Napoli

The early bird catches the worm; or a seat on the train heading to Rome. We worked our way through the station with practiced ease, looking up and checking the platform number, finding one of the many ugly, yellow boxes and validating your overly-large ticket, and to finally swerve through the crowd to finally stand impatiently on platform 10 and wait for your train to arrive...and be sure to not cross the yellow line! Kylie and I have actually memorized the voice of the announcer in the train station, and every few minutes, without fail, we are told to NOT cross the yellow line.
Four hours later and a very interesting conversation, topped with a bit of creepiness, from an older man in our car, we arrived in Rome to quickly drop off our bags and then catch the first regional train heading south to Napoli for the day. Another two hours, and we were officially in the South. Speeding cars, street vendors, busy travelers, lost and confused travelers, all blended together in the chaotic place known as Piazza Garibaldi, the piazza directly in front of the train station in Napoli. We followed our usual course of action. Get away from the crowd and find a map. Then comes coffee. Or really, which ever comes first.


This time we actually walked quite a bit, stopping to take pictures of everything and nothing, seeing the curious and capturing it for the future. We did have one major goal: find Pizza Napoletana! The pizza was amazing, even at a seemingly normal and not well known restaurant.
After digesting our heavy meal, we got back to wandering the streets of Napoli, passing museums,churches, piazza's, markets, street performers and more vendors. I should also mention that it was St. Patricks Day, but more importantly, it was the 150th anniversary of Italy (as a united country.) Flags of green, white and red (like a margherita pizza with basil, mozzarella and tomatoes) flew high all across the country.



After a long stop in Piazza San Domenico where we drank our much needed caffè and tried our first Neapolitan pastry, zeppola, while watching a pick-up soccer game from a small group of local kids, we made our way to the port of Napoli to finish our long, long day.