Unfortunately we had to leave he lovely city of Florence to head to Naples. I'm not sure if any of you know too much about Naples, but it doesn't have the best reputation. A lot of tourists skip by it because it is more known for it's pickpockets, thugs and garbage than it's sights. We decided to brave it for one night on our way to the Amalfi coast.

We boarded the train in the morning and this was the first time that we had a full car on the train. We noticed a blond middle aged woman struggling with her luggage, and the car was so crowded that Matt offered to help her get her luggage up. It turned out that she was sitting right beside us. I could feel her eyes on me after she sat down, and then she said 'you're not from Vancouver are you?'. She had recognized my Mountain Equipment Co-op purse, and told us that she was from Vancouver too.Afterwards, I could still feel her eyes on me. Then she asked 'what part of Vancouver do you live in?', we told her Dunbar, and she told us that she was from Commercial Drive.I figured she must recognize me, and then I realized that she looked familiar to me too. I asked 'Are you a teacher?', and sure enough she is a special ed teacher in Vancouver and we have been to a number of the same Pro-D conferences…again, it's a small world. This happens to us on every trip, but it is always such a surprise.

We arrived into Naples in the early afternoon. You could tell that this city was not set up for tourists. Everything was written in Italian and everyone busily rushed passed us. We tried to sort out the metro system to get to our hotel, but after waiting 30 minutes in a dark subway with people around us listening to the Italian metro information announcements and quickly leaving, we figured out that our train wasn't coming. We finally gave up and caught a cab. Wow, what an experience that was! There are no lanes in Naples…it is a complete free for all. There are mopeds everywhere you look that have no problem sneaking right up beside the car in order to get to the front of the line. Our taxi weaved in and out of traffic quickly, pausing only long enough to tuck in the side mirrors before darting into narrow roads only wide enough for the car. It was quite an experience! Thank goodness we had a really nice hotel to arrive to, because we were off to a pretty wild start in Naples!

Our overall impression of Naples…chaos reigns! People seem to just do whatever they want. Being a pedestrian in this city truly means that you are taking your life into your own hands. I desperately clung on to Matt when we had to cross the street and he would eye up the traffic and quickly pull me along when the time was right….truly a good marital trust test! Naples is the most densely populated city in western Eurpope, and you can tell. The streets were filled with people, garbage, and graffiti.I'm sure there were great parts to the city, but we didn't get to them. We did take in the Archaelogical museum, which was supposed to house all of the great art and artifacts from the Pompeii excavation. This museum was classicallyNaples style.Pieces were just randomly placed, with no information writeups (in Italian or English!). Incredible statues were poorly lit and covered with thick layers of dust.It was also really frustrating because more than half of the exhibits were closed, so we really didn't get to see half of what was there. Luckily the 'Secret Room' was open. This was a pretty shockingly funny exhibit of all of the 'erotic art' that was found in the palaces of Pompeii. Wow, those Romans had a dirty sense of humour! Don't worry folks, we took plenty of pictures!

That was pretty much all of Naples that we could take. We spent the rest of the evening hiding inside our lovely hotel room, watching movies on the laptop. Thank goodness we were off to Sorrento the next day.