Napoli- Secondo Parte

Back to Napoli!

On Saturday, we left the city via train for Herculanuem, an ancient city that was destroyed by the same eruption that covered Pompeii.  Unlike it's more famous counterpart, Herculanuem is smaller, which made it easier to visit in the little time that we had.  It's also better preserved, and we were able to see a lot of the original mosaics from the buildings.

Next, we took a bus up to Vesuvius itself, and hiked for about half an hour to the top.  We were able to look inside the crater, where we were actually able to see steam rising up.  It was pretty foggy, so we weren't able to see much of the view, but it's amazing how close to the city of Napoli Vesuvius actually is--if the wind had been blowing in the opposite direction back in AD 67, Napoli never would've made it.

Vesuvius as seen from Napoli's waterfront

Vesuvius as seen from the edge of it's crater

During this leg of our journey, we met an American couple from Rhode Island.  Of course, we played the "what are the chances that we are somehow connected?" game, and somehow made our way through four degrees of separation.  Thus, the greatest text message ever sent, to our friend Claire, from Wesleyan, who's in Italy with us:

"We're on top of Vesuvius with your dad's dentist."

I'd also like to point out here that, on this trip, we never once missed a train, bus, boat, or other form of public transportation.  We did, however, cut it close getting back down from Vesuvius, but we saved face by telling people that the reason we were sprinting down the side of the volcano was that we wanted to relive the Pompeii experience.

I didn't bring my camera to the National Archeological Museum back in the city, where we went next, but it's just as well because the entire second floor, which houses all of the cool stuff from Pompeii that we'd wanted to see, turned out to be closed "for emergency renovations"--and has been since February.  So Italian. 

But we did get the always-welcome overhead view of the city at sunset when we took a funicular up a nearby hill.

On Sunday, we took a ferry over to Capri.  I was tempted to take back everything I've said about Corfu being beautiful, because this island was absolutely stunning.

We didn't have much of a plan, so we took a funicular up to the top of the island and just started walking.  By some amazing luck, we ended up at the natural arch that's one of Capri's main attractions. We walked some more and ended up at a private beach where it costs 16 euros to sit in the sand.  Even though it was a warm, beautiful day, we weren't buying it, especially since we still had to figure out a way to get back to the main harbor.  I was dreading this part, since we had walked down A LOT of stair to get to the beach.  However, our lucky streak wasn't over yet, and we met a group of Italian tourists who let us hop into their boat.  They dropped us off at a smaller harbor, where we enjoyed Caprese salads (what else?) before catching a bus back to our ferry port.

 

Our new friends were excited to have some young people join their trip.  We were excited to be saved from a literal tourist trap, so everyone was happy.

Last but not least, there was the food.  If you've read Eat Pray Love or seen the movie, you'll know that Napoli is famous for having the best pizza in the world--it is, after all, where the margherita pizza was invented.  It's also known for having the best coffee in Italy...something to do with the water.  Everything we'd heard was true.

The first night, we ate at Sorbillo's, a restaurant recommended by Giovanni.  We chose our pizzas from a list of 21 varieties- each named after one of the owner's 21 children.  Mine was called Ulderico, it had eggplants on it, and it was absolutely incredible.  Hope had the "Elena," with artichokes, and it was also amazing.  We tried our best to eat them "Italian stlye," making our way through with a fork and a knife instead of picking up slices.

If I had an Italian boyfriend, it would be Ulderico

The second night, we went to Da Michele (the "Eat Pray Love place").  We knew we had picked the right spot when we saw the huge crowd of people waiting outside what otherwise seemed like a pretty basic pizzeria.  We had to wait for over an hour for our number to be called, and this time there were only two varieties- margherita and marinara.  We both ordered the margherita, and dug in under a picture of Julia Roberts filming the movie.  In between bites, we struck up a conversation with the couple we shared a table with--they were both from Napoli and lived just around the corner.  We asked them if they'd seen the movie that glorified their local pizzeria, and it turns out they were going to see it right after dinner. Adorable.

Julia Roberts eats her pizza like an American

But not me!

We were pretty upset when we realized that our new friends had ordered their pizzas with doppia mozzarella (double cheese)- they claimed that this was actually the best pizza in the world. Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime, we ordered a third pie to go and took it back to the hostel for dessert.  It was so good that pizza's basically ruined for me forever.  But it was soooo worth it!