Thur 4th Naples DAY 12

Our first task this morning was to post three postcards. One would have thought this was a straightforward process but it was SUCH FUN! First we found the post-office by asking a street vendor who basically cleared his throat giving us an answer but DEBBIE understood this to mean ‘just around the corner to your left’…ahem….and there it was. We had to wait for the ‘air-lock’ to open and close three times as it let three individuals into the VERY SECRET...shhhh…post-office. Once inside we had to work out what to do, and they (the PO) have found a way to make people who live East of the English Channel WAIT THEIR TURN!

Post office queue - after our visit BUT NOT our fault

...er…BUT…this means finding a little yellow machine which dispenses numbers for the various departments. PO, AO, EO and SO…..we chose wisely (a quote from Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom) and elected PO and then waited for 35 minutes to be served by the slowest post officers in the world. However, once we got there she was very cheery and weighed each postcard with equal severity (as though it were the most important document) and printed her little (sorry…HUGE) sticky barcode plus stamp. This all involved much discussion as to where our postcards were going and if the price was OK. She then tried to stick the big printouts onto our little postcards and they wouldn’t fit so out came the scissors – lots and lots of people waiting behind us WITH important stuff – and trimmed  the aforementioned printout to fit...BUT that was not all ‘cos she then remembered that an Air Mail sticker was needed too, and this obliterated some of the writing on the postcards… we worked very hard not to laugh…and left ready for a coffee after 45 minutes. SO, IF YOU are/were the recipient of a Vesuvius postcard then you should know it took about the same time to post as to climb the bloody thing! Here’s the queue waiting to get in to the PO after we left! (This bit of blog made Debbie and I cry laughing)

Galleria Umberto - we had a coffee here

Actually we’ve had a brilliant day. We then went to the Galleria Umberto – a huge glass and iron structure where one goes to have coffee, keep cool and pass the time of day (yeah, perfect for me and Deb…mmmmh!). The Galleria was all of this and we have a pleasant 20mins there.

After this we sauntered to a large Piazza where the San Frederico di Paolo Chiesa was but there was a political demonstration about lack of work, accompanied by armed guards with riot shields on one side so we veered around opposite-wise and took the opportunity to have the whole piazza to ourselves. Nothing untoward happened but quite a few places/attractions kept closed just in case things got ‘ugly’.

We met the most charming information chap who bemoaned the problem of lack of work in the city and sort-of supported the demo but said that all the tourist attractions would not be open till it was ‘safe’. He suggested we went to the subterranean tour of Naples, which we did later and to come back in the afternoon when things had calmed down.

View from bridge of Castel dell' Ovo - Vesuvius behind and
kids swimming off a dinghy in front - very heart-warming

Next we wandered, and at this temperature (30-32ish), that’s all you can really muster, down to the Bay of Naples and went to the Castel dell’Ovo. This so named ‘cos of it’s egg-like security (not sure what that meant but hey-ho). We climbed to the top (helped by a bit of elevator and air-conditioning) and took some pictures from the top of sea and city. Certainly a good view but rather dwarfed by the ocean liners or cruisers that looked like extra buildings on the horizon.

Part of underground Theatre of Roman times

Next was a fascinating visit to the underground theatre (from Greek and Roman times) which was discovered relatively recently in Naples. It was very interesting that modern buildings had been constructed on top of old sites and the Napolese had bought-out the landowners to excavate and reconstruct quite a bit of what was there. We had a great tour with quite a ‘camp’ guide (who spoke impeccable English…and even though we were the ONLY people on the tour who WERE English it was conducted in our language – we explained that it would be OK in French or Spanish but he didn’t believe us….) and were marched through our visit with some authority and pizzazz (er….not pizzas…by the way). 

Small tunnels to get to the cisterns

We had to walk down some quite small tunnels to get to the various cisterns and here's one of them. There were a couple of 'larger' people who couldn't make it - particularly a very tall Dutch chap who really tried but (at about 6'10'') was just too big to fit the little parts of the entries.

On the sunny side of the street........

After our trip down into the bowels of Naples we then walked back to the Hotel (in search of cold white wine and a beer or two) and saw, in day-light, some of the magnetic streets we'd only experienced by night-time. Just too hot 'on the sunny side of the street' - to go up them and also to quote a well-known song. 

A really good day to end our Napoli section as we’re off SOUTH to see Nikki in Acquapesa even tho’ SatNav doesn’t know where it is. We found it before in 1982 (…without SatNav) so we’ll probably be able to again!







We’re OFF LINE for two or three days but there’ll be an up-date on Sunday when were back in the 21^st century…at least from a technology point of view. Hopefully we can retrieve the bike from the Garage Men who are looking after it here in Napoli…they seem OK but both father and (his more savvy son) both need a shave…………