more Italy

Ahoy,

Let's mention again how I have no idea what the date is and what day of the week it is. I only know it is July. And all the clocks on the ship compoopers are wonky, so I don't know really what time it is either. I didn't bring a watch either. Genius.

Our port in Naples was horrid. It was so sketch. We were in a bad part of town, and you could tell. People were coming back frightened. A lot of people were saying they encountered mean Italians, but some were saying they were finding really nice Italians.

So directly in front of the port was sketchy, and to the right was sketchy. To get to somewhere that was reasonable, I had to walk all the way left out of the end of the port and then another 20 to 30 minutes to get to where stuff was. The waterfront was right next to this freeway. The cars went really fast and the sidewalk was really narrow with a curb that couldn't really be distinguished from the road. Crossing the street was near impossible. I kept walking and passed two castles, a tunnel, and up a hill to get to the part of the waterfront with street vendors and people. People usually come in twos. They are usually attached at the lips. They look like they might start the sex any minute right there on the street. I'm so serious. PDA is so not a concern here.

Sorrento was a little less than an hour out. What I saw of Sorrento was tourist shops. I'm told they have excellent, ginormous lemons. There was this one gelato shop whose length of gelato option is longer than that lunch line at Whitney Young (not the people, that line of food being served thinger inside). Pompei was a half hour back towards Naples. Old stuff. Lots of old stuff. A city of old stuff. It was cool.  They had speed bumps, which I thought were really interesting. I wonder where they were invented. There was this tragic casting of a pregnant woman who died from the sulfur in the air during the eruption. It was buried under something like 45 feet of ash, so a lot was preserved really well. The tour guide was super-friendly, borderline creeper/charming. He was the stereotypical smooth-talking, flirtatious Italian man. I wonder if they're all like that all the time, or if because he's a tour guide, he played it.

There were a lot of mixed reactions about Italy. I was not impressed with the food. I've become accustomed to deep dish spinach and mushroom from Ricobene's. There was this one place in Naples rumored to have been where pizza was born. I'm told it was not impressive. Some people wanted to go back to Spain. I think I like Spain more than Italy.

boggledy eyed,

JT