Today was great!

I woke up around 8:30 and got ready. I made sure everything was packed, stripped my bed, put all my dirty linens and stuff in the sink, and rearranged my room back to the way it was when I arrived.

I’m a weirdo and like to leave hotel rooms cleaner than when I found them, so, yeah.

I went to the restroom and then checked out and headed to the vaporetto stop. My pass that I bought on Friday during the strike still worked, somehow, so I used it and went to the train station. I bought my ticket to Naples and the train was already there, so I jumped on-board and headed for Rome. The first-class section of the high-speed trains are awesome: free newspaper, free snacks, free WiFi, luggage storage and crazy large seats! Definitely worth the price, in my opinion…one of the only things I’ve been willing to splurge on during this journey. Also, yes, I validated my tickets and didn’t get any on the spot fines.

Once I got to Rome I found the platform for my next train and then went to get a sandwich and some water. I got on my next train and there was no WiFi, so I ate my lunch, took some footage on my GoPro, listened to some music and took a nap.

 

My friend was waiting on me right when I got to Aversa, so we went straight to her house and I unpacked my stuff and freshened up. About that time, her husband got home from work and we decided to go downtown and have pizza.

We drove to Naples and saw an apartment building that was completely on fire…everyone just stopped in the highway to watch. We went to L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele aka Eat, Pray, Love pizzeria! It was SO cool! I LOVE going to places from movies and TV shows and that movie is one of my all time favorites, so it was absolutely amazingly amazing. They only serve one kind of pizza and you get an entire one to yourself, so we all had drinks and pizza and then drove around downtown. I got some good GoPro footage of the traffic and crazy drivers, which I will hopefully get to upload soon!

Naples is something else man. All the windows of the stores are smashed or painted on, the traffic has absolutely no rhyme or reason, its crazy polluted and dirty…but it’s charming in a weird way. I was planning on taking the bus from my friend’s house to downtown on Thursday to go explore alone, but I don’t really know if I’m going to do that now…it was a little scary.

After dinner, we drove back to where they live near Aversa and got gelato. On the way to the gelato place I saw a woman standing by a bucket on the phone…it was a prostitute. I thought it was her seat just to wait for Johns, but my friend said it’s her BATHROOM and that she’s seen her pop-a-squat on it before!

Apparently crime syndicates own the women (usually from Africa, Asia, or Eastern Europe-not Italian women) so the police don’t arrest them or mess with them at all…I couldn’t believe it!

Tomorrow we are going back downtown and then to a wine tasting tomorrow night! Talk you guys tomorrow!