The Italian coast

After Rome, we headed off to Naples in an early morning train (to save on reservation costs). We had chalked out a plan of going to Mt. Vesuvius and then on to the Amalfi Coast or Pompeii, but as soon as we got to Naples all that went out the window. If Rome is like Delhi, then Naples is like Bihar. We reached and typically you would expect tourist information at the railway station and there was none. The office existed, but it was shut since it was about 8:30 and although everything else at the station was open, the little govt. Office wasn’t.

Anyways, we figured out our way to our hostel and got some info there. I think we had an experience which pretty much summed up Naples for us as we were leaving the hostel after that. We had just left the hostel and were walking towards the station about 500m away and just outside the hostel is a market. While we were crossing the market, a guy came running into the market shouting “Police, Police” (in Italian). In 30 secs there was no market anymore, everyone had immediately packed up and left their stalls. We stood in shock just observing what was going on. The first thought was “do we have our wallets). Napoli is the home to the best pick pockets in the world and this was our biggest fear going into Naples. So we very carefully managed our way to the station.

My research told me that there was a bus from Naples to Mt. Vesuvius, but everyone in town ignored that and were adamant that the only way was a train ride to a small town called erculano and then a bus ride from there. This added some 5 Euros each to our budget and also about an hour in time. It was almost as if everyone in there was getting a commission from this guy who ran the bus business. In any case, we made it to the station and got on the bus. This bus took us to a pretty reasonable height and left us about a kilometre under the crater of Mt. Vesuvius. From there onwards, we were supposed to trek ahead.

The trek was actually quite a difficult one, given the elements and the fact that we were carrying a bit of luggage. But the worst part was the other fit people who would just walk past you making you feel useless. But after the long trek, we got to the top and it was quite a sight indeed. Not only were we treated with brilliant views of the sea and Naples from the height, but obviously there was the volcano. I think if someone is around this area, this is a must do for them, unless they find something like Mt. Edna, which at the time was erupting!

After an hour at the top, we got back to the bottom and took the bus back. From there we headed on to Pompeii. This is basically an ancient town, which was buried under the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius  in 79AD. Its an interesting site where you can figure out how ancient Romans lived back in the day. Its like a Harappa civilization, but for the Romans. After many useless audio guides and expensive tour guides, for this we had downloaded an app by Rick Steves, a travel author and also read up on the place before we got there. So basically, we knew what was what. I think the most interesting things there were the small things like roads with marble chips in them to light the way for people in the night by reflecting the moon light.  Another interesting thing was the reconstruction of the dead bodies from Pompeii. The thing is that the volcanic ash, when it descended on the city had taken it by such a surprise that people did not have time to react, let alone evacuate. Due to this, there are several bodies of people just in shock, trying to protect their faces etc. these were all reconstructed from the ruins. The ruins are quite nice and we spent about 3 hours there. Some of the structures were just massive and its shocking how they were hidden for so many years. They even had a Colosseum like structure though not as big obviously, which was underground for so many years.

In any case, on our way out from Pompeii, we realised that all of Italy is basically out there to rip you off. Everyone told us that we had to take a train which cost us 2.5 Euros to get to a village to get a bus for Vesuvio we could have got the same bus from Pompeii as well and the train to Pompeii was included in our Eurail pass. Even to get back from Pompeii, everyone would direct us only to the station which was paid and not the one which was included. In any case, we got back to our hostel and had a nice dinner interacting with other tourists. I think this is the best part of living in a student hostel, we get to meet new people who all have very different stories and its very interesting getting to know some of them. Some hostels really help meet such people and it adds to the experience.

The next day, we made our way to the Amalfi coast in the morning, but once again this was not easy. Nobody in the station recognised the existence of the station at Vietri sul mare, one of the small towns on the coast. It almost seemed as though they all wanted us to take some expensive bus or train to the coast once again. However after a lot of information searching we finally got to know that we could get there from Solerno and so we took a train to that place. Solerno is basically a town from where the Amalfi Coast starts and we walked from that city to the coast. It was a bit of a let down, it wasn’t as spectacular as we had expected it to be, but at least we ticked off the Amalfi coast. Perhaps we didn’t visit the best part or maybe we needed to give it more time. In any case we made our way back to Napoli after a few hours and then ran to get some original Pizza from Napoli (Napoli is where Pizza was invented).

On our way to the place where it was started, we saw a Lemonchello store. This is a local drink which is made by dipping lemon peels into alcohol rather than fermenting the lemon. The person at the store actually gave us a tour and made us try some for free. We quite liked it and bought it on our way to the pizza place. There are many different places which claim to have the original pizza, but basically they are all the same and we chose a place called “Vesi”. The original pizza is just either marinara or margarita. We ordered one of both and it was shockingly cheap. While pizzas were 8-10 Euros in Rome, the original pizza was just 3 Euros. What’s more, it was absolutely brilliant, don’t know how the marinara without even cheese managed to have so much flavour, but the preparation had more flavour than most pizzas I’ve had in my life, the difference was probably the use of olive oil in the pizza. In any case we rushed to the station and got on the train for Frankfurt after the pizzas, thanking our stars that we were not robbed or mugged throughout our stay in Naples.