I spent the first day walking, much like I do in every city and ended up shopping, which I hardly do. I found some really reasonable, great fitting and great looking pieces. The problem is that I am carrying around towels, thermoses and notebooks to provide to our tour guides at the end of our trip. So until then, I am stuffed to the brim of clothes. I also bought my new Harry Potter book (I buy one from each country with the countries language and different cover to add to my collection) and gloves for my mom. I'm basically done with my shopping unless there is some souvenir that screams out to me. I have looked already but nothing seemed worthy to pass out.
I arrived, yesterday, June 30th to Napoli. I stayed at a hostel near the old downtown area near Piazza San Gaetano. The streets are small. A little more to let one car pass through. The streets were built small to bottleneck any invaders that might have tried to overtake the town. Scooters honk you out of the way and tend to use the "one way" signs as loose guidelines.
After my shopping, I went to L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele and ordered a Margherita pizza. It's supposedly the oldest pizza place in Italy, maybe the world. Naples is the birth place of pizza so it was a must eat. I felt like the pizza was sweeter than normal. From the last time I was in Italy, I heard that they put sugar in the dough. Maybe this place did as well. What I don't like about getting a pizza in Italy is that it's one size and it's HUGE. But I ate all of it, the dough was thin enough where I didn't feel guilty but thinking about how big it was, it's like ugh, just make different sizes!
From the pizza to my hostel room I went in to crash early. I did not sleep well on the plane due to all the turbulence on the plane so I needed my rest. Due to climate change, scientists are saying that turbulence is only going to get worse. This was the worst turbulence I had ever experienced. So I hope that it doesn't get worse cause I don't know if I can go through that again.
Today, July 1st I woke up after a horrible night's sleep. I stayed in a hostel to keep the cost of this trip small BUT I did get a private room cause....no more shared rooms if I can help it. I slept about 4 hours and was woken up by a bang in the hostel from somewhere. To be fair, it was about 2 o'clock and in hostel life people are just falling asleep so not a big deal but I was unable to go back to sleep at that point. After 2 Sherlock episodes, I was able to go back to sleep for the last 2 hours.
After breakfast, I went to the Underground Napoli tour. It was pretty cool. They took you on a tour of the aqueduct system that was built by the Greeks and expanded by the Romans. Our guide put it this way, the Greeks were a people, but the Romans were an empire. The aqueduct had many stairs leading down that opened into a wide space. The aqueduct hadn't been filled for about 150-200 years after a cholera outbreak forced them to close the wells. During World War II they were able to use the space for a bomb shelter. I did not realize this but the Italians were bombed by the Allies due to Fascism. I never had really thought about Italy being bombed and learned something new.
After my tour of the underground, I got lost in the city. I walked around until lunch looking at artwork and the things they were selling. After lunch, I walked to my hostel to pick up my luggage and started my 1.6 mile walk down to my hotel. I didn't want to get a taxi but even if I wanted to, I did have to walk a ways to a taxi stand because they don't drive to the area I was staying. I learned that there were only 3 main roads and then expanded to about 6. You can drive down the other roads but they don't really do that. And walking with a rollie luggage is not easy on cobblestone or large stoned sidewalks. My luggage must have toppled over 50 times. No joke. But I was able to find shops along the way that let me find leather gloves for my mom so that was a win.
All in all, a very good beginning.
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