O Sole Mio!

We got up at 3 am this morning to get to the airport in order to catch a 6 am flight to Napoli. What an ordeal. I will begin by saying, European train travel is much more civilized than flying European cheap airlines. My carry-on was too big so it cost ...... get this, 60 euros to check it at the gate. So much for cheap airfare, but at least we learned how to pack better to get around this, and that will never happen again. Otherwise we made it fine and found our apartment in Naples. It's big, updated with modern things, including air conditioning--praise the Lord!! And it is in an old section of town. We have already found the Saturday market for fruit and veggies; we made a friend there -- the peach vendor who threw in some plums for free. We made a big deal of his generosity and everyone around loved his "show", smiling and clapping. We took his picture. Then we had espresso with a chaser of sparkling water and also found a couple of supermarkets to stock up on basics.

Naples is not Prague, it is not Paris, and it isn't even Stuttgart--it's more like Tiajuana. It's the dirtiest city I've ever seen, maybe even more dirty than Tiajuana, and the Italians are stressful! The Saturday market and even the supermarket was a zoo with people everywhere, yelling, stopping in the middle of narrow isles to bark on their cell phone or converse loudly with the produce guy or the fish vendor. And here we are, wide-eyed and trying to figure out what we need and doing a quick conversion from euro to dollars to get a sense of value as well as a quick conversion from Italian to English to make sure we know what we are buying--sure don't want to confuse olive oil with vino.

It's been a big day already. Did I mention how hot it is in this part of Europe these days? And it's very sunny. We have some great farmers' tans and brown flipflop feet going on. We even have tans on our hands. You can tell when you take off the rings. Anyway, we plan to locate some famous Napoletano pizza tonight and tuck it in early -- we're pooped. Then tomorrow, we start our adventures with a visit to the Bay of Napoli Coast, then we will fill in the rest of the week with day trips to the Isle of Capri, to Pompeii, to the National Archeological Museum and to Sorento on the Amalfi Coast. Who knows what else.