Coffee does strange things to a mind.
Usually, I’d be grumpy as fudge, but we went to actually eat breakfast at a place called “Route 66”, in reference to the US. Apparently in Italy, when you order “coffee”, they give you a tiny teacup with a shot of espresso. That’s coffee to them, apparently, while in the US, we have espresso+water, which is “americano”, or something. I asked for milk in my coffee as well, and ended up with a pretty delicious drink.
Then, we went to go eat ice cream, because that’s what normal people do after they eat breakfast. It was mainly because we saw a really long line to the ice cream place the night before, so we decided to check it out. It was super fancy and the aestethic was A++++. Ice cream was up to par as well- yogurt tho <3 <3
Since my family can’t plan, we decided to go to that one gothic church in Rome- apparently the only gothic church in Rome actually. A driver said that it was by the “ministry of justice”, so I plugged it into Google Maps. Along the way there, we saw a fountain floundered with pigeons, and coincidentally, we had more bread to use. So, my sister and I fed some pigeons for awhile for kicks and giggles.
We continued to wander around until there was no church near the ministry of justice that we went to. Angered and disappointed, we turned around, only to stumble upon both of them on our way home to catch up to our train to Naples. So was it go see the church, or rush home? Hmm…. My mom’s around, so the former it is! It wasn’t anything special, besides the facade in the front.
We rushed out, got our stuff, and puzzled how we were going to get to the train station on the other side of town. After asking some people…
ITALIA TIP #4: TRAINS, BUSES, AND SUBWAYS ARE A THING AND MUCH CHEAPER THAN TAXIS/UBER. DO A SMART AND USE THEM.
So basically we wasted a ton of money using Uber and Taxis when we could have been using the subway or the bus. Oops! In our defense though, we had a lot of luggage that needed to be moved, but in the end, it all worked out.
In the 3 and a half train ride to Naples, I slept, wrote stuff, and slept some more. I was actually super tired, and needed to work on some schoolwork, but my mind was like “Nah”.
Once we got to Naples, however, my level alertness went from 1 to over 9000. The train station itself was pretty nice- had a place to sit down and eat, shop, but the outside was a completely different manner entirely. We got lost (no surprise there), but the city was crazy. Cars were on the verge of hitting everything around them, everyone was smoking, the streets and buildings seemed to me covered with soot… It reminded me of a slum, to be honest. Maybe it was just a reaction to being a new environment, but I was eyeing everyone around me up, making sure they weren’t going to jump me or my family.
It was a tense 30 minutes until we finally dragged our luggage to a gigantic door. But as we looked around, there was no hotel to be found. However, on the other side of the street, there was a White House-esque hotel building, with butlers escorting its guests in. We collectively looked at my mom for confirmation, but she shook her head. I should’ve known- we weren’t that eager to spend our vacation budget away.
Instead, we found our guesthouse on the third floor of the gigantic building, which was apparently built over 200 years ago. But what we found inside the guesthouse was a huge surprise. It looked super-modern, with a obvious white/mint color scheme and was very neat for being such a small space. Beds were super comfy as well. Furniture was quality. The owner treated us very well, super sweet. Compared to our last hotel, it was like heaven.
For the rest of the night, we stayed in the hotel, since it was getting late and shady. My dad brought back some gelato (3rd gelato of the day!!) and some Naples pizza. The pizza, being from the birthplace of pizza itself, was slightly above Papa Johns’ quality, and completely worth it. With a full stomach, we went to sleep.