Naples Coastline

This morning we awoke and were a bit sad to be leaving Rome. We had such a good time that we really didn’t want to leave. But the trip continues and our next destination is Naples, about two hours south of Rome on the coast.

Today we had our first experience with the train system in Italy. We pre-bought all our tickets the other night, so we already had today’s ticket. We just had to find the train. The departure board said the train would be on Track 14, so we lugged all our bags to Track 14. Of course when we got there we found out that our train had moved to Track 11. So we lugged all our bags some more. But we found the train with plenty of time to spare, and first-class seating allowed us plenty of room to store our stuff and spread out. We had an entire four-seat block of seats all to ourselves.

The two-hour train ride to Naples was very enjoyable. I did some reading on our Kindle, and Jessica looked out the window and managed a few power naps on the way.

We got to Naples and bought our ArteCard, the Napoli version of the Roma Pass. This pass allows us free entry to our first two historic sites (the ruins at Pompeii and Hurculaneum, in our case) and also gives us free transportation on all public transport (bus, Metro, local trains, funiculars).

Of course the hardest part, like we found out in Rome, was trying to get our bearings and figure out how to find the way to our hotel. We asked the tourist information office how to get to our hotel and they said to take bus 601. We got to the main bus depot and realized there was no bus 601. So we asked someone else and they said to take bus 1. So we got on bus 1 and the bus driver said he didn’t know where we were going, so we got off that bus. Then another bus 1 came by and that driver knew where we were going and said we were on the right bus.

So we finally got to the right bus stop and had a ten-minute walk to our hotel. We soon realized that we were going to be right on the waterfront. Our hotel is about 50 yards off the edge of the water, down a little side street. We were able to check in immediately, so we dropped off our bags and decided to go out exploring.

We found a sidewalk restaurant called Anema e Cozze and stopped to get something to eat. We were able to sit outside at the edge of the sidewalk with a great view of the Gulf of Naples. The restaurant had a heavy-plastic tent with sides to keep the wind from blowing us away. We found a nice, smaller bottle of white wine, which was fantastic. We followed that with a great caprese salad (bufalo mozzarella and seasoned tomatoes) and a fantastic cipracciola pizza (ham, mushrooms, mozzarella, artichokes, black olives).

Naples is the birthplace of pizza and now we know why. That pizza was amazing. You could tell that the ingredients were the freshest available. Even the black olives were more of a purple because they were so fresh. I said that they probably were grown just over the hill.

We finished lunch with a cappuccino for Jessica and a caffe for me. They hit the spot after a wonderfully filling lunch.

Since we were already on the edge of the water, we decided to take a nice walk by the gulf. The area we walked was similar to a boardwalk, but was paved, not boarded. It was nice and wider than a sidewalk, allowing plenty of space for many people. Some were jogging, others walking and many were taking photos of the amazing views.

Between the walls and the water was a large barrier of huge stones. These stones helped to break the waves before they reached the wall. It must have been high tide, and the wind was blowing really hard. The waves were really high and crashing hard into the rocks. They would crash and shoot water high into the air, and then the wind would blow the mist right into our faces. Some of the waves were really high and really close and seemed just inches from coming over the edge of the walls. We got really scared a couple of times and misty wet many times.

We walked about a mile down the edge of the water, passing several overlooks on the water side and a nice public park on the other side across the street. The mountains that form a border around Naples rose up above the cities, with houses all the way up the mountains. The houses were an assortment of bright colors and made for great views and photos.

We ended up sitting on a bench by the water, just watching the waves and looking out across the water to the other end of the bay. We had a nice stroll back to the hotel, stopping for a bottle of wine and some gelato along the way.

We have opted for a nice evening in tonight, catching up on laundry and downloading photos from our cameras onto the computer. Tomorrow we are planning an early trip to Herculaneum and Pompeii to see the ruins following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (which we can see from the waterfront). We will update more tomorrow. Ciao!