well as the actual tombs of most popes, including John Paul II and John XXIII (whose body is on display).

This church is also the home of Michelangelo's Pieta, on display behind bulletproof glass near the entryway. It was damaged by a deranged man in the 1970's, and has been behind protection ever since. Sad we couldn't get too close, but we were close enough, and it's a magnificent work of art. We took in the scene at this church for a while longer before heading back outside, where it was still raining.

We were too hungry to climb the dome, so we went to the bathrooms (Liz got stuck behind a large student trip group) and got some breakfast at the classic Italian eatery, McDonald's. To Liz's consternation, they had no savory items or eggs on the menu, so we had to make do with sweet pastries (and a dark hot chocolate for myself).

We decided to go to the Pantheon after this. The third time was the charm: after waiting in line for almost half an hour, we got inside. This time we got to enjoy a different dome, built over 2000 years ago (which inspired the domes in Florence and the Vatican). It was magnificent inside. The Pantheon also houses the tombs of Raphael and Victor Emmanuel II. To my surprise, the oculus of the dome is still uncovered: it was raining into the inside of the Pantheon. I figured they would have covered it up with plexiglass or something, but they left it just as it was in ancient Roman times.

After the Pantheon, we went to a nearby shop that contained lots of Christmas ornaments and bought a tiny nativity and three angel ornaments for the kids. We also picked up a lunch at a nearby grocery store and went back to the hotel to recharge before returning to the Vatican for the afternoon.

After our break, we headed for a different part of the Vatican: the Vatican museums. This is a vast museum complex that you could conceivably spend all day in. Unfortunately I didn't have my audio guides downloaded, so I had to share a headset with Liz, which meant shuffling awkwardly close together. The museum has an astounding collection, including some very old Egyptian artifacts (the oldest thing we found was a figurine of a woman that dated back to Neolithic times, around 5600 BC). There was also a Raphael room featuring his large-scale paintings, a hallway of tapestries, countless sculptures, and much more. 

These are the oldest artifacts we found in the museum

My personal favorite was a hallway of maps: The hallway itself was beautifully ornamented, and the maps themselves (which were actually maps of various parts of Italy) looked like they came out of fantasy novels. These were the Vatican's official maps for a long time.

Finally, there was the Sistine Chapel. The chapel itself is glorious to behold, and it was amazing to actually see it in person. At one point, a museum worker asked for silence and directed a prayer in the room, in both Italian and English. We weren't really sure how to participate, so we bowed our heads and remained silent. It would have been nice if there were places to sit in the chapel. After a long walk-through of the museum, which has few benches, we really needed a break. Normally the chapel has benches around the side, but they were roped off because of Covid. The audio tour we had downloaded would have worked fine if those benches were open, but with us standing, it just took too long and we had to leave. We took a long sit-down break at the nearby courtyard.

Now we tried to head over to St. Peter's to climb the dome - after waiting in the line for over 20 minutes, we approached the entryway to find it closed. Apparently it closes at 4:30. Some signage would have been nice, but there was none to be found. Another example of poor wayfinding in Rome. 

At least we got a good look at the Swiss Guard

We decided to get some dinner, and we found an inexpensive place nearby with lasagna ready to eat, and some spinach because Liz was craving vegetables. The man working there was very nice and gave us some crispy pizza dough-like bread for free.