Italy Adventures: Naples Day 2

Our second day in Naples we decided to make the "trek" (it was a pretty easy trek, mind you) up to the scenic overlook of Naples. That involved another metro ride and then a trip on the funicular, which I've actually never heard of before today!

Please ignore the black spot. I don't know what that is or how it got there, but lets pretend we just can't see it.

The sky looks beautiful and sunny...but I kid you not, the wind was brutal today. It was a record cold day for Italy, and we were actually joined by snow later on in the afternoon. We were almost wondering why we left Munich at all, as today definitely felt colder than it has been in Munich lately.

Castle Elmo.

We spent the afternoon in the National Archeological Museum, which featured art and architecture from the Roman Era as well as ancient Egypt.

 A badass-looking Athena.

 A model of the original city of Pompeii as it was before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

 Some beautiful mosaics as well.

We wrapped up our afternoon with some capuccinos and two different kinds of sfogliatella, a traditional Italian pastry with a sweet filling, both delicious.

Italy Adventures: from Palermo to Naples

Yesterday was pretty much consumed by travel, as we endeavored to get from Palermo to Naples, a process which involved two trains, a ferry and some underground transportation! We left our hostel in Palermo at about 7:30 and found our way to the train station with only a few minutes to spare before our train left. Unfortunately I didn't get any good photos of the gorgeous landscape and ocean during our ride (pesky dirty train windows), but got a few good ones during the 30-40 minute ferry ride.

We got a little slice of sunny, beautiful weather as we floated across the Straight of Messina and the breeze felt pretty good after lugging our backpacks around all morning. As mentioned in my last post, we did spoil ourselves with  some leftover cannoli for breakfast, which made the travel day a little more bearable.

Our view of Messina as we headed towards Villo San Giovanni.

Once we got to Naples we took the Metro to our hostel, showered and freshened up a little and then headed out to the Spanish district of the city to find some food and drink. We ended up in another traditional Trattoria that turned out to be charaterized as much by the ridiculous quasi-performances (jokes, dancing, and a very sexual peeling of a banana) as by the tasty food, which once again came in three courses. And once again, we practically rolled out of there to head back to the hostel for the night, where we ran into another group of American students studying abroad and spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the hostel's small bar to have a few drinks and gather around a guitar to sing some songs.