friends. are. great. (for mda)

but its true! i hung out yesterday with the same kiwi and another american, and it was so great. i just loved having someone to laugh with about our ridiculous predicaments and slightly erring decisions that dont quite end up the way we want. and of course, in chasing sunsets.

so we headed out yesterday at about 9am, straight for the bus terminal and got on the right bus for pompei scavi, the ruins of pompeii. peter hadnt slept well, so he assigned me the task of determining where to get off and took a nap. so daniel and i chit-chatted our way across town and by the shadow of vesuvius. there werent too many other tourists on the bus, as it was a regional transit bus, and they all got off in one area of hotels and such. i looked around, but didnt see any big signs saying this was our stop, nor did it look like there were any ruins anywhere. so we stayed on. and stayed on. about an hour later, peter wakes up and is like, uh, we have been on this bus too long. where are we? well, i stopped yapping away to daniel long enough to realize we are the only ones on the bus by this point, and we have long since passed vesuvius and have seen nothing but city for the past hour. so, peter, the great guy that he is who doesnt speak but a few words of italian, goes and asks the bus driver, who doesnt speak but a few more words of english, about where we should get off. he points backwards and makes motions that mean to say, "a long way back was pompei scavi". so peter asks about what bus we can take to get back there, and the bus driver comes back to us in our seats (the bus is still running, in stopped traffic, with no driver behind the wheel) and says that he will turn around soon and go back himself, he just will stop to get a coffee and smoke a cigarette.

sure enough, about 3 blocks later, he turns around and parks the bus and comes to talk to us again. he keeps motioning that we should get coffee, and peter is like, i am not leaving this bus! then the driver says we need to get new tickets. well, we purposely had bought 3 zone (downtown to pompei) daily tickets, which are good for the bus, train, metro and trams in the naples area. we keep trying to explain to him that we already have tickets and try to show them to him, but he is still saying we need to buy more tickets. eventually he gives up and invites us to have a cup of coffee with him. so we follow him off the bus down the street to a coffee shop. and we have no idea where we are, just in some city south of naples and pompei. before all this happened, daniel had said that he had to pee pretty bad, so as we walk to the cafe, he is looking for a toilet anywhere. he sticks his head into the back room of the cafe, and the bus driver comes up and starts joking with him, then goes in the room, and daniel follows him. but the bus driver holds up his hand in a "stop!" motion and goes in and shuts the door to the restroom. so daniel backs up, a bit bewildered and a little desperate, and waits his turn. good times.

so we are hanging out on the patio for the driver to finish his coffee (which is espresso in a tiny little mug that looks more like a shot glass). when he does, we walk right by a peach orchard back to the bus, and the driver keeps joking about us stealing a peach. or something. so peter pulls his out that he bought at the supermarket the day before to eat for lunch, and is rather confused, and tries telling the bus driver that he already has one, he doesnt need another. i am just laughing at this whole exchange, glad he isnt trying to joke with me cos i would freeze up and freak out about not knowing italiano. so i am happy he is joking with peter and making peter confused. he then starts saying that pompei is not far, we should walk. i immediately know he is just kidding, but peter kind of plays along and is like, "really? how far? should we just walk? is it not far?" but again, i am just laughing at how we got ourselves into this predicament, not knowing where we are, not really being able to communicate well with anyone (daniels italian is even worse than peters, and mine, too). then i remember that I got us here, by not getting off the bus at the right place, and laugh even more. so we get on the bus, and a few other women get on, too, and we take off. they and the bus driver are talking loudly and very animatedly (is that a word?!) for a while. well, the whole trip! i love that about italians... side note: when i was on the train from rome to naples, i was in a cabin with 5 italians, and they didnt know each other and were all in a big, heated discussion over the different types of trains and how fast tehy are and how much they cost. for an hour. in america, we wouldnt even talk to one another, much less argue with a stranger! again, i just laughed as i watched them all. ok, back to my story. the bus driver also points to us and i realize he is laughing about us to them, how stupid we are not to get off at the right place. well, one woman gets off the bus while it is stopped in traffic, runs across the street to the equivalent of 7-11, buys 2 bus tickets and jumps back on. when she sticks her tickets into the machine to validate them, i realize they have a big "4" on them... as in, 4 zone tickets. ours are only 3 zone. so THAT is why the bus driver was saying we needed another ticket! so, we are glad that he gave up and let us keep our 3 zone. we go along for a half an hour thru more city, and peter is like, wow, i really slept through a lot! then one of the women leans over and tells us where to get off, and we are thankful. yeah, it is the same place with all the hotels all the other tourists got off at earlier. still, i dont see a sign that this is the right stop or anything, i just see an old wall off to the right, thru a park, that happens to be the ruins. so, we get off and walk that direction, having finally made it to pompei scavi, spending and extra hour and a half to get there!

so up to this point, i failed to mention that it is raining, and our plan was, from pompei scavi, to catch a bus up vesuvius to near the summit, walk around the crater for a few hours, then come back down, see the ruins, and come home, making it a long day. and at this point, since it is 1130 and we heard the busses only run in the morning to vesuvius, we decide to just see teh ruins first and play it by ear abour vesuvius. peter pulls out his raincoat, and daniel and i are both cursing ourselves that we didnt bring out raincoats, having listened to the weather forecast instead, which called for sun. those darn meteorologists dont know anything! so we are standing under the tent of a vendor, wet, im a little cold (having worn shorts for the first time on this trip), and we see people selling umbrellas and head for them. they are also selling ponchos, so i opt for one of those, adn we head into pompei.

ok, let me tell you, this place is AMAZING. i cannot believe how much work must have gone into excavating a WHOLE CITY, digging it out of ash, finding stuff all over the place, including everything that would make daily life in a roman city. wow. and teh place is HUGE! and it, much to your dismay, i am sure, doesnt look anything like "escape from pompeii" at busch gardens. anyway, we figure out where we are on the map, wander around with our guide book, and see as much as we can in 3 hours. i cannot believe how many frescoes survived 2000 years. they are just amazing, with beautiful detail. i dont think they have done any reconstruction, except to replace, perhaps, what was already there. that is to say that they just added roofs, they didnt reconstruct anything else, saying this is what it would have looked like. they have redone some of the vegetation, but that is about it. so that was really cool, looking at teh gardens of houses, thinking, this is really what it looked like! my favorite place had tons of frescoes and 2 huge long fish ponds in the garden. no fish in there now, tho. we walked thru the arena, the equivalent to the ymca (recreation area for young men), up and down the streets, in a few houses, by the "fast food" restaurants of the day, the bakers-millers, thru the brothel, by another rich guys house, by the city baths (the ceilings there survived with amazing reliefs), and finally out thru the forum with temples and government buildings galore. so amazing. peter kept exclaiming that he had never taken so many pictures and was scolding himself for being so snap happy. he still doesnt have anything on me, as i took more than 60 pics on the bus from amalfi to positano the day before, and he just laughed at me.

so while we were there, it had quit raining, but we are a little to beat to try to find a nonexistant bus up to vesuvius, still hidden in clouds, so we make for the train station and head back to naples. daniel says he would love a coffee, so we decided to head thru the historic center of the city, by the duomo (taking pictures teh whole way), and to the main street of the city to find a good cafe to sit and chill at. so we just wander for a while, and it was so cool. we had gone to the historic center the past 2 nights for pizza, but it looked SO different during the day. tons of people walking, kids riding bikes, madness all around. adn the napolis (napolitans? napolians?) drive CRAZY. red lights really are suggestions, as are one-ways. craziness. thru small alleys, too. anyway, it was great fun. we find a gelateria and lick and slurp our gelato as we wander past more than 5 churches and down the main street. it is about 6pm now, we find a cafe, daniel knocks back his coffee at the counter, and we head for the castle to take sunset pics. well, from there, we realize we are on a bay and head for the sunset (with the AMAZING clouds), and daniel tells us about this waterfront walk that has amazing views. we we wind our way thru the city, and the road we are on goes thru a tunnel under the city, with no sidewalk. so there is an elevator and stairs up, to teh top of the hill the road cuts under, so we take that up, trying to head west. when we got to teh top, we were blown away. it was a huge plaza with a huge government building in a semicircle with big white columns all the way around, and kids playing soccer around the graffitied statues. with a perfectly blue sky and pink clouds. so amazing, and certainly not what we expected.

after snapping a million more pictures, we continued our chase for teh sunset, and the road we were on came to a bridge, about 4 stories above another road, that was a pedestrian mall with a million people shopping and eating at cafes. with laundry hanging on all teh balconies of apartments above. with the amazing sky of sunset. we again took a million pictures, and i climbed up a little to get a better view. an italian walked by, and said there was a staircase down to it. what?! oh, geez, so we raced down and followed the road west. so amazing and again, not what we were expecting! so then we followed it, realizing the sun was setting faster than we could get to the water. we continued following it to where we thought we needed to be, and ended at a park with the city aquarium. on the other side, alas, was teh waterfront. the sun had set behind the peninsula, but there were tons of lights on the hill and the clouds were still amazing behind them. and we took a million pictures, exclaiming all night at how amazing the sunset was. then we turned around and saw teh moon rising over another castle-island. another million pictures, and my camera battry was on its last legs, and my spare was dead, too. so we just sat there, enjoying it all, and eventually wandered back to the hostel, exclaiming at the clarity of the water, even in the port, and the guys planned to go back tonite. but i am headed for roma.

if you actually read all this, you are an amazing friend. ciao!!