Following our half-day sojourn to Pompeii, we returned to Naples for the afternoon to await the night train to Venice. First and foremost on our itenerary was food, as we were both rather ravenous. We ate at pretty much the first restaurant we found. As it turned out, either we were very lucky in our selection, or Naples is one of the best places to yeat - the food was amazing. We had a seafood salad (cold squid, octopus, shrimps, and mussles on lettuce with lemon), which was delicious, followed by an octopus (for Jay) and pasta with clams (for me). We were also served delicious bread (great for soaking up those last bits of delectible sauce). Also, in retrospect this was the most friendly Italian restaurant we've patronized, as the staff was not at all snooty regarding our attire (grubby jeans and jackets - the same thing we've been wearing for two weeks straight).
After dinner, sufficiently bloated, we wandered around in search of an internet cafe. We only found a regular cafe, and Jay ordered a coffee and received a tiny cup with about an ounce of liquid in it. After he'd poured in all the sugar he could without causing it to overflow, it was more a liquid sugar than coffee. We still found no internet cafe after we returned outside, and there were so many street vendors and dangerous umbrella-weilders that we ended up going back to the train station. One thing that must be said in favor of the vendors is that Jay purchased his new hat from one. Why a new hat? The boy left his old one on the train from Pompeii. Disheartened by the lame actuality of this event, he's working on a tale of daring escape and mafia mix-ups in its stead, so just appease the man, if you will. Anyway, new hat, great food, back to the station.
Sadly, we had to hide out in the McDonalds (free restrooms and heating), and when Jay got up to purchase an unrecognized Fanta, some sketchy guy sat at the table next to me and started talking at me in Italian. He left when Jay returned and Jay is henceforth forbidden from going in search of new Fanta flavors. There are two reasons for this: one, the sketchy guy, and two, that Fanta was vile. Really, really vile. We think they were going for coke-flavor, but the result was closer to earwax-tea tree oil. Icky. (Jay wishes to add "licorice bile" to that description).
The rest of our evening would have been spent waiting for our 11-o'clock train in the waiting room, but the waiting room actually closed at around 9 pm, so we were left huddling outside for two hours to await our train. That train also switched tracks 4 times in the 2 hours we waited, helping to aleve the cold by forcing us to run around the station to the newly designated track every few minutes. As this was the second time this had been the situation in Italy (same on our way to Pompeii), we would have liked to consult Information. Unfortunately, just as every time we had checked earlier, Information was closed. Gah. Luckily, we found our train successfully and settled in to wake up in Venice.
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