People are often asking us, "What's been your favorite part of Italy?" This is very hard to answer as there have been so many favorite parts. But today, we found our least favorite part--Naples.
Leaving Sorrento was a little sad because we had such a nice, relaxing time there and people were so friendly. Our plan was to take the train to Pompeii and tour the ruins there. Then we planned to go on to Naples, tour the museum where all the artifacts from Pompeii are, and then take the train back to Rome. We want to end up at a hotel close to the airport, making it easy for our late morning flight on Monday.
The first part of the plan was great. The ruins of Pompeii are amazing. It's hard to describe the thoughts and feelings you experience walking around in what's left of this ancient city, thinking about what happened here so long ago, when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompeii in lava. The plan got complicated in Naples. We arrived at Naples, checked our baggage at the train station and took the Metro to the Museum where we planned to grab lunch at the "delightful, little cafe" we read about in Rick Steves' book. After we paid our admission, (which was a couple of euros higher than the book said), we found out that they were doing renovations and there was no cafe at this time. So we decided to do the museum (What was it Mom always said? "Offer it up for the poor souls") and then go find some lunch. The museum didn't take as long as we thought because many of the exhibits weren't open due to the renovations. Other things didn't seem to be where they were supposed to be--I'm supposing because of the renovations again. So long story short, we were starving and a little crabby as we left the museum and followed the self-guided walk through Naples back to the train station thinking we'd find a little lunch along the way. Just suffice it to say, we definitely saw a side of Italy that you don't see in the resort towns and the big, popular tourist destinations--a good reality check. Naples is very poor and dirty. We did not find any places that looked appetizing (i.e. clean) enough to eat at. We arrived back at the train station slightly delusional from hunger and what do we see? The Golden Arches!! Hunger makes you do strange things. So our last dinner in Italy was--Big Macs and fries! Sadly, they tasted really good to us. It must be time to get back to the USA!
But the fun wasn't over. After a nice relaxing train ride, we were thrown into the abyss of chaos of the Rome airport on a Sunday evening. Half of Italy was coming or going in this airport, and it was by no small task to decipher signs and find our way to the taxi stand to get to our hotel. But once again, we did prevail and finally arrived at our hotel (which was adequate, but definitely not in the ranking for top ten). About
midnight, the baby next door finally quit crying and all in all we did get a decent night of sleep. Guess it's good to have a bad day at the end of our trip, because that makes us all the more anxious to be home.
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