A BLOG CHRONICLING MY SEMESTER AND TRAVELS ABROAD

Thank you so much for visiting my blog. I hope that this will be an excellent way for me to keep all of my friends and family up to date on my semester abroad in Rome. Please feel free to post any comments you would like, or shoot me an e-mail and I will try to respond as soon as possible. Also, if you click on each of the photographs below, it will display them at their full size.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Naples: Day 3

WARNING: Kaitlin, there may be graphic photos of delicious pizza in this post!

We slept in a little later than we anticipated this morning, perhaps it was from all the walking around Pompeii yesterday. We met up with Monica's roommates Kara, Krista, and Ashley and headed over to Pizzaria da Michele which supposedly has the best pizza in all of Naples. It was a small, kind of hole in the wall place in a not-so-special part of town, but the pizza was amazing! They only had two kinds of pizza: Marinara, red sauce only, and Margherita, red sauce and cheese (though you had your choice of 3 different levels of cheese on the Margherita). I got the Margherita with the most cheese on it and it probably was one of the best pizzas I have ever had.
We saw this on the way to lunch. It might be kind of hard to see in this picture but there is a lady who lowered down a basket on a string from 4 stories up. At first we thought she might be begging for change, but just too lazy to actually come down to the street to do it. Then we saw someone from the store directly below her apartment put something in the basket. I guess she just wanted to safe herself the trip of going down there.

This is me outside in front of Pizzeria da Michele, makers of the best pizza in Naples.

This is me and my Magherita with "doppia formaggi" or double the cheese. It was delicious.

Here is my pizza minus me.

After we were done eating lunch we started on our way to the National Archaeological Museum. It was a little expensive to get in (they are not too nice about discounts for American students at many of the Museums in Italy), and there was a lot to see but the Museum didn't seem like it was kept up very well. We started out looking at a bunch of bronze and marble statues. Then I checked out some old currency from Pompeii and other societies from a long, long time ago. Some of the coins were almost 5 inches in diameter and made from solid metal, it would not have been too much fun to carry those around. We saw everything from old Egyptian artifacts (from a travelling exhibition) to old clay pots from indigenous people in the area. There is also a huge area full of artifacts and frescoes taken from Pompeii.

This is the outside of the National Archaeological Museum.

This was a 3D map that was made of the ancient city of Pompeii, it was cool to see it after we had just been walking through the streets yesterday.

In the same room was this model of the city. It was pretty amazing how accurate it seemed to be and we were even able to recognize some of the placed we checked out yesterday.

This was one of the mosaics taken from Pompeii. The detail was pretty amazing, it didn't even look like it was made up of a bunch of small pieces from far away.

A little closer view of the lion in the center of the mosaic.

A close up of the lion's head.

This was a portrait statue of a guy with the top of his head removed and Monica's roommate Krista. The statue's head was really big, so I made Krista go stand next to it to give it some perspective.

After spending about 2 hours walking around the museum, Monica and one of her roommates sat down at the museum's cafe to take a break. I found a staircase leading into the basement so I headed down to check it out with Krista and Ashley, they immediately turned around and went back upstairs when we realized the whole basement stunk of formaldehyde. I was a little repulsed as well but thought if it smelled this bad there had to be something cool down there so I kept going...and I was right. I stumbled upon not only a whole mummy still resting in its coffin, but mummified heads and other limbs on display in glass jars. They even had mummified crocodiles (or alligators I can't tell the difference very well). It was definitely worth dealing with the smell.

I first saw this pair of mummified feet in a jar...

...then this mummified head...

...then this entire mummy still hanging out in its coffin. It was really cool.

They even had a whole crocodile/alligator that was mummified for some reason (and some baby crocodiles/alligators next to the full grown one).

One of the baby crocodiles/alligators.

I went back and told all of the girls about the mummies and invited them to come downstairs with me to check them out, but none of them took me up on the offer. Then we left the museum and headed back to the hostel to take a break before dinner.

A courtyard near the National Archaeological Museum that we walked through on the way back to the hostel.

This is Via Tribunali, one of the liveliest streets in Naples with a ton of good restaurants lining the sides.

For dinner, we decided to go back to Gino Sorbillo because it was so excellent the night before. Even though i really wanted to get the calzone again I restrained myself and just got one of the pizzas. It was excellent as well.

My pizza. Capricciosa.

After dinner we went to Piazza del Gesù Nuovo to grab a drink. There is a pizzeria there that supposedly sold 1€ big bottles of Peroni. We found it and they had raised the price to 1.50€ but it was still a heck of a deal. We spent the rest of the night hanging out in the piazza, eventually got some gelato, and then headed home for the night.

This is la Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo. It kind of looked like it should be in one of the castle stages on Super Mario Bros. 3 for the Nintendo.

This was a huge monument in the middle of Piazza del Gesù Nuovo.

Ahhhh, Peroni (from left: Monica, Ashley, Krista, Me - Kara is taking the picture).

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Anonymous said...

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