Our day in Naples

Yesterday we spent the day in Naples Italy. We had planned on spending two days there, but there was a weird 24 hours layover in London attached to our flight. I had never thought that we would have such a long layover so didn't really check before buying the tickets. I saw that we left Glasgow at 3, had a layover in London and got into Naples at 8. We didn't even think to look at the dates and see if they were different. =P

So we spent one day that we had originally planned for Naples doing nothing in the London airport. When we finally got to Naples, we had to make a 4-hour trek, including an unintentionally free bus ride, to our Airbnb accommodation in the neighboring town of Portici. We tried to make the best of the next day, which would be all we would have here. 

The morning wasn't looking too good. We didn't realize that it would be Sunday until we woke up and so were kind of stressing about finding a church. We didn't get wifi information from our hosts before going to bed and so we couldn't look it up. Lucky for us there are Catholic churches on every corner here in Italy so once we saw one with the procession waiting outside we just followed the priest in and joined.

 

After mass we looked for something to eat. Many shops were selling pastries right outside on the streets. We stopped at one, pointed out a puffy doughnut looking thing, held up two fingers and gave them our money. The people were trying to tell us what they were, but didn't speak English. When we started eating however, we were pleasantly surprised to find they were filled with ricotta cheese. They were pretty darn delicious. 

Jacob is so happy

We didn't have a map or internet so we started walking in the direction that we thought Mount Vesuvius would be with every intention of climbing it. Once we got a map from a nice man at a news stand, however, we saw just how far it was and decided to abandon that quest and start the quest for the beach. This was a more difficult quest to accomplish than we realized. It took us about an hour and a half or two hours of walking before we finally found someplace. This was an hour and a half of being tormented by the constant sight of water just to our right but no road to lead us there. We were left in such despair that we nearly turned back right before we found it. I am very glad we didn't turn back though. A little time on the beach was just what we needed to get our day back on track.

A sand castle we made, then destroyed, of course =)

Jacob playing in the sand

Me buried 

sitting on a rock trying to keep my feet relatively clean before putting them in shoes.

Feeling revived after a successful and fun few hours playing in the black sand (probably black from volcanic ash, we decided), we got some lunch, looked at the map and the time and decided that we had enough time to at least get closer to the famous volcano that completely buried the ancient city of Pompeii. It turned out to be a really big hill so we didn't get as far as we would have liked, but we did get some closer pictures and once nice picture of the city below. We walked for quite a while to get these pictures so enjoy.

 

We really like Portici. The town was not for tourists at all. No one spoke English, which was scary but cool at the same time. We felt like we were getting an authentic Italian experience. And we are very proud of the fact that we survived. =)

small stereotypical Italian street

We got into Rome today. We spent a stressful day walking and being lost, but we are now where we are supposed to be, have internet, a bed, and food in our bellies (McDonald's twice today, but desperate times right? nothing but pizza and pasta for the rest of our time in Italy). The rest of our time here in Rome looks very promising. We are excited to experience it and then tell you about it after. We are here until Saturday so come back around then to find out what else we get up to. =)

From Italia with love,

Jessie and Jacob