Off to Naples! Oh, and a little ancient fun on the side...

We got up bright and early on Thursday morning to catch the train to Naples for the day.  We were going on a fast train through a private train company.  It really was a fast train because it only took us about an hour to get there (with a brief pause in the tunnel while we waited for a train with mechanical problems up ahead to get up and running again).  We had heard quite a lot about Naples being a grubby city, and first thing when we got off the train a policeman came up to us and told us to watch out for our bags.  I think this put people a bit on edge, and affected the way that we viewed the city as we walked towards the center of the city to the Duomo.  It was also gray and drizzling out, and it felt like the group as a whole was a bit sleepy and uncertain.  At the Duomo, we met up with our guide to learn about the building's history.  I also read about the Duomo in the guidebook, and learned about the relics of one of Naples' saints, San Gennaro (Januarius).  The Duomo has the tongue of the saint, which miraculously remained intact postmortem, and two vials of his congealed blood  Every week there is a service in which the blood is supposed to liquify, and if it doesn't, tragedy will befall Naples.  Next we visited two chapels.  The first was the original cathedral, and had a baptistery with the oldest remaining mosaics in any baptistery.  The second was a family chapel, the Minutolo Chapel.  I loved this chapel because it depicted knights (members of the family) praying.  I enjoyed seeing the "uniforms" of the different knights' orders, and how they changed over time.  There were three different sets of knights depicted, each from a different period.  In particular, I liked a set of horned knights--they had large horns coming out of their helmets.  It was fun to get such a direct depiction of clothing from the period. When we asked the guide about this particular outfit, she said that the chapel was the only remaining depiction, and so there is no other evidence to explain it further.

Next we headed to San Lorenzo Maggiore, an open church which was built over a Roman forum.  Following this visit we were free for lunch.  Because Naples is the home of pizza, I checked my guidebook for a few "authentic" suggestions.  Several of us set off for one of these places called "Di Matteo."  The menu ws extensive, and it was hard to choose between the various combinations filled with meats, vegetables, and cheeses.  In the end, I chose a pizza with greens and sausage (and cheese of course!).  The pizza really was fabulous.  I've never been a fan of thin crust pizza.  I prefer thick, soft, and doughy to thin and crunchy.  Yet somehow, in Naples, the pizza was both thin-crusted and soft.  You really had to eat it with a fork and knife because if you took a piece and picked it up, it flopped over and all of the good stuff fell off.  After lunch we walked across the city to meet up at the Castle Nuovo, a castle built in the thirteenth century by Charles of Anjou.  On the way we stopped to grab pastries, another speciality in Naples (no shortage of good food here!).  I got something called a Napolitano, which a slice of a longer rolled pastry with a sort of plan cookie outside, and a filling of chocolate and dried fruit.  When we reach Castle Nuovo, we found there was sort of military display happening in the courtyard.  It looked like something to do with cadets or new recruits because those performing in the demonstration looked very young.  As we stood outside talking about the castle, the soldiers began marching out past us.  I was interested in this whole display because in the U.S. we don't really have military displays in the same way, and so it is interesting to watch an organized display of military power.  I have studied abroad previously in Jerusalem, and in Israel, there is a different sort of military presence as well.  There, the soldiers go home with their weapons.  Even when they are on leave, they carry them at all times.  It is not uncommon to be riding a bus, getting coffee, or visiting a religious site, and to be standing next to a young person holding an AK-47.  Having had these experiences, it is interesting for me to compare displays of military power, and to think about how I've really grown-up in a society which largely shelters us from the military.  To get back on topic, the castle itself was really a beautiful and stereotypical medieval castle.  The entrance was a triumphal arch flanked by two towers.  Visually, it was my favorite of the castles I have seen so far.

We then visited the convent of Santa Chiara.  The cloister itself was gorgeous.  All around the edges of the cloister were beautiful painted tiles depicting images of farm life.  The color scheme was largely yellow and blue, and the style reminded me a bit of Dutch delft tiles.  The church of Santa Chiara had been mostly destroyed during World War II, and only the outer walls had remained intact.  This meant that the church we were seeing was largely reconstructed.  Following our busy day as a class, we all headed back towards the train station.  I had decided to stay over in Naples with some friends so that we could visit Pompeii and Herculaneum, two of the ancient Roman cities destroyed by the volcano Vesuvius.  We stayed at a basic hotel right by the train station so that we could catch a morning train to Pompeii.  There were only four of us staying for the one extra day to go to Pompeii, but there were another four who were staying for extra days to snorkel off the island of Capri as well.  We asked the concierge at our hotel for a dinner recommendation and he mentioned the other pizza place that my guidebook had suggested.  With two sources urging us to go we decided to check it out.  When we got there, it was already packed, I think with locals, except for us.  We had to wait about twenty minutes until we were seated (it was a tiny little place, and very basic on the inside).  The restaurant was called "Da Michele," and has been open since 1870.  The menu was very simple.  They offered two types of pizza: Margherita, which had tomato sauce, mozzarella, and basil, or Pomodoro, which had just tomato sauce and spice.  We ordered our food, and then got to watch their very efficient system as they got pizzas in and out of the wood-fire oven.  The pizza was some of the best I'd ever tasted.  Like our pizza at lunch, the crust was thin, soft, and moist, and the simplicity of the topping made it possible to see how well they did the basics, and to really savor the flavors.  The spice mix on the Pomodoro was plenty flavorful, so you didn't even miss the cheese.  After dinner we headed straight back to bed so that we could get an early start in the morning!

The Duomo

Inside the Duomo

A lion in the baptistery

Horned knights in the Minutolo chapel

The Minutolo chapel

The Minutolo chapel

The streets of Naples

Di Matteo pizza!

Castle Nuovo

A military demonstration 

Santa Chiara

The cloister

Tiles in Santa Chiara

The next morning, we packed up our stuff, and headed to the train station to get our tickets for the "circumvesuviana" (meaning basically, "goes around Vesuvius," I think).  It was about a forty-minute train ride out to Pompeii (it was a commuter train to the outskirts of Naples, so we stopped a lot).  When we got there, we bought our tickets, grabbed our maps, and dove right in.  I don't think we quite knew what we were getting ourselves into, so it took us a bit to get our bearings.  I for one, hadn't realized just how big Pompeii was.  You basically walk along the streets of a Roman city with all along the sides.  Soon we came upon the ruins of one of the main town centers.  These large spaces would have been flanked by columns on all sides, and would have been the centers of business and politics.  Right near the forum, there was also a temple to Apollo.  We also saw a brothel (a building with lots of little rooms and complete with very explicit paintings), and the steam baths.  At the bath complex, they also displayed the bodies of people who had basically been petrified.  You could still see the folds of their togas.  It was sad and weird, but also interesting for what it could tell us about history, and historical dress.

We also found a really wonderful theater complex with two theaters--large and small.  The theaters were in the half-round and had the three doors for actors (as we learned about at Palladio's Teatro Olimpico).  Finally, we headed to the amphitheater.  We were able to go inside and stand inside the oval arena, which is now overgrown with weeds.  After three hours, we had just touched the surface of what Pompeii had to offer, but we felt that we had gotten a good sense of the city and we also wanted to have a quick visit to Herculaneum before having to catch our train back to Rome.

We hopped back on the Circumesuviana and headed back in the direction of Naples.  I took a quick look at the map in the train, and got us off at the "Ercolano" stop.  When we got off we didn't really see anyone or anything, and i didn't feel quite right.  It turns out that there were two Herculaneum stops, one for the town, and one for the "scavi" (excavations), which was the next stop on the line.  The next train wasn't for another half hour so we decided to walk into the town and try to get to the excavations on foot.  We asked someone who told us the wasn't wasn't that long, so we started off down the road.  A little ways along, we asked some middle school age kids if we were going in the right direction.  As we were muddling through with our basic Italian, another man pulled over on his vespa to help us out.  They sent us on our way.  As we got to a main intersection, we asked again.  As it turned out, the whole time we had been walking behind a very well-dressed old man who by that time had overheard enough to know that we were trying to get to the excavations.  He turned around and told us to follow him, he was headed that way--so we did.  Once the excavations were in sight, we thanked him and waved goodbye.  But as we entered the complex a few minutes later, we saw him again.  It turns out that there is a park just outside the excavations, and he was meeting his friends there.  We waved to each other as we headed in.  Herculaneum was significantly smaller than Pompeii, but it had a few things that Pompeii did not.  My favorite thing that we were able to see was the 2,000 year-old petrified wood.  We saw stairs, door frames, etc. that had bee petrified and preserved in their original form.  Once my friends knew that I liked the wood, they started teasing me, and pointing out every little piece of wood they could find.  Herculaneum was also much closer to the water, and we could see the sea from the town.  Finally we headed up the road to the train station to go back to Naples.  When we got to the Ercolano Scavi train station, we were struggling to figure out which door to go through to get the train, and some young boys jumped up and hurried over to help us.  Finally we were on our way back to Naples, and then home to Rome!

I am hoping this map of Pompeii will give you a slightly better sense of how extensive the excavations are
(http://www.orangesmile.com/common/img_city_maps/pompei-map-0.jpg)

One of the public spaces in Pompeii

Part of the forum

Houses in Pompeii

An ancient street

A room in the brothel

A painting from the brothel

A fountain 

One of the bodies from the ruins

The steam baths

The smaller theater

My travel companions up where the stage would have been

The larger theater

A part of the theater complex 

Part of the excavations have been turned into a park

The outside of the amphitheater 

Inside the amphitheater

Temple to Apollo 

The entrance to Herculaneum 

The park outside the excavations

Looking down at the Herculaneum excavations

The edge of the excavations--there was a sort of natural moat of marshland going around the edge

The colors were still very vibrant, even after 2,000 years!

Mosaics!

Petrified wood (and my reflection)

Petrified wooden stairs; unfortunately you mostly see our reflections

A street in Herculaneum

Goodbye, Herculaneum!

The modern town of Herculaneum

It is interesting how your expectations of a place can change your opinions of it.  Because I had been told by several people, and had read in guidebooks and online that Naples was a grubby and not very safe city, I was apprehensive when we got there.  A little bit like I felt when I first arrived to Rome having heard so much about pickpockets.  I quickly grew into a comfortable routine in Rome, and I also grew to enjoy Naples as well (in just one day!).  Once the rain let up, the city was quite pretty in places (just look at that castle!), the food was delicious, and the people went out of their way to be nice.  As I mentioned, on our Pompeii trip, we got lost and confused a few times, and people made an active effort to make sure we were okay and that we found our way.  In addition to our helpful concierge in Naples, on Thursday night when we were going to dinner, we also got slightly lost and one of my friends stopped to ask some people for directions, and they spent several minutes making sure we knew where we were headed.  I think what I'm saying is that you can't stereotype any place, and that sometimes having expectations before you get there isn't necessarily a good things because you often either end up disappointed (didn't live up to expectations) or you end up liking a place less than you would otherwise because you haven't given it a chance.  When we went on our trip up north, I knew almost nothing about Ravenna, Ferrara, Padova, Vicenza, etc. before we got there.  I would read the blurb in my guidebook, but that was it.  This was sometimes disorienting for the first few hours as I got a feel for the place, but I also felt that I was able to form my own opinions of that place without having been shaped by others ahead of time, and without having been told how I should feel.  Luckily, Naples disconfirmed my suspicions, but I also wish I'd given the city more of a chance in the first place.  I am also so glad that I spent the extra night and went to Pompeii and Herculaneum!  It was amazing--unlike anything I had seen, particularly due to its massive size.  It was a good two days!