"Naaaaapoliiiiiii!!!"

Naples started off rather slow, due to the time of my arrival and the rainy weather. I arrived at my hostel, owned and operated by a man named Giovanni, who welcomed me with a heaping bowl of pumpkin pasta and water. After eating, he gave me an hour-long run-down of the to-dos and to-not-dos of Napoli and the hostel. By this time it was pretty late, so i hung out at the hostel and befriended a new guest brendon. We gathered a few others and headed out for our first napoli pizza, in the city that pizza was born! We both enjoyed this pizza the most out of all others (there were many!) but we agreed it may have been because it was our firsts...i could tell the first night that napoli is a small, intense little town.

The next day brendon and i, along with a few hostel friends, took the metro to pompeii. We were there for about 5 hours, and it was raining for about 4 of them. The last hour was a steady pour-down! Pompeii itself is giant, and i felt lost for the most part. A majority of the streets look the same. The grounds were lacking any creepy ash-covered human corpses (save for 3 that i believe were replicas), but it was still pretty cool. It would have been more enjoyable on a sunny day, but my company made the trip more fun! After pompeii we headed to a pizza place called L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele, from the movie Eat Pray Love, which was an experience in itself. the pizzeria runs a tight ship: they only serve marinaira and margehrita pizza with or without extra cheese. only 3 types of beverage, and no dessert. The walls are filled with old family pictures and shots of the staff with julia roberts and her signature. To be honest, the pizza was pretty oily/moist and was not my fave of the trip, but i can attest that i definitely would have needed larger jeans after eating, if i wore jeans.

The next day we took the Naples underground tour which shows you the old fallout shelter, aqueduct and an underground portion of a very old theatre that had been hidden up until a few years ago. It was pretty cool and our guide was  entertaining. It was also rainy that day, and after walking around a bit more and having lunch we went back to the hostel to dry off and relax. That night i went for a walk with brendon and found a few vintage shops and some wine. We decided to go out on the town after much prodding from b and ended up staying out pretty late and checking out a bunch of different bars. Italians really know how to party...lets just say that!

My last day was one of my favourites of napoli. B and i set out with a hilarious dude from our hostel named Christian, and we saw so many sights! So many churches, the royal palace (amazingggg), the castle, the pier, mt vesuvius from across the river, and a lot of modern napoli town. We kept repeating the goings-on from the night before and i was cracking up the whole time. It was mostly our other hostel saying italian phrases in his super un-italian accent. Memories! That night a gang of us went for one last pizza and finished with beers. Bittersweet timez.

The hostel was cool and i was fortunate to meet some interesting people. The owner was pretty intense and was very interested in what we were doing (annoyingly so at times) but he really wanted us to get everything out of napoli. I also was not down with him smoking in the hostel... It was pretty gross. All in all it was a relaxed close-knit environment and  i had an amazing time in the city.