Yo. So we made it to Naples! I mean we are leaving tonight because there’s not a whole lot to do here. But for now, anyway, Naples it is!
We took a train here from Rome- it only took a few hours, and I passed out on it (as usual) so it didn’t even feel long. We absolutely did not get McDonald’s at the train station before leaving, that would have been disgusting. Because we are intelligent humans, we booked a place less than a five minute walk from the station. This was a FANTASTIC IDEA because when we arrived it was gross and rainy. After checking into our super-cute place, we headed out to dinner at a place I had found online as one of the top budget places to eat.
They sold Napoli street food, which is basically a bunch of fried stuff. I ordered the fish, which by the photos seemed to be like a bunch of small pieces of fish, breaded and fried. As it turned out, it was a collage of lots of different types of tiny fish. With faces. Anchovies, squids, and even a little octopus. It was HORRIBLE. I could barely choke down my food- all I could think about was how many animals had died to make my meal. I’m officially going to work on becoming vegetarian and then vegan when I’m done with this trip, because I honestly cant take it anymore. It almost made me sick to my stomach to eat that, and I had to try really hard afterwards not to think about it.
Anyway, we grabbed a bottle of wine on our way home, forgetting that it was not a twist off and we had no corkscrew. We couldn’t find one in the hotel, so we spent a good fifteen minutes trying to open it, and eventually crushed the whole thing into the bottle. Important question: why do people still use corks? What is the purpose of corks? Wouldn’t it be easier to have something that you could just twist off on all of them? It makes NO SENSE. Also, apparently synthetic corks work better at preserving the wine ANYWAY, so why haven’t we done away with all corks entirely?
We went to bed relatively early because we had to wake up early for our next day in POMPEII, something I’ve been wanting to do since I was a little kid and read a picture book about excavations there.
You guys. Pompeii is INCREDIBLE. Easily one of my favorite places I’ve visited ever. First of all, it’s huge. Like, insanely huge. It’s actually an entire city that housed tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people, so like, yeah. You honestly need all day to do it: we spent about five hours there, and tons of the exhibits were closed for renovations.
One of the most interesting parts of the whole experience was finding the details that have been preserved for thousands of years. Even though the city was destroyed in 79 AD when Mt Vesuvius exploded, the city was about 600 years old by that time, so it had lots of time to develop and become very much its own thing. For example, on the cobbled roads you can see the grooves that have been carved out by so many wagons rolling over them for so many years. And there are stepping stones at road intersections for crossing the street – the sidewalks were elevated over the street to avoid the water and animal feces.
So many paintings and mosaics have survived and are in near perfect condition. My favorite were naturally the graphic paintings in the brothel, but I swear I liked other things too. Floor mosaics, wall mosaics, columns, sculptures, gardens, fountains…so many perfectly preserved pieces of art. It really gives you insight into they way the Romans lived, and how much their world influences the way we live today.
When the city was covered in ash, people that hadn’t evacuated (over half the population) were suffocated in their tracks. The ash preserved the imprints of their bodies, even when their skin and organs had rotten away. When they were discovered, archeologists were able to make plaster casts of the imprints of their bodies, so you can see the exact position they were in when they died. One group of fifteen people, including several children, was trying to escape over 3.5 meters of ash when another cloud descended on them and killed them. In another area of Pompeii, there is a man holding his child on his knee. In another, someone crouched against a wall, holding her knees to her chest with her head down. See people in the throes of such disaster and agony forces you to connect with them. It forces you think about these nameless, faceless, would-be-dead-by-now-anyway people as someone just like yourself. You can see the expressions on their faces. You can almost see what they are thinking and feeling.
It makes me wonder how we are still so easily able to alienate other people on our planet, people that are alive now, people that are just trying to live their lives. How do we demonize them? Why do we dehumanize them? If I can connect this much with a plaster cast of someone who hasn’t been alive for thousands of years, shouldn’t we all be able to connect with other humans who are just like us?
Yeah, so we were in Pompeii for like, five hours. We went through most of what we could do, but I’m pretty sure more of the buildings would be open in the summer. All the walking completely exhausted me and Kiwi guy, so we took the 45 minute train back to Naples, got pizza for dinner, and went on a short adventure to find wine. This adventure mostly entailed going into a pet shop with lots of cute puppies and bunnies and hamsters and mice that also happened to sell guns and knives. It was a very confusing adventure. And then to avoid our disaster the previous night, we had the guy the sold us the wine open it at the store for us.
A little bit of Netflix, then passed out.
Today we realized how lucky we had gotten with our timing: the day we got to Naples it was pouring, the day we spent in Pompeii was sunny and beautiful, and today it is pouring again. We wanted to go to the Naples Archeological Museum today because they have tons of artifacts from Pompeii. What we didn’t realize was that the museum was closed yesterday, AND that because it’s technically a “holiday” (Valentine’s Day is official?) we got half price tickets. So everything worked out perfectly – always a good feeling.
The museum was pretty sweet: it wasn’t too big, but it certainly had a lot to look at. There were loads of marble Roman statues (some of them GIGANTIC) and the Pompeii stuff was pretty sweet. In the Egyptian part there was a mummified crocodile – apparently they worshipped them – but the best part was by far the Penis Wing. I’m pretty sure they don’t call it that, but they should.
But yes, there was an entire exhibit dedicated to the relationship that ancient Romans had with penises. Highlights included – oh god, there are really too many to list – but tons of very well-endowed statues, pornographic paintings, tiny good-luck penises, and giant penis statues. Legit. It was amazing. Possibly my favorite part of Italy. Maybe I shouldn’t admit that.
Now we are just killing time until our overnight bus. We are pretty tired, but our hotel has no common area to hang out in, and the weather is gross so we can’t hang out outside. We got lunch and coffees, but now…we still have five hours until our bus. Oh, woe, woe woe.