Tuesday 12 April 2011

Florence and Naples

We took Florence real easy. Did lots of gawking at old buildings, ate some gelato and pasta, etc. We saw David, he's really super. We also got completely lost and ended up on a big hill with a view of the whole city, and a Medici villa that was converted into a few museums. Them Medici folk sure knew how to live.
We get lost a lot. Europe is hard sometimes, but we always end up at something cool.
Me and Susan attempted to tackle a Florentine steak. It bested us, but we gave it a good go.
We got lots of 'upkeep' done in Florence as well. We did laundry, which was a relief. Back in Venice I had me first 'washing socks in the sink' experience and it wasn't to thrilling. I saw a doctor to, and he gave me some fancy new antibiotics for my stupid ears. Since it was a Florentine doctor I was glad he didn't prescribe a tonic of pomegranates and lead. The antibiotics did resulted in 6 days with no booze allowed (the horror!) I'm in Rome now and will be finishing the dosage in a couple days and intend to celebrate.

I wrote up Naples last night so here it is:

Naples is shitty. I mean that in the literal sense. It's covered in shit. There are also a lot of flowers in the area. The smell reminds me of a woman I once knew. Also, here's a little tip for the government of Naples: (or should I just forward this directly to the Mafia?) If a garbage bin never gets emptied, it's not a garbage bin anymore. It's a garbage pile.
Naples is like Detroit with a view.
I was riding a on a little train today, just a couple stops to get on a bigger train. I thought to myself, "Surely, since commuters need to sit on the bigger train for over an hour, it can't be allowed to smell as strongly as piss as this little train." I was wrong.
I was wrong.
How is it that nobody ever mentions this kind of thing? Of all the magazine articles and blog posts I read in my research, nobody ever used the term "shit-hole". Send a blogger to hell and they would post "It's so warm here LOL! The torture is sooooo authentic LOL!!"
Our 5 star hotel, The Grand Parkers Hotel, could only be described as Naplish (bad smell, overpriced, great view). I think it's like in the Dominican Republic where the rating system is a little skewed.

OK, I'll write some positive stuff now.

Pompeii kicks ass. I loves me a good ruin, and the preserved nature of this one took it to a whole new level. The paintings on a lot of the walls are even intact. The cemetery was a lot like or modern cemeteries, in that there are huge monuments to a couple rich folk, and a couple rocks stuck in the ground for everybody else. We walked through a neat building that was all beds and there were paintings of people doing naughty things on the walls.
The ashy soil and the mountain with a big chunk of it missing add to the eerie effect. The 10000 other tourists not so much. There are also a lot of stray dogs there, so, that's a plus? I think it's a plus anyway.

I just got back from an admittedly bitter-sweet experience: having my first ever pizza that was better than my own. Needless to say, it was very good, and worth the trip to stink-town to try it.

2 comments:

Jabbles said...

Shitty about the doctor visit, hopefully it wasn't too much money.
Aside from the smell it sounds like your trip is going well. Glad to hear it.

Colin Young said...

Okay, I read your post a couple hours ago, but have only now quieted my laughing down to a level where I can reasonably hope to write a response. Well done sir! Nice to see that someone out there is willing to write something negative about a travelling experience rather that just sugar-coating in hippy idealism.

I smell nothing but the thread of life that joins all of us together in brotherhood... yeeeeeaaaaahhhh....

Anyway, glad to hear that you're still alive and well. Hopefully you find Rome to be a little less fragrant. Enjoy your time there, and eat well!