Italy Day 1

Sweet Sleep is the name of the small private hotel that will be our home for the next 3 day. As it is on the sixth floor of an old building Sweat Sleep might be a better title, considering that the temperature at 10pm is still hovering around 27 degrees,get

 Our balcony actually overlooks the Piazza Garibaldi, one of the city's main Squares and the main transportation hub of the town. 

  Our flight landed at Naples airport at noon and it took no time at all to grab our luggage and hop a bus to the Square. Armed with a poor map of the city it took almost a half hour to locate our building. Located on the sixth floor and reached by a coin-op elevator ( yes! a dime a trip) All I had were 2 five cent coins which didn't fit the coin box. So our first trip, luggage and all was via the staircase.

 After a seriously needed change of clothing we set off to explore the old city and promptly got lost. Naples is an easy city to get lost in, with some rather narrow streets and tourist maps that are not quite to scale or accurate. The city is easily walkable if one doesn't mind the rather oppressive heat and humidity. There seems to be a historical church at almost every street corner, most in a state of disrepair and several in a state of what must be perpetual renovation. Beside these various churches, street vendors and small shops offered everything from pizza to purses. As if the streets weren't busy enough, every 50 to 60 feet a Somali street vendor was offering "genuine" knock-offs of famous designers, purses, wallets, bags and the inevitable "selfie" sticks. I am not sure why every single streetvendor seemed to have the same racial characteristics- perhaps to better tolerate the heat !

 Three hours and maybe 15 churches and cathedrals later we returned to our hotel,  loaded up with bevereages, so wecould relax and await sunset and a hoped for drop in temperature, which never really happened.

 We eventually ventured out for supper for a typical Italian meal. Starting with a sizeable salad, I managed to work my way through a pasta (first course) and a plate of grilled calamari (second course) , nicely washed down with a bottle of the local vino- Falanghina de Vesuvio ( I think they call it that cause your head feels like a volcano exploding the next day!!) LOL . Luckily Susanna did her best to make sure she got her fair share, otherwise I would probably still be under the table. The entire meal came to a reasonable 34 euro, including the wine which was only 6 Euro a bottle.

 A walk around the neighbourhood after dinner brought us to the Circumvesuvio train station, from where we will make our way south on Thursday morning. Public transport seems to be quite efficient around here ( apparently Mussolini gets much of the credit for that, if not much else)
 Sorry folks, but no pictures at this point- just spent 30 minutes trying to upload one!