Naples

On the last weekend of February, we were scheduled to go to a cheese farm for the entire day, so I did not travel out of Italy. But, I did take a day trip to Naples on Saturday. This trip began rough – on Thursday I had attempted my first “outdoor running” experience, and on Friday afternoon I had hiked up some steep hills to get to the cheese farm. On Friday night it was one of my friend’s birthday, so we were out at a club until 2am. So, waking up at 8am and taking a 3 hour train into Naples was not ideal. Every muscle from my waist down was aching from my two days of rough physical activity. (haha J ) I traveled to Naples only with my one roommate and her boyfriend because everyone else was feeling “too sick” and decided they would see Naples another time. The first thing we did when we left the train station was search for the ever famous pizzeria – Da Michele. Naples is where pizza was first created, so it is home to some of the best tasting pizza in the world. The pizzeria Da Michele is the one that Julia Roberts eats at in Eat, Pray & Love (and obvi same one from the book). The outside of this pizzeria was extremely crowded, and we went and got a number to wait to eat inside. After an hour and a half later and a big misunderstanding, we quickly came to realize that it would be about 3 more hours before we could actually sit down and eat. I was pretty frustrated, so I decided to take the pizza as “take away” (as they call it in Italy) and eat it on the side of the street like a homeless person. The streets of Naples are much dirtier than any streets I’ve seen before, and there are no benches. I didn’t care, I quickly gobbled up the pizza. It was sooo soooo good. I ate it so fast that I felt a little sick afterwards, but I continued two blocks before I decided I needed some gelato. We walked around Naples for a couple hours, but it was very dirty, kind of shady, and not very beautiful. Walking down the mall area was nice – that is where I saw a Michael Jackson impersonator. He not only danced like MJ, but he legit looked like him. Sketch. But this one of my favorite things that happened in Naples. Because there was nothing else really special about it. We walked into this piazza del Plebiscito, which was beautiful in architecture – especially at night. It was one of the few places that did not have massive amounts of graffiti everywhere. Afterwards we walked around Castel Nuovo, trying to kill time before our 8:30 train ride home. We got in a bus to head back to the train station and witnessed a dangerous “domestic” fight. A 200 pound woman and a skinny man were literally clawing each other, pulling out each other’s hairs and pulling off things like coats and shoes. As scary as it was, I was more concerned about the fact that we were taking the bus without buying a bus ticket and if the police came to end this fight, we would all be checked. Typical of me, I know. We decided to get off the bus and took a cab back to the train station. I knew I would be hungry so I decided to get McDonald’s at the train station. They had a hard time understanding “a burger without meat but with all the veggies”. This fiasco ended with me yelling at about 3 people until my order was right. Finally, we hopped on the bus to make it back to Rome.

Super cool that I ate at the famous pizzeria, but Naples will never see me ever again. Also, for some reason there were SO MANY INDIAN people in Naples – Rome has like none…..except for the hundreds of single, weird Indian men that are street vendors and gawk at me because there is no other Indian girl in the city of Rome.