Is this Italy?

Napoli is cool. Dean and I instantly took a liking to it. This is probably because it reminded us so much of SE Asia. Street stalls, motorbikes riding on foot paths, groups of locals getting together, ahhh we like this place:)

Napoli is surrounded by steephills so we took a furnicular to check out the views. A little hazy, but still pretty cool. We saw Capri from here too.

For the next few days we did day trips and then came back to Naples to enjoy the atmosphere. On one evening, we joined the locals hoarded into a cafe with a big screen to watch Italy draw with U.S.A. The body language and the 'what was that's ' was brilliant. Loved the place:)

Pompeii - Feeling tired of audioguides we opted for an ageıng archeologıcal tour guide.... after tellıng everyone to ask many questıons we soon learnt not to do thıs. He seemed to get offended at every question. Lıked his tangents too put stıull gave us a good pıcture of what happened ın 79A.D and what lıfe ın Pompeıı was lıke before the whole town was covered ın Pumice stone and gas.

After Pompeii a vısıt to another 'uncovered' cıty was ın order - the Herculeon was also covered ın 79A.D. I actually preferred these ruıns because you could stıll see some of the wall paıntıngs that they used to have paınted all over theır walls - ınsıde and out. These guys were serıous home decorators. Many floors also stıll had theır mosaıcs floorıng. Thıs place was defınately worth it.

Now food. The pizza, which Napoli claims it invented, was delicious. Typical of Italian pizza, there are few ingredients on top, the tomato paste is just crushed tomato and the herbs and selected topping or two add the extra flavour. Dean will still say Australia has the best pizza,but we both enjoyed the pizzas of Napoli, and yes, there was plenty had:).

The pasta was also good, and I was amused when I heard a 4 year old eat her pasta and say 'al dente', hehe.

Gelati - Dean took my advise and had at least one a day, I was sulky because I missed it:(
Back in Roma, Dean did learn to ask how much a Gelati was. On receiving a 3-scooper, he was told 'that will be 6 euro' (approx. $AU10), gawking Dean went to the counter to pay. Fairly typical of Italian service, the counter guy, busy chatting on his mobile, took Dean's 20 euro, and then gave him change as if Dean had given him 50 euro. Dean came out, told me this, considered going in and telling them, then remembered the robbery price... he kept walking, happy to be paid to eat Gelati.

Karma has it's way though. On leaving Napoli, the metro machines were broken and Dean and I received a fine for not a having a ticket (34 euro). We then ran to our train enroute to Brindisi... the wrong one to the middle of nowhere. Ended up on our route though (whew).

Sick of trains, we skipped our connection to Brindisi and caught a ferry from Bari to Patras, Greece instead.