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Breakfast as usual, a little more rushed this time due to the impending check-out and pre-impending-check-out packing blitz. Luckily, I pack light. So there. A little coffee and a pastry or two or three later and we’re ditching our gear in the lobby and headed off to meet Peter to visit the Zaha Hadid Contemporary Arts Center. She’s the “it” architect, and the building is kinda schnazzy (if not technically dated).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We Metro and meet Peter at the Palazzetto dello Sport, an interestingly shaped little building. Google it, then read the rest of this paragraph. See those inclined supports stretching from the roof to the ground? Don’t they look like you could run up them?

You can, and we did. We started our morning off right with a little building-scaling. There are pictures to document this, of course.

Everyone shows up, and we depart from our playground.

Peter walks us over to an innocuous white building. We go inside and are treated to a boring Powerpoint about a fantastic building.

There really aren’t words to fit this building. Many would toss around “ultramodern” or “confusing” or “too radically different to matter”. I’ll stick with “fun to photograph”.

You can google that mess too. Check it out, make her more famous.

And that’s a wrap. Rome is doneskies as far as we’re concerned.

But wait, there’s more! Buy now and we’ll throw in a (not anywhere close to free) trip to Pompeii!

So we did. We grabbed a lackluster lunch, Metroed to pick up our stuff, and Metroed to the train station.

Now all that’s left to figure out is how to get to Pompeii. Simple enough right?

We attack the automated ticket machine and Jess (with pseudo help from the rest of us) plots us a course. We’re getting a little bit frazzled at this point, what with the quick plans and rising uncertainty. We have a little time before the next train, so the gals (Perhaps I should have defined we earlier. We = Me, John, Beth, and Jessica. Readygo.) stop for a pre-train gelato. Then we hop the train and are off to Naples.

We sit down in our luxurious first class…oh wait. No. We weren’t first class. Did I mentioned the train was people stuft? We sat on the floor in the little room just before the connection from one car to the next.

There were people stuffed in with us, too.

The good news is it wasn’t like that the whole way. I think we could have managed 3 hours like that just fine, but I’m not complaining that we got seats.

So now we’re in Naples. What’s Naples currently famous for? Mafia and garbage (Literal garbage. There’s a strike of some kind, and the garbage is staying where it’s thrown. We’re witnessing history, folks.) and that’s not any sort of joke.

So what’s the plan? Hour till the train to Pompeii, so lunch in totally safe and comfy Naples. Awesome. Granted, we’d been told that the pizza in Naples is the best anywhere ever. We start walking around the totally bright and welcoming streets (It’s dark at this point. Shops are closing. Streetlamps flicker with a pale indecency. [Score one, me for self-reference that no one will get.]) in search of a pizzeria. We find a nifty little place where the people are nice enough and speak some English (cheating, I know, but still nice). We order a couple of pizzas and have a good little time kicking it and messing around and generally being friends. We pay and cheese it…

…down a few more alleys in search of some gelato. Yes, it’s that important. We find an open shop after a little while, and gladly pay for the familiarity and comfort of everyone’s favorite cold dessert.

There can’t possibly be a bigger target than us in all of Italy. We’re all touting our packs, eating our gelato and staring at maps.

We’re totally incognito, in other words.

We make it back to the train station just before John has a panic attack. (Just in the nick of time. I’m not carrying him anywhere.) We catch our train perfectly. (Actually a little better than perfectly. We’re sitting on the train before it leaves long enough to notice the following:

1. Not a lot of people.
2. A few strange looking people.
3. A few strange acting people.
4. A fight. Some guy put some money in a vending machine. It ate the money. He spent 5 minutes just banging on the machine. Someone finally got fed up and hit him upside the head. There was blood involved.

John is, at this point, out of body. After what seems like eternity, the train starts moving. We’re on our way to Pompeii! We have the number of stops counted out, and we’re ready to roll.

Something like an hour later, we’re in Pompeii. Easy peasy.

We were cool enough to pick a hostel two blocks from the train station. Score one us. We walk there and check in. They’d been waiting for us, odd as that may sound. (We kinda told them we’d be there at 7. Oops.) This place is fantastic. Very hotellish, and not creepy or dilapidated at all. It was perfect for the occasion. We were beyond pleased.

After the initial “ohmuhgosh, this place may be the best thing that ever happened to a traveler”, we settled in and fell asleep.

Interesting, you have no idea.

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END FRIDAY