Uncle Travelling Matt .com — the personal site of Matt Gifford

Yesterday I took the EuroStar from Napoli to Bologna to stay with Anna again until Saturday morning. Today and tomorrow I’m working, so there isn’t going to be much of interest to report—well I’m going to buy a couple of new shirts after work but that’s about it. On Saturday I head south again to Roma, as the Vatican museum is free this Sunday only—yes the queues are likely to be huge.

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Today we caught the train to Pompeii, the city that got buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted. What surprised me most was the size of the city, I spent 3.5 hrs exploring it and probably covered less than half of it. The frescos were pretty cool, as were the gardens that have been replanted. One of the buildings was an ancient brothel with frescos depicting a menu of various positions on offer!

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I’m sharing my room with a French guy from Luxembourg, today we explored the waterfront and a couple of forts and churches. I see why my friends said I had to visit here—it’s really nice, the weather is good and the people very friendly. However the traffic is absolutely crazy, people doing U-turns right into on coming cars and parking in the middle of road! I also think it must be a legal requirement to honk your horn every 30 seconds to make sure it still works, and I haven’t seen a single car here without dents, missing mirrors, bumpers, or all of the above!!

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Southern Italy is like another country. I arrived last night in Napoli at about 9pm in the dark, it was hot, humid and busy. I went to the McDonalds in the station to get a late dinner the only a couple of letters of their sign were working and everything inside that be stolen had been stolen, including the toilet seat but fortunately I didn’t need to use that!

After getting off at the correct Metro station for hostel, I got hopelessly lost. Turns out the hostel is up a winding industrial driveway in the middle of a construction site, and very difficult to find in the daytime, let alone at 10pm at night in the dark. I ended up miles away from it, being spat at by passing youths on Vespas. Napoli was starting to sound like a very bad plan.

The area I’d wandered into was pretty rough, with rubbish piled piled a metre high on the sidewalk and I was starting wonder if I was going to end up in dumpster too. However, I saw a family walking by and asked the husband for directions, but got lost again. Then they drove by in their car and motioned for me to get in and kindly drove me to hostel—without them I’d never of found it!

After Firenze I’ve spent two days over in Marche staying with Anna and her parents in a small town near the sea. Yesterday her father drove me over the mountains into Umbria to an even smaller town to catch the train to Roma and then on to Napoli. The mountains are really pretty in autumn but I’m looking forward to the better weather in the south as it’s been raining and a bit cold here.

Today is my last day in Firenze, tomorrow I head east to met up with Anna. Firenze is undoubtedly the most beautiful city I’ve ever been to and I can understand why so many great artists were inspired by it. However, it is incredibly easy to get lost here, the street markets being much like pinball machines, but this has lead to many unplanned discoveries, like the botanical gardens today!

My Hostel was about 5km away from the Train Station, so it took some effort to find. Below is a montage of the landmarks I use to get from Centro to the Hostel and back. The painted foot prints on the pavement are in fact to help school children find their way to school—green and red are two different schools. They also help lost tourists to find their way through the maze of streets too and I was very lost at the time!

After staying in a number of hostels in Australia, with lots of hot foreign girls that all spoke English, hostels here came as quite a shock. For one they’re not co-ed, so I’m stuck here with a elderly guy, a young Dutch guy, both of which don’t speak English or Italian, and an old Australian guy that sleeps naked. Yes, i don’t think it could worse! lol. Hopefully the next one is better!