Napoli

Friday was our day to explore Naples. Since it was already dark when we arrived at our hostel the night before, we didn't get a full impression of our surroundings until we set foot outside in the morning. As it turned out, our hostel was located in the middle of a construction site, which was now crowded with people selling cell phones and DVDs out of plastic bags. Wading through this center of commerce, however, we didn't feel as uncomfortable as one might have expected. The thing is, everyone in Italy so far has been incredibly nice. No matter how rundown an establishment or street may look, nobody has given us a funny look whatsoever. Even though we're pretty hard to miss, two blond kids with huge backpacks, carrying a map, looking both lost and terribly excited. Even the stray dogs are nice. They're sunbathing at the piazza's, occasionally giving you a heart-melting look with big brown eyes.

Naples was an entirely different from the places we visited earlier on this trip. It's full of narrow, curvy streets which in turn are full of people, cars, mopeds, noise and more people selling cell phones and DVDs out of plastic bags. It's probably the most disorganized city we have seen so far. As we were walking around, we ran into a parade celebrating the public works of Naples and its surroundings (the local police and firemen, for example), for which none had bothered to close the streets to traffic. Consequently, the band was cheerfully accompanied by cars and mopeds honking at each other as they weaved their way through the marching crowd. Nobody seemed to think this was a problem. And it wasn't.

We walked along the coastline, visited the Castel Nuovo and the Castel Dell'Ovo. Our tourguide at the first castle provided us with an explanation for why half the city seems to be under construction. Every time people start digging a hole somewhere, they hit upon some the remains of some ancient temple or fortress. Underneath, there's usually several other treasures to be found, since every new civilizations built on top of the previous one here. Therefore, it tends to take multiple years of excavation before the Neapolitans can actually start laying the foundations of their new metrostation.

Since we had severely upset our hostel's owner the previous night by not following his recommendation for two 'internationally renowned' pizzaria's down the street, we decided to go there for lunch today. He didn't say a word to much, it was definitely quite fantastic. Lasagna on a pizza, who would have thought.

With full stomachs we headed back to the train station, beginning our journey across the country, to the port of Bari.