I got to Naples two nights ago after spending an unreasonable amount of time trying to figure out the Italian railway system. It's really quite simple, actually. I just went about doing everything in kind of a backwards order. I will spare you the details.
I met up with Stella in the hostel called Giovanni's House, so named for the Italian bachelor that runs it. Whatever notion you have about a typical Italian bachelor, ignore it. Giovanni is a really nice guy who treats his guests like they are his children, cooking us dinner and serenading us on his guitar. Naples is famous for being the birthplace of pizza, and as soon as I put my things away we rushed off to have the very best that Naples has to offer at Gino Sorbillo's. The main difference between American pizza and Italian pizza is that Italian pizza has thin crust, and it just looks and tastes a lot healthier. I think the ingredients are generally fresher, too, and less greasy. So you don't feel guilty about eating an entire pizza, and topping it off with a cannoli. Or two. And maybe a doughnut.
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| Stella says I look like Gaston in this picture. I thing I have a knack for looking like Disney characters. |
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The weather in Naples was less than beautiful yesterday, and seeing as Stella has already been in the city for a week we really restricted our sight-seeing. We didn't really feel bad about it, either. There's no point in forcing exploration if it's going to make you grumpy. One of the cool things we did was explore the underground Roman/Greco cistern called the Napoli Sotterranea. It involved a dark, damp cavern, a large tour group led by a small Italian man who was self conscious of his cracking voice, and crawling through tight spaces for the fun of it. It was not for the claustrophobic, but I found it satisfying because we got to carry lit candles around and pretend we were living in the old days. We also learned that the cistern was used to hide refugees during WWII. Stella and I are still uncertain which side the refugees would have been on.
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| Glamour queen on the chair lift |
Today we woke up at the crack of 7:15 to catch a ferry to Capri. It was the best day in Italy I could have possibly asked for. While the ferries in Istanbul are much cheaper, I really cannot complain because it was definitely worth the 18 euro (round trip) fare. Capri is a fantastic island, and it only took about 1.5 hours to get there from the port in Naples. It is basically a mountain rising out of the Mediterranean Sea, which makes exploring by foot fairly daunting. When we got to the island, Stella and I hopped on a shuttle up to Ana Capri, which is a slightly more residential and quiet area of the island. Even in the off-season the island is quite posh and touristy. It kind of reminded me of an Italian version of Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard. From Ana Capri we took a chair lift up to the very peak of the island, which had an awesome view. While the sky was still a bit hazy, the weather was warm and it smelled like spring. I was so, so happy.
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| No, that is not midriff |
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| It was kind of windy. Stella says I look like Santa Claus in this picture. |
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| Perched. |
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We made our way back down to Capri, the regular part of the island, with just a little time to spare before we had to catch the ferry back to Naples. The lighting was really pretty, and we got some nice shots of the houses and the cliffs.
Photo credit goes to Stella for all of these pictures. I had my camera, but I did not bring my cord to upload my pictures to the computer. I will try to add more when I get back to Turkey, if I can still circumnavigate the blogspot block!
Tomorrow I'm heading out of Naples in the morning to spend about 24 hours in Rome before I go back to Turkey. Rome will be great, but it's going to be hard to beat Capri!
