Tuesday May 25, 2004

We arrived at the Napoli (Naples) train station at 9:00. The station was quite busy. Nick's earlier cautions were fresh in my mind and were confirmed by a lot of rather unclean people milling about.

We purchased open tickets to Rome and grabbed some basic tourist information. We ran into another couple from Canada, Rose and Matt. They were from Edmonton and Vancouver respectively. That made me feel quite a bit better. We decided to go to Ishcia island in the Mediterranean sea. We bought bus tickets and tried to get down to the port. We left the train station and got utterly lost. We tried asking for help at various bus stops, but no one spoke any English. Thankfully, two very nice women (looked to be university students) took pity on us and escorted us to the correct bus.

Given how difficult it was to traverse the square, I'm very glad they did. There are precious little rules here when it comes to pedestrians and motorists. At several intersections our escorts seemed to blindly walk out into traffic. It worked, we got on the right bus and made it to the port in time.

The bus ride down was quite hectic. The bus was jam packed and we were in the middle of rush hour. The streets were full of cars. It was rather strange; there weren't defined lanes, so motorists were making up their own as they went along. At some points the streets had four lanes but mostly 3, with scooters dodging through constantly. I was thankful to be taking the bus, as walking it, while not far, would have been rather stressful.

The port was quite large. We purchased our tickets to Ishcia and boarded the 10:55 ferry. The ferry was huge, able to hold at least a hundred of passengers in addition to several large trucks and many other cars. As peak season is July and August, there weren't too many people on the ship and finding good seats was easy. We ended out sitting at the side of the ferry with a Napoli man for the bulk of the trip. He couldn't speak English, but between body language and the English-Italian dictionary we found out that he was married with two bambinos (girls, we think.) he drives a vehicle of some sort for his job. He was very nice and told us a little bit about the various islands.

The ferry ride over took an hour and a half. It was a beautiful trip through the sea. We passed by Mount Vesuvius and saw Capri as well as all of Napoli. Napoli stretches out over a much larger portion of the coast than I had imagined. Naples has about a million people, it seems that almost everyone is clustered around the coast. We passed by old ruins, many sail boats, lush forests on the coastline and the islands. We took many pictures. It really was quite beautiful. So much so that it made us forget how tired, hungry and groggy we were.

I was wholly unprepared for the island. It was almost like a tropical island that was picked up and placed in Southern Italy. The plants were very luscious, the weather noticeably warmer. There were many palm trees and semi-exotic plants that I recognized but had only seen as potted plants back home. In short, the island really is breathtakingly beautiful, but in a way that is completely different from what I have seen of the rest of Italy. Moreover, the people here are quieter, calmer and much more used to and accepting of tourists. While I'm not sure that I'd want to spend a whole week here, a day in a quiet, safe tropical island was a very nice unexpected treat.

Once we arrived at the port, we left the main area and made our way to Camping International. It advertised bungalows for $40 euros. We walked what seemed like quite a distance up hill only to arrive at 12:00 with no one there. (Lunch typically lasts 11:30-2:00 here, so this didn't surprise us too much.) We sat on a bench and waited, taking in the scenery. It was indeed a camp ground, and a lushes one at that. There were snaking vines, exotic plants, an apricot tree that had fruit on it.

The woman arrived and we saw bungalow, it wasn't at all what we were hoping for. It was a bare-bones camping hut with a burnt out light and no towels. Even though we were exhausted, we decided it best to leave. They thankfully had no problem with that, and we carried on back in to town.

We stopped at the first cafe we saw and purchased two small pieces of pizza. We sat outside and ate, I had a cappuccino, we both had water. Getting a bit of food greatly improved our spirits. We found a pay phone and called around. Sarah got a bit overwhelmed and a very nice, large Italian woman gave Sarah a kiss and said some encouraging words in Italian. It was very sweet. I took over calling and lucked out on the second call.

We ended out staying at a hotel/resort fir $70 euros. While this sounds expensive, it included a full Menu and breakfast. The room was large, clean, had a bathroom and a shower as well as a balcony with a small clothes line. It also had a nice desk, and a small table with two chairs on the balcony.

Sarah and I crashed, exhausted, and slept for an hour and a half. Afterwards, we showered and got dressed. We made our way to the dinner area and sat down for the meal.

The meal consisted of a heaping portion of spaghetti, a buffet of mostly German salads, an omelet, and fruit. We had to purchase beverages separately, we bought a liter of wine and a liter of water. Both were great. We stuffed ourselves and kept eating some more. It was a lovely meal. We took the last of the wine to our room and headed out for an evening stroll. It's odd, the island seems to be inhabited by people supporting the tourist industry here, and many, many senior citizen tourists. It's a bit like Myrtle Beach Florida. Anyway, it was certainly safe, and a very nice walk. We went into a few shops here, including a grocery store, a housewares store and a general tourist store selling beach gear, hats and postcards.

We returned to our room and finished the wine. Sarah read about Napoli and Roma, I wrote about our trip. We both fell asleep at about 10:30 and slept a very deep sleep.

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