The Hero, in Feminine Dress, is Completely Inebriated

Day Four, June 29th

We decided to take the metro/train (the stop was literally right outside of the hostel entrance, and the trains came so close to our rooms that the windows rattled) into Naples for the day. We'd been told that there wasn't much to do there, and even if there would have been normally, it was Sunday, so there REALLY wasn't anything to do. Most attractions were closed or only open until early afternoon. Well, we got into the main station and walked to the sea. We wanted to go into Castel Nuovo, but it was closed (and also did not look "new" at all). We walked along the seaside for a bit, decided to go down and join the Napoleons (I know that's not what they're called, shh) on the rocks, and swim in the mediterranean. It was so beautiful out there, but we were definitely out of place. The area really didn't have many tourists (probably because tourists went further down to a beach area). we stayed for a while, then walked further, making our way along the promenade (which in my opinion was the nicest and possibly only nice part of Naples).

There is a lot of poverty and corruption in the South of Italy, and it was all too apparent in that city. Homeless everywhere, graffiti on literally everything, and all the illegal merchants on the streets barely blinked when the police would pass by. Definitely a strange place. Well, that's really all we did that day. Not go to any attractions, just walk and lay by the seaside. We headed back to Pompeii (after waiting like half an hour for the train, it was WAY late) and ate pizza at a restaurant close to our hostel. 

Day Five, June 30th

We had a ride from Naples to Florence at 3:30pm, so we checked out of the hostel early, and, as much as we wanted to explore more of the ruins, went into Naples. We were meeting the guy at the Archeological Museum of Naples so we decided to just go to the museum (they had baggage checks) and stay there basically until it was time to go. I'm really glad we did that. The museum was awesome! We saw a bunch of statues, but the main attraction were all the relics taken from Pompeii. I saw Cave Canem, in person! Jeff and I were honestly amazed at the Roman paintings and mosaics. I think I never thought about the fact that, since their sculpture was so fantastic, their paintings would also be fantastic. But you never see Roman paintings (potentially because we didn't have any until Pompeii was excavated?) They are awesome! This one, though, is my favorite.

 The description of the painting said it was Hercules and that "The Hero, in feminine dress, is completely inebriated." I've been quoting that line this whole trip, every time I see something funny, basically. I'm sure Jeff is tired of it. 

Then, of course, we got to see the "secret room" of erotic Pompeiian art. What I didn't know is that in Roman times, apparently the male genitalia was a good luck charm. So the reason there was so much erotic art in Pompeii wasn't because the Romans were just sex crazed orgy goers: it was all for luck! They had sex scenes outside of their houses for luck, women wore penis-pendant necklaces for luck, and a lot of the every day objects they used, dinnerware, lamps, wind chimes, were all penis-themed. They even had a "fingers crossed" type of hand motion that I probably should not describe here (and that I'm not even sure how scholars know about?) that was for good luck but that alluded to the whole penis thing again. 

Anyway we finished with the museum and went across the street to have (guess what) PIZZA and wait for our ride. So our driver was Alessandro, a young Italian guy from Naples who works in a city a little north of Florence, and our fellow passengers were a French Canadian girl who had been woofing it in the hills for a week and an older Italian guy who didn't speak any English but kept trying to offer us the food he bought. We had some fun conversations on the 5 hour ride up north, and Jeff and I both were a little blown away by the scenery. We got to Florence and, after some drama trying to figure out how to get from where we were to the apartment we're staying in, (the drama being mainly that we couldn't) decided to just take a cab. Boy, was that the fastest driver I've ever experienced. We got to the apartment (we're staying in the second loft bedroom of a nice Italian couple who are lending us bikes for riding around town) and went to bed! 

Day Six, July 1st

Florence! Firenze! My god this city is gorgeous. I seriously could live here, if not for, you know, money. Nestled between the mountains and straddling a river, it is the epitome of Italy, in my opinion. The apartment we're in is pretty far up the river, so when we woke up, we biked to the supermarket to get food for the day, and then about 4km along the river to the center of the city. We stopped along the way to go through a riverside market with cheap clothes and whatnot. We got to the city center and, after sitting on a bench and eating our sandwiches, walked toward Il Duomo. This is probably the most beautiful church on the outside that I've ever seen, because it's colorful!

The stone is painted and it's beautiful and I don't understand why other churches didn't ever do this! I love it! We went inside and it was pretty cool, the ceiling to the dome painted beautifully. Went down to the crypt for a bit, then went outside again to wait in line to go up to the top of the dome. While we were waiting we started talking to this older couple, the guy had been a US diplomat in Spain and Mexico for many years and his wife was Mexican and they live in D.C. now. They were so cute. 

We went up to the cupola, all ~370~ steps, and marveled at the view. I may be crazy, but I liked this view better than the one from the Eiffel Tower of Paris.

Florence just isn't as big and is among so many mountains it seemed more inviting than the vast never ending French city. That's just me, though. One great part about climbing the cupola is that, unlike any other church dome I've been in, you got to go up on the inside and see the great painted ceiling up close. That was really awesome. 

Once done with that, we went into the Baptismal and admired the ceiling there, too.

Then, we got gelato and used some wifi, trying to plan our next leg of the journey, to Venice. I told Jeff every day we didn't have gelato, I would have to punch him. We then wandered over to Ponte Vecchio, the old bridge that has buildings across it, all of which sell jewelry. I can't understand how any of them make money, since literally all their competition is on that one bridge! We walked back to the bikes, then tried to find this garden Jeff wanted to bike through, but it turned out it was closed, so we just bought some snacks and biked back to the first park that would eventually take us home. 

Day Seven: 

Another day in Florence. though this one started very differently. First of all, Jeff wanted to biked up to a mountain village overlooking Florence to catch the sunrise. He left (I guess, I didn't hear him) at 4:30 to do it, and came back around 6:30, but apparently he had gotten lost on the way and didn't make it, so he just biked around the city for a bit and watched the sunrise that way. Finally we woke up around 9:30 and got ready to go to the Uffizi museum, to see Venus and David. Except apparently! David is in another museum in the city. Well, anyway, before we had even hardly started, we had an accident. We were coming up on an intersection and a car was coming the other way: Jeff stopped for it, but I saw that it was stopping for us so I kept going. Except I was right behind Jeff, and didn't realize until too late! I hurt my hip/pelvis and bruised my shin a little, but other than that everything was fine. It made biking and walking the rest of the day a little more painful and slow going, but I managed. 

So we got to the Uffizi museum, and did that for several hours, until we were too hungry to handle it anymore. Saw Venus

and a bunch of other paintings and sculptures, including the Boar. 

We went out and ate our sandwiches and chips and fruit we bought from the supermarket, and frightened a bunch of pigeons several times in the process. 

We walked around for a long time, just enjoying the city, although at one point we had to stop in a tie shop so Jeff could buy the most amazing tie. He's going to tell everyone about how it's his most expensive tie, bought in Florence Italy, yada yada. It really is a great tie. We then walked up to the Piazzalemichelangelo, but we had wanted to see the sunset from there and it was only about 6:30, so we went down again to get dinner and wine. Drank and snacked next to a little decorative fish pond until closer to sunset, then climbed back up again. It was definitely worth it: gorgeous view!

After the sun truly set, we walked back down, got our bikes, and went home.