Thursday, my cousin and her friend were in Napoli. It was their last stop on their cruise before going back to Roma to catch their plane to go home. Fortunately, I had the day pretty much free so I had planned to go with them to Pompeii and possibly other sites in the area. Unfortunately, the day before we had found out that there was a general strike for public transportation throughout the country. My luck. BUT, I was told that some trains and things may be working just not as frequent as they usually operate. So, on Thursday morning, I went to the train station and waited for a train. There were a lot of people waiting for a train as well. It felt like a normal day. So after waiting around 10 minutes I got on a train to Napoli. Then I checked to see if there were trains going to Pompeii and if they were being affected by the strike. They were all operating. I called my cousin and tried to explain to her how to get to the train station. Unfortunately, the taxi wanted to charge her 50 Euro per person just to get to the train station from the port. She decided to walk, obviously, but with that I don't know Napoli very well to give her directions. I told her to find a map and then I would try to tell her how to get where I was. Luckily, an older Italian gentleman who only spoke Italian, tried to help them. I gave her phrases to say in Italian over the phone and then he was able to send them in the right direction. Long story, but she was sent to the train station but not the one I was waiting at, luckily it was near the one I was at though. We ended up finding each other among the protesters in the square outside of the train station. We only had to wait 20 minutes for the next train to Pompeii. In that time, I told my cousin and her friend that they had to try Sfogliatella. We got three sfogliatelle to eat on the train. When we were on the train, they ate the sfogliatelle and I had the sandwiches that they brought me from the ship. I didn't have breakfast so I asked my cousin to bring me some food :) I even had cheddar on the sandwich!
We arrived after 19 stops and 30 minutes later to Pompeii. Side note, I discovered this in Roma too, if you are an European citizen between a certain age you get a reduced price ticket for museums and archaeological places. We got our tickets and then went on our way to Pompeii. It was only my second time in Pompeii with my last visit being 11 years ago. Things looked very different to me as we were walking through. I remembered certain places but some things seemed bigger 11 years ago. I guess I was still looking at things through a child's eyes back then... :)
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| Mt. Vesuvius |
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| They had these large rocks in the middle of the road in Pompeii. From what I remember when I was 13 years old, these were for when the road would be either flooded or filled with crap and people didn't want to walk in the filth so they would cross the road by using these large stones. |
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| A view of Mt. Vesuvius from the train |
We cut our trip short at Pompeii because we were worried about getting me back home in time for work because we weren't sure if the trains would be working or not since there was apparently a strike going on. Also, they weren't feeling that good. They hadn't been sleeping well and after 10 days on the ship they were exhausted but still pushed through for their last day! They did great! After Pompeii, we decided to get lunch. I asked what they wanted and they both said PIZZA! They said we are in Naples, we need to have pizza from where pizza originated. So we returned to Napoli and started looking for a pizzeria. I took them to where apparently the best pizza is in Napoli but the line was long and we were still concerned about the time so we opted for the pizzeria located across the street from the "best pizzeria." The name was Pizzera del Angeli. I said it must be good pizza because it is made by angels. :) It was very good too!
After lunch we went to find gelato. We never managed to get gelato when we were in Roma. Well, I did but they didn't. We got gelato and window-shopped while walking and eating our gelato. Then we said our goodbyes. They went right towards the port and I went left towards the train station. I managed to get a train about 45 minutes after I got there. All in all, I had a great day with my cousin and her friend and ended up not being affected by the so called strike.
