Next stop Naples

So continuing on where I left off in my Rome post, me and my boyfriend took the train down to Naples on the Tuesday afternoon.

Now I felt very depressed coming back to this city. I fell deeply in love with Rome. It was so beautiful and so much more tranquil than the inferno of Naples. I was almost close to tears when I stepped off the train at Stazione Centrale. My boyfriend didn’t seem any better, after checking into the B&B, which I had made sure was in one of the most upmarket and safest areas, we took the funicolare up to Vomero to try and pick him up a strap for his SLR camera. I could tell by his face that something was wrong. It turns out that all of my talk about Naples in the past few days had been so negative that he was now really afraid to be there. I felt awful.

Luckily he perked up. My shoes broke and we had to go for an emergency shoe hunt which was a complete disaster. We only had one hour to find shoes, it was 7pm, and I have abnormally wide feet and could not find any shoes that would fit them. Finally at 7.50pm I found a pair of boots…yes boots in the summer!…that accommodated my feet well enough.

We then went for a walk along the sea front towards a pizzeria that I had been to a few months before with my family. I ordered pizza D.O.C and he ordered pizza marinara (two very Neapolitan/original pizzas).

We went home and attempted to have a shower. It turns out that the shower uses a tank and we had been left with no hot water! As if that wasn’t bad enough our bathroom had some weird device which sucks the water from the tap/toilet/shower very loudly, which was annoying and scary.

The next day I took him to the historical centre. We got the metro to my least favourite part of the city Montesanto,which my boyfriend renamed “Shanty Town”. I took him to see the statue of Dante but alas it was under constructions, or should I say under cleaning (is that even a phrase?) because of all of the unsightly graffiti. Anyway I took him to see my favourite monument in Naples, The Gesu’ Nuovo. It’s such a suprise when you walk into the building because from the outside it doesn’t even look like a church and then walk in and it’s like BAM!

From this:

To this:

We then walked along the small narrow streets of the historical centre looking in the shops and then shopping for a bit to watch the man selling fake designer bags fail at trying to sell his crap to tourists. For lunch I tried to that him to a place I’d been with an Italian friend but I couldn’t find it and decided to go to another pizzeria that I’d been to with my parents. On the way there we were stopped by a man who was funnily enough advertising for the pizzeria we were going to. He first tried to speak to me in English and then asked “Sei italiana?” “Si’” I replied…and guess what he fell for it hahaha. So for lunch we had fried pizza and croche’. Nomnomnom.

We then went home and I packed up all of the things that I didn’t need anymore. We got on the Cumana to Quarto, the town where I used to teach at, and I showed him the stray dogs at the train station and the school. We then hopped back on the Cumana to Soccavo where we got an ice cream (strawberry and I’ve forgotten what else) and we went to my house where I introduced him to everyone and we collected some stuff that I needed for the next few days/ stuff for him to take back to the UK.

That night we went to a Greek kebab, which I love so much.

We ate it by the sea looking out at the lovely night view. A lovely way to end the night.