Naples and a Boat

It’s been a long 4 days since I last posted, so I’ll summarize them here. Also, I've heard that people are having trouble accessing the website for the blog, which has all of my posts from previous trips, and will (soon) have pictures from this one. Simply go to http://aceurope.blogspot.com , and everything will be there.

Sunday (2/14/2010)

Today, we got up, had breakfast, and went to get a rental car. We reserved with Hertz, one of the largest rental companies in the world, 2 months in advance, and when we got there, he said he has a car for us. He wanted to give us a SmartCar, which seats only 2 people, while we need to seat 4 plus luggage. When we explained that we couldn’t take it, and we ordered a car for 4 people, he said we’d have to wait a few hours. We immediately cancelled the order, went to a neighboring car rental service and ordered a car for the same price and better insurance in just minutes. This car was also our first test with Italy’s crazy drivers. We made it safely to the hotel, and from there took the two hour drive to Sorrento, a town near Naples which had our hotel. On our way, we stopped at a rest area on the highway. I ate some pretty good pizza, and my parents said that the coffee was excellent. When we arrived at our hotel, we were impressed. It had an extremely nice view of Vesuvius, and the rooms and lobby were very large and nice. It is probably the best hotel I’ve ever been to. In the afternoon, we visited a nice village 5 minutes away called Vico Equense. You could walk every street within 20 minutes and had a square with a nice fountain. There were restaurants and pastry shops everywhere. When we walked in a restaurant for dinner, we were informed that they don’t serve food until at least 7PM. Disappointed, we returned to the hotel to relax and returned to Vico Equense at 7:30. We had a nice dinner and for dessert we searched all around the town for some excellent pastries which we ate for the next few days.

Monday (2/15/2010)

Today was a long and adventurous day. We woke up early with the plan to climb Mt. Vesuvius, the volcano that towers over Naples, Pompeii, and Sorrento. To do so, we drove up towards the car park before the summit, seeing some beautiful views of Naples and the surrounding area, as if we were in an airplane. When we reached the last view bends in the road as it was getting steeper, we reached the snowcap (which rarely occurs on Vesuvius), and our 2WD rental car refused to drive up, so we had to walk the remainder of the route, about 1km. When we reached the car parking area, we were disappointed by the news. The summit was closed due to icy weather. We were not permitted to walk the remaining 30 minute walk. We walked back, grabbing some igneous rocks from the various historic lava flows on the way down and when we got to our car, it was stuck in the snow we parked it in. It took 3 people to push the car out of the snow. We drove down the mountain and then decided to visit the ancient ruins of Pompeii. It was a mindblowing 5 hour adventure, walking through the city that was once buried by ash and rediscovered. We saw so many things: bathhouses, forums, temples, houses for the rich, theaters, a large stadium/amphitheatre, gardens, and even a YMCA of their time. We left the ruins exhausted, and returned to our hotel to relax. We went to Vico Equense for dinner, but instead of the usual 5 minute drive, there was unexplainable traffic that took us 45 minutes to get there. I can’t imagine what would happen in the summer. We had a decent dinner, returned to the hotel, and went to bed after this long day.

Tuesday (2/16/2010)

Today was the first day of the entire trip where we got to sleep in because tit was rainy, so there wouldn’t be anything interesting to do. I woke up at around 11AM, and we packed up pretty quickly, caught some last good views of Vesuvius, and drove off to Naples where we would spend the rest of the day. When we arrived in Naples, we did not get what we expected. It turns out it is a dirty city, but that wasn’t the bad part. What was bad was the drivers. IT was ridiculous. 6 cars would be side by side in the 3 lane roads, motorcycles would be slaloming through the traffic, and traffic lights were only suggestions, and almost never followed. We also got lost on our way to the port, where we would park. After about an hour and a half of crazy driving, we reached our parking space, and went off to to find the underground city of Naples. That was an adventure--getting to the underground city. We got lost in dark alleyways that could somehow fit cars racing at 50 mph, and the rain made it that much worse. We finally arrived at the city at 1:55PM. Perfect timing. The guided tour in English began at 2:00PM, and it was extremely interesting. We explored an ancient Roman amphitheatre that was discovered in the cellar of an apartment, and we explored the underground wells that people use in Naples. Those with claustrophobia or arachnophobia should not come to this place, as it is filled with small spaces, and spiders in those places, but it didn’t bother me. And don’t worry about rats. The snakes ate them. We left the underground city at around 4:00PM and started our walk back to the port, which was so much easier now that we knew a better route than Naples’ dark alleyways. At the port, we got lost, trying to get to our ferry, but by 6:30, our car was parked in the garage, and we were experiencing our first overnight voyage on a large vessel with cabins and a restaurant. Falling asleep was difficult, not because of the rocking up and down 10 feet at a time, but the annoying disco music playing two decks below us while normal people were trying to fall asleep. Anyways, it was somewhat of a shorter, crazier day, than the usual long and relaxing ones.

Wednesday (2/17/2010)

Today was a long and very tiring day. I woke up at about 6:00 AM in the ferry with an announcement that we’ll be arriving at 7:15AM. Rather than sleep in, I decided to get myself ready and watch the sunrise over Sicilian hills and Palermo, on the aft deck of the boat (The back, for those of you who have never been on a boat). We arrived and left the ferry at around 7:30AM. We spent about an hour through the dirtyish streets of Palermo (not as bad as Naples), in search of the Capuccini Catacombs. It turns out it didn’t open until 9AM. We spent the next half hour browsing the nearby cemetery. We could tell that they buried the very wealthy, because some people and families had an entire chapel built for them. We entered the catacombs as soon as they opened, and I have to admit, it was creepy. The bones of hundreds of men, women, and monks were displayed, with incredible preservation techniques. There were bodies hundreds of years old, yet the skin and hair still remained. The creepiest one though was a little girl, who looks like she is just sleeping, but actually died 90 years ago. The guy who invented this preservation method died, taking his secret with him. We left Palermo and had a very long road trip from one coast of Sicily to the other. We had two main stops, first, about an hour in, we stopped at Caccamo, which housed a medieval Norman castle, with breathtaking views of Sicilian mountains and valley. Our second stop was a cliff in Milazzo, where we were supposed to have views of Stromboli and the Aeolian Islands, but we couldn’t find how to get to the lighthouse. Nevertheless, we still got a great view of Sicily and the surrounding area. The remainder of the ride was countless tunnels through the Sicilian mountains, with the occasional breathtaking views of the valley between them. We finally arrived at our hotel at Giardini Naxos, which started as a Greek colony in Sicily, became a fishing village, and is now a popular tourist resort city. We took a stroll through the city, and from the port, we got our first and breathtaking view of Mt. Etna, the mountain that towers over Sicily, and the one that we’ll ascend tomorrow. We returned to the hotel to relax, and went out again for dinner in a traditional Sicilian (Which is not that different from Italian) restaurant, and finally came back to the hotel to sleep after such a long and crazy day.

Now, tomorrow, I'll be climbing Mt. Etna, and from there, the trip will be done in reverse. We'll drive back to Palermo, take a ferry to Naples, try climbing Vesuvius again, hopefully it'll be open, then we'll drive to Rome, and from there we'll fly back home.