Thursday 2-25-2010

Our whole class met at the Portone below our classroom at 7:15 in order to catch the bus to Termini. We all made it and hopped on to the train for our two and a half hour ride to Napoli. Once we arrived, we were greeted by all of the loud noise and chaotic atmosphere that was foretold to us by all. A street demonstration was going on (from what we could tell it was some sort of labor dispute) so that meant that the buses were shut down so we ended up walking to our hostel, which turned out to be much nicer than any of us anticipated.



Following a brief break we reconvened and headed to one of Lisa’s favorite restaurants in Naples called De Matteo. We sat down and took up over half the room in the second story of the restaurant as we glanced over our menus. Almost the second that a menu was in everyone’s hand, their was a loud mumble about how unbelievably cheap the food in Naples was. Sounds of “4.00 Euros for a pizza!” and “Coke is only 1.50” were rampant throughout the room. Once our food arrived there was even more commotion. I think that it was unanimous that the pizza at this restaurant, and across Naples, was some of the best, if not the best, pizza in the world. Contrary to what many of us thought the pizza was much thicker than we were accustomed to throughout the rest of Italy. Overall, the food was amazing.



We then made our way to a nice little piazza where we sat down on the stairs that were highlighted by the sun and grabbed a coffee. A couple of us had to register for classes for spring quarter at an Internet café, while the rest of the class headed to the archeological museum. It is one of the most well renowned museums in Europe and housed the Hercules statue. It also was home to a large share of art from Pompeii as well as other parts of Italy. We were free to roam around so after about an hour or hour and a half the class had left. Some went shopping, some toured the city, and some went back to rest up at the hostel. Either way it was a very eventful day as we attempted to discover as much as we could about the city that was so new to all of us.