Monday the 18th. March is going by so fast. We ate b(R)eaky at a decent hour and decided to go to Pompeii this morning. We met a guy, Nestor, from Spain. He’s super decent and comes from a family of doctors and has twins sisters who are surgeons! He went with us to the metro and we rode the train out to Pompeii with him. The escalators here are the longest I’ve seen. They take you so far down and there are several layers of them to get down to the train. Last night the stations were pretty deserted so Levi went to the bottom of the escalator and we rolled an orange down the side beside the escalator and it struck us all funny because it was bouncing and going like 30 mph by the time it got to the bottom where it hit a sign and no more orange.

It’s very unclean in Naples in general. It looks like a third world country in places. The traffic just whizzes by and motos and cars honk and squeeze through impossible places all the time. Everywhere is cobblestone streets and there is graffiti everywhere. I mean everywhere. On trains, buses, walls, storefronts, alleys, bus stations. It’s crazy. It seems like basically if something works they just use it regardless of safety or anything else. Nothing is really in good shape or clean.

We arrived in Pompeii and split with Nestor who was doing a long guided tour while we did a shorter audio one. So I’ve always pictured the city of Pompeii to be quite small but wow was I mistaken. It’s around 170 acres full of partial buildings and pillars and streets so of course we didnt get through even 1/4 of it I’m sure. Mt. Vesuvius was clear today so we had good views of it from Pompeii. We spent awhile there walking around.

We found the Garden of the Fugitives where the bodies of people were found so there are plaster casts of the people and they look as if they are trying to cover their heads or run away and it really is quite sad how the city met its end. You really do need to go online and read about Pompeii to get a better view of how incredible it is.

After we finished up there we ate some fake food and caught the train back to Naples. Id heard of this place called Christmas Alley that I wanted to see so we walked there and shopped around awhile.

We went back to the hostel and recuperated for a little and then went out to get supper from another Italian place which was an experience our hostel lady recommended for a true Italian waiter experience. Alot of the restaurants here are set up with the kitchen in the building and usually a tent on the street that has chairs and tables in it. The men at this one were loud and yelled “grazie” or thank you when someone tipped the cooks. You ordered either with an appetizer or without and they brought you food accordingly so we had fried mozzarella and buffalo cheese, prosciutto, rice balls, and fried potato balls.

Levi and I had mussel and squid and bean pasta and Morgan had spaghetti bolognese. Prices here for a pizza are about 5 euros and for pasta 10 to 12 euros. The euro is pretty much the same as our dollar so it makes it easy to figure. Water of course is expensive and most places assume you want mineral water which is disgusting. Wine is also really cheap here, cheaper than coke or water. After supper, we walked up a hill to one of the higher points in the city right by St. Elmos Castle. The view was amazing at night and overlooked the bay of Naples and part of the city. We took an uber deal back to our hostel which stressed me out because the drivers here are ruthless. Like it was supposed to take 30 minutes but we made it in 14. Our driver cut through streets that probably never see the light of day and took blind corners with I guess the hope nobody would be coming the opposite way around them. The guys think its great.