Naples

I forgot to write about a little incident in Naples during the Pompeii trip. On the way home from Herculaneum we had to switch trains in Naples. Now, there are two train stations in the city. One serves the Intercity and Eurostar trains which is what we wanted and the other has the equivalent of U.S. subway trains… graffitied-up versions of the Intercity trains that only do short, local runs. We got off at the wrong one so we had to backtrack on foot through Naples which I’ve already said was dirty and not somewhere that you would ever think of as a pleasant place to be. It’s a place you’ve got to go through to get to better, happier destinations.

Anyway, we’re walking through sketch-town, trying to find signs… ANY signs that point to the train station (this is a quirk of Italy, all of the signs are for hotels and there are absolutely none for monuments, historical sights or important buildings). I’ve figured out that the more hotels and busses there are, the closer to a train station or airport you are. On our short adventure we passed a pet store. This was the first pet store I’d seen (and of course there were bunnies in the window so we HAD to stop and look) and I was seriously tempted to buy one of the chickens they had in cages on the sidewalk, at least until I’d spotted the knives. Yes, knives.

The pet store also doubled as a knife/throwing star/gun/sword shop. Dharyll and I look at each other and we still haven’t decided whether this is the coolest thing ever or extremely disturbing. I wonder if they have sales where it’s buy one get one free. I always wanted a chicken… but a chicken with a pair of throwing stars?

Priceless.