Day 20 - The island of Ricky Martins

Tuesday, July 19th

Just to clarify, I don't mean an island of gay puerto ricans (that would be manhattan), I am referring to the beautiful Italian men.... But I'll get to that in a sec......

We woke up late in the morning and went to go see a castle that is in baia. It seemed huge to me but davi said it's actually the smallest in Naples. One thing we are learning about Napoli that just because there are signs and rules doesn't mean that anyone follows them. We got to the castle at 1:15, the sign said it closed at 1:30 but davi said that we should just go up anyway. Heres a pic of the drawbridge!

Of course there are no guards anywhere, we were free to roam around as much as we wanted in the areas that weren't completely sealed off.
The museum had a plethora of artifacts. It's hard to take it all in and absorb what your looking at. After seeing so many ruins, so many statues, remains, bodies, sculpture, pottery, weapons and so on and so on it gets overwhelming and exhausting after a while. We took a lot of video and pictures so we could remember it all. The view was amazing, of course. There isn't a bad view from anywhere in this town but every time I look down onto the beaches and see the cliffs and Vesuvius in the back ground its just astonishing.

We have lunch with Davis mother upstairs in her house. She cooked fish, whole with the head and everything. Fresh calamari with peas, salad, bread and artichokes.

After lunch we go to a beach that's having a party. We pay to have our chairs set up and there is a Dj playing, fresh plates of pasta being served and punch. We meet a bunch of Davis friends, some of which a American.
The deck on the beach is packed. I make a comment to bill that after all these years of us going to beaches together I'm finally getting my turn at some eye candy. I've never been to a place like Naples before.... All the men are like Adonis. Great faces, chiseled abs, perfect tans, tattoos and speedos. Really small, really spandex-y, really hot, speedos. I actually was sitting there a little stunned at how ridiculously good looking all these men around me were. My favorite was a guy in an Italian flag speedo. Trust me on this, on paper it sounds ridiculous, in the flesh it was delicious. Bill actually agreed with me and said he felt like we were on an island of Ricky martins, and I was free to soak up all the Vida loca my eyes could handle. The girls we were with thought this was very funny and agreed with me that there's really no where else on earth that you're going to get a view this good. In both the landscape and manscape. We order a bottle of sparkling wine, pop it open and party the afternoon away. Tough life- Napoli edition. I think bill got a little of the said scenery in the video below:



After we nap we go into the city of Napoli and have sushi for dinner with Davis friends. I think there are only a small handful of sushi places in Napoli so everyone was excited to eat something different. After dinner we went around the corner and had a bottle of wine at a bar, then headed home. Napoli is a strange juxtaposition. The mob presence is huge, there's a lot of petty crime, and the city itself is known for being a dump. Literally, there's huge piles of trash everywhere because the mob controls the trash pickup and doesn't ever do it. But outside the city where we spent 99 percent of our time, was stunningly picturesque. For all of our bitching about the service in our Pompeii trip, almost all the people we met were extremely nice and overly hospitable. I think it definitely helped that we were davide's friends and not just strange tourists, but I think on a certain level it wouldn't have mattered at all. The people were very warm, and overall seem very happy with the life there. We met many people who live in the states but come back every summer for a month or two because they love the town so much. I would like to think that I would be very happy in a place like that but I know the neurotic new Yorker in me could never be happy with just espressos instead of a giant coffee, I want to be able to go to the post office and bank until 8pm at night, I want to use a credit card when I don't have cash, which is something Italians don't do it's cash all the time always. My life has been so programmed to have anything i want at any hour of the day or night that the transition would be a rough one, and not to mention that I don't think there are too many lingerie designer jobs in Naples.
I was sad to leave, there was so much that we didn't get to do that I absolutely think we will return someday.


-Claire