Oh my goodness... the trip has now reached the peak of its insanity and madness today! Presently, I am sitting in a flat in Naples, belonging to one of the librarians at the University. She kindly offered to put us up for one night, while we 'experience' Naples.

Despite only having a brief glimpse of Naples, I am nevertheless concerned for my safety in this city. I'm scared of the 'camorra'... Phil has been regaling stories of them; apparently Naples is still in the hands of organized crime or the 'camorra' and little happens that matters without the nod of the larger families. Much of the government money ploughed into Naples has found its way into the hands of these families. Even as recently as 2000, mafia violence has raised its 'ugly head', when an alliance between the 'Camorra' families, concocted by Godmother 'La Madrina' resulted in the deaths of sixty people in a series of tit-for-tat killings.

Anyway, enough of that! We decided to head straight for Pompeii when we arrived at Napoli Centrale, but not before enjoying the first McDonald's McChicken Sandwich meal of the trip of the trip, which I was disgusted to find contained 100% of my salt intake for the week! The Circumvesuviana or Too-To train took us to our destination. It has be the most bizarre train journey I have ever experienced - there were two boys at the back clearly stoned out of their minds, a man opposite crying into his hands, multiple beggars running up and down the train, and a man folding piles and piles of designer jeans and shirts which I'm sure were all fraudulent. To top it all, everyone in the train was staring at us, as the only tourists on the train. I never thought I'd wish there were more tourists!!!

Unfortunately for us the weather decided to be at its worst today - it was bucketing with rain. Pompeii was a complete washout - the stepping stones across the road (which I imagine in Roman times would have been used to avoid the sewage in the street) were used to navigate the roads which had become 'rivers'. With no roofs on any of the buildings there was nowhere to take refuge from the rain and we currently still drying ourselves out! Pompeii was still amazing though - some of the frescoes, mosaics, and tiling are still intact. And indeed it's impressive to see how 2000 year old buildings have stood the test of time.

Despite the attempts of the Metropolitana (new to Naples) to confuse us, we managed to make our way to the flat, but only after getting a taxi whose driver displayed another example of 'perfect' Italian driving, navigating a rather long one-way road in the wrong direction! As the flat is on a steep hill, there is a magnificent view of the bay of Naples and Vesuvius.

I have finally started my essay (the whole purpose of being here), with the title History of Anatomy; The Greco-Roman Period - I think John Shaw-Dunn (our supervisor and retired head of the anatomy dept. at Glasgow Uni) will like that!

Phil has this burning desire to climb Mt. Vesuvius tomorrow and we also need to head to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale... Until tomorrow... Buona sera! x