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This photo has nothing to do with Naples because Naples was so horrible and ugly I didn't take any photos, so this is a substitute.
To begin, the three of us caught a day train to Naples from Rome, figuring we would have some daylight to see the city since the next day we were going to spend in Pompeii, outside of Naples, then off to Greece, or so we thought.
Around 1:30 we get off the train, I had a hostel booked in the old town area so I had to catch to metro and the girls were headed nearby to see if their reservation had gotten through. My experience went something like this, walk down to a crazy, dilapidated metro system where I bought a ticket but found no where to valid it because the system is so broken and abused that people just walk right through it and never purchase tickets. I felt a little silly. I made it to my stop, got out amongst more gross, dirty and populated streets, feeling very glad I was dealing with this in the daytime rather than at night like I had originally planned. I proceeded to walk about 30 minutes to my hostel, got yelled at by some old man waiting for ab us, not sure what he said but I'm sure it was because I was blonde, American, a tourist, and or he was starting to suffer dementia. Either way, great way to start a day. I finally made it to my hostel on some alley, amongst suicidal moped drivers that have no regard for pedestrians, and was so excited to be inside. I ventured out again later to do my laundry, but the laundromat in my guidebook had shut down and the market was crazy and I was so overwhelmed, I went back to my hostel and stayed inside all night. This of course meant that I had crackers, pineapple juice and a candy bar for lunch and dinner because I wasn't going to go outside till I absolutely had to the next morning. Luckily my hostel had american movies so I watched Anchorman and Lord of War with fellow americans. Only upside to Naples.
At the same time, Jessie and Jenny were not having too much luck either. After exciting the train station on foot, they were swarmed by 10 to 20 Italians who proceeded to physically seperate them from each other so they were out of each other's site, and steal Jenny's brand new camera that was in her purse. They recounted the experience to me and it sounded really scary and frustrating. Especially when you've just stepped off the train after reading Rick Steves Italy guidebook and you know about pickpocketing and you have all yoursenses alert and you're guarding your stuff the best you can, but you're physically overwhelmed and can't keep it from happening. So there day wasn't much better than mine.
We happened to run into each other at Pompeii ruins, which was beautiful and renewed our spirits for a little while. But as we got back to the station, they had to get their luggage at the hostel, I had to get mine from the baggage deposit, and by the time we got back together, one train had already left, the other was leaving in 5 minutes, and the ticket guy hadn't given Jenny a through ticket so we missed the next train while she was frantically trying to get another ticket. This meant we couldn't get to Bari in time to catch the night ferry to Greece. We termed Naples a clusterf***. Excuse the offense language, but we've decided it's a technical traveling term now and Naples fits the bill in entirety. Jessie and Jenny also came up with a bunch of hilarious other ways to describe Naples, such as the dirty sock in the boot of Italy, and many other hilarious and rage inspired comments.
So, after missing the train, we tried the bus system, another clusterf***, we tried a million other train combinations, no luck, we called STA travel to see about flights, too expensive. We HAD to get out of Naples, there was no question about that. So we surrendered and came back to Rome, where we knew our way around, knew good hostels, and could catch a train to Bari direct.Oh and we figured there would be a pub crawl so Jessie could get intoxicated enough to forget the day. I figured we'd just pretend to be Bill Murray in the Groundhog day movie and try again today. Which is what we're doing.
Our hostel was clean, we had a room to ourselves, at breakfast this morning Jessie had a smiley face in her orange juice, so we figured it has to turn out to be a good day. We're currently sitting at the laundromat so that's exciting in itself. Hopefuly, with the traveling gods on our side, we'll be chilling on the ferry this evening on our way to Greece.
Whew! It's been a long couple of days and we're ready to move on from Italy! Oh, and if you didn't get the underlying message here, DON"T GO TO NAPLES! Ever.
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