We sailed from the small town of Pozzuoli to the large city of Naples complete with department stores and malls on busy streets but with an old-world atmosphere. We did walk through the Galeria Umberto I, an enormous and very ornate mall, but still very much a mall. The side streets were smaller with older buildings and open air markets of all kinds. People walked around and chatted as in the smaller towns.
Since we couldn’t go back to the ship for lunch, Francine arranged a pizza feast for us. We all thought that when pizza number 1 arrived, that would be it and ate it happily. But then pizza number 2 came followed by 3, 4 and 5. They were all so good that we had to have some of each. When we were completely stuffed out comes an enormous dessert. The real highlight of lunch was meeting Francine’s really cute husband. Jorge tried to barter for Francine but he wasn’t having any of it. All in fun!
We all waddled down the restaurant steps, each sure that an 10 extra pounds would come with us to the U.S. We then stopped for a visit outside the Castel Nuovo and had a group picture taken. The building of the castle started in the late 1200’s and its towers were added much later. It was named Castel Nuovo to distinguish it
from older castles in the area. It does look like castles in fairy tale books, complete with a drawbridge. It currently houses a Municipal Museum and is used for cultural events.
In the afternoon some of us took a cab to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale. We decided that Naples cab drivers are really intense! Visiting the museum was perfect prior to seeing Pompeii since so many artifacts were from the its excavation site. We were told that there were more artifacts at this museum from Pompeii than remained in Pompeii. Our guide, Liliana, was wonderful and knew which things she should show us and how much information and time to devote to each piece.
