Go see the boring pitures of the ugly train ride from Rome to Naples
Rumor (well Greek Mythology actually) has it that Naples was built where the Siren Parthenope was washed ashore after she had been rejected by Odysseus. All in all, this doesn't sound like a very illustrious start to a city's career...and from what I could see Naples has lived up to this.
The concept of Naples isn't improved by the train ride through the ass end of every little po dunk town between Rome and Naples. My tour book says about Naples, and I quote "...it is wise to be on the lookout for petty crime, keeping money and valuables well out of view". To be fair they also said many nice things, and I am sure there are many nice things. For instance there is the neat little castle by the harbour.
Naples is the most modern of the cities we visited...and is in fact a lot like I expected Rome to be, with modern glass skyscrapers...except with more dirt...quite a bit more dirt. This is hard to prove however as dirt, like vampires, seems to be very difficult to photograph…so, you will just have to take my word for it. Naples was also home to the craziest of all the Italian drivers we ran across….actually it would be rather more appropriate to say the drivers attempted to run across us...but I digress...
In other cities, although frightening to take your life in your hands to cross the street you at least felt like they would most likely stop or veer rather than hit you. In Naples I suspect they don't even stop to let passengers out of the car when dropping them off anywhere. I wisely decided not to test this theory out and therefore opted for walking rather than taking a taxi.
The main reason we visited Naples was to go the Museum that houses the stuff they have taken away from Pompeii, including I might add...quite the little ancient smut collection. This is in a small section off on it's own and you must make an appointment to view it. Presumably this is to prevent the more sensitive tourists from having to be revived with smelling salts.
The display was very nicely done, and had the best descriptions of anything in the museum. I have a theory, and it is by no means fully formed...but with all this smutty artwork going around in Pompeii, perhaps the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD had less to do with a natural phenomenon and more to do with a rather Puritanical higher being with a trigger finger for smiting.
