We Survived Napoli

Today our goal was to see the artifacts of Pompeii and Herculeum at the National Archaeological Museum in Napoli.  On our way back to our hostel in Salerno yesterday I had spotted a Foot Locker store and thought to myself, ,"if that place is open tomorrow morning I am going to buy a pair of shoes."  My comfy shoes are apparently alright for a day at the mall, but not for 4 days of non-stop roaming around Italy.  They were especially inappropriate for hiking Mt. Vesuvius and even worse for Pompeii, man that place is ridiculously big.

Anyways, Sergio and I, with my sparkly new Reeboks, set out to the train station once more to Napoli Centrale.  I was more sleepy than nervous but we found the tourist information booth and were given directions for using the metro to get to the museum.  We found our way down to the subway, which smelled like the Pirates of the Caribbean, and then got off only a few yards away from the museum.  So far so good is what I was thinking.  The historical center is super old and dirty, maybe Rome will look clean because of our trip today LOL! 

The museum was great I'm so glad we came, I felt jipped when we went to Pompeii and all there was was tour groups and the skeletal remains of a city.  There were Roman and Greek statues, the Pompeii and Herculean artifacts and a beautiful great hall that is the largest in all of Europe!  We also made our way into the R rated "Gabinetto Segreto" a room filled with very naughty sculptures, paintings, drawings and mosaics from the excavations of Pompeii and Herculeum.  You'll have to use your imagination on this one (this is family blog people).

After the museum we headed off to find food, more specifically Neopolitan Pizza.  On route we saw this huge fight break out between some locals.  A woman was pushing a trash bin into a guy on a scooter and about 6 polizias were just standing around watching, while on lookers filmed using their phones and cameras. We didn't stick around to see the outcome.  As we walked towards a church we were eager to check out we found a place called Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba.  Sergio had the pizza marinara con funghi (tomato sauce and mushrooms and oregano) and I got the same but just tomato sauce and anchovy.  The pizzas were incredible, how will I ever be able to eat pizza from the Monrovia pizza company again and not think of what I'm missing in Napoli? 

After that we headed to the a church next to the Church of San Lorenzo Maggiore since that one was lame.  And it was beautiful all on its own but then out of no where a guy came out and starts paying the organ, filling the whole place with music.  Luckily we were almost out of there before he started playing Pachabelle's Canon in D...not a cellist favorite if you know what I mean, if not it just means you weren't an orchestra geek like me. 

After the church and an espresso break we bought tickets for a tour of Napoli's underground.  It was too cool, you would never guess that there was such vast open spaces under such a huge city.  Apparently, the underground is as old as Napoli! The Greeks built the city from quarries of tufa stone deep underground (or probably slaves).  Then the Romans dug even deeper creating 400km of aqueducts.  The ducts were abandoned because of the cholera epidemic in 1884 (so sad) and then used once more as a bomb shelter in WWII.  I was so taken away, we had to squeeze through narrow passages with candlesticks, it was incredible how modern it all looked. 

After that we made a run for it, it was dark and we didn't want to find out if the pick-pocket stories were fact or fiction.  Well, that sums up our adventure in Napoli, I would love to detour to there again soon and see more this misunderstood city.  It really wasn't much worse then Mexico City.

Ciao!