We took a group walk to the funicular station, took that up the hill, then took the metro to get to the National Archaeological Museum of Napoli in the morning. We met up with our guide once again Pina for a tour of the museum. The most magnificent piece for me was seeing the battle of Alexander again- except this time the real thing, not just the mosaic on the floor of the rich man’s house in Pompeii.

Atlas	Homer (?)	The Alexander Mosaic
	Caesar	Farnese Hercules

From there we walked to the Sansevero Chapel, where we saw the Veiled Christ marble statue. Not only was it one of the most precise pieces of marble art I’ve ever seen, it was actually really moving. Also saw Queirolo’s “Disillusion” which is the most magnificent piece I’ve ever seen in my life! The netting is so real looking it’s hard to imagine this was done in marble. I enjoyed reading more about it here.

After the chapel, we decided to go eat at Rick Steves’ recommended pizza place and also “Eat Pray Love” book mentioned Pizzeria Antica da Michele. We stood in line for 1:30 hours, took number before and just waited and waited with so many others. Finally sat down at table for 4. It was dirty, and two strangers sat beside us. Initially it was awkward for Tobia and I to sit next to random people, but then got to talking and had great time. Pizza was actually really good, especially the double mozzarella one. It is fair to say the double mozzarella cheese was the best pizza I’ve ever had (I think Tobia said the same thing).

The couple at our table invited us to coffee (after the meal), then took us around the city, showing us so many different piazzas, stores, and things. We continued walking around; they were gonna take us to the funicular station to send us off to the Castle Sant’ Elmo by ourselves. Eventually they decided to join us, so we all went to the castle together, got magnificent views of Napoli and the Gulf from above, took lots of pictures, then took funicular on the way down and walked to our hotel where we split off, said goodbye, but beforehand had exchanged emails/facebook/skype/phone number information.

		I couldn’t resist	Piazza Dante
			Laura and Francesco

We had an absolutely wonderful time with Francesco and Laura- totally impressed at how easy going they were, never feeling weird and getting along very well. I hope to see them again, but next time in San Francisco.

Mario entertaining the group

We showed up late for our group’s happy hour apperitif, where young Mario was playing guitar music for all of us. From there headed to dinner, but before took group picture. It started raining a bit initially, then really hard, so we ended up taking taxis to dinner. Great dinner: sat with Sarah and JoAnn, and Sylvia and Paul. Then said goodbye to almost everyone before coming back to hotel.

Sat around in hotel chatting with Nina in the lobby before wrapping up some things prior to turning in for the night.

We left Sorrento this morning, headed to Napoli. After reaching Napoli, we headed to the Capodimonte Museum. We had a guided tour there. It had Medieval and Renaissance art.

This vehicle took all of our luggage up the hill in Sorrento

Capodimonte Museum

Then we pulled into town, said goodbye to our driver Maurizio, and walked to our hotel. Checked in our stuff, then headed off to lunch- ate with Karen and Ray (had excellent white bean spaghetti dish).

Went back to our room and slept for about an hour, then got up and went on an afternoon city orientation walk with our group. It was about 3.5 hour altogether and included dinner.

We saw Piazza Salvo, d’Acquisto [on a quick break, we went to Nina's recommended chocolate place and got some chocolates, plus Jordan almonds], Gesu (Gesu Nuovo Church, Church of Santa Chiara).

We continued on to Santa Dominico Maggiore. San Paolo Maggiore. Headed to dinner at local popular pizza place called Pizzeria di Matteo. Had mushroom pizza there and some of Tobia’s margherita. Sat in 4 big tables in small place. Pretty good, but not even best in this country. Napoli is the birth place of pizza (or so it is claimed) and they believe they have the best pizza not only in the country, but world.

Main center in Napoli		Almost identical to the one in Milan	Sort of the essence of Napoli here
	Gesu Nuovo Church	Church of Santa Chiara
Santa Dominico Maggiore

In addition to being known for pizza, Napoli is considered a poor, crime heavy city, which is dirty and crowded. I found it real, not hiding anything and not trying to appeal to anyone; authentic. Though the garbage situation is pretty bad in the city as it tends to just pile up in neglected mounds. It is very densely populated with very little space, and folks drive like mad, mad people.

After dinner we walked back to the hotel as a group. Most folks split back to hotel, but Tobia and I continued walking to the harbor, and ran into Molly and Steve, and we sat down at a cafe with them until after 10:30pm, enjoying conversation very much.

Then we turned in, interneted, and called it a night.

Leaving Sorrento for Capri Island

Most of our group headed out to the Sorrento harbor this morning to catch the boat to Capri Island. It started out partly cloudy and warm, so natually I wore my shorts, t-shirt and sock-less sandals.

Capri Island

About midway through our boat ride, the sun started coming out hard, so I stepped inside the boat where there was shade so as to avoid sunscreen or a burn. Well, about 10 minutes later, as we pulled into Capri Island, it was rainstorming heavily! We tried to huddle as a group in various areas of town, but inevitably we all got soaking wet (and I was still in my summer wear).

We hurried to take a funicular up the hill of town and in the process got even wetter. Up higher in town, it was raining so hard that we all scrambled in our own various directions with few instructions on where to go.

Tobia and I started walking in the direction of Villa Juvis where Emperor Tiberius kept one of his villas up at the top of the hill. There were few signs, and it rained exceedingly hard. So walking a bit, then hiding under some awning or natural shelters, we slowly made some progress. Eventually we decided we’d wait out the rain in a cafe- so stepped in for some cappucinos and dessert.

Afterwards, we made some pretty good progress for about 20 – 30 minutes uphill, periodically hiding from the rain when it got unbearable. What turned out to be about halfway there, we stopped at a small store and I bought a disposable slicker. It was the COOLEST THING!! It covered almost my whole body, provided a hood, which with my hat on top of it, helped a great deal. It also covered my travel pack on my back. Except that there was no rain, and instead I started breaking a sweat.

Well, eventually it started raining like crazy, hailstorming and thunderstorming, and then I really came to appreciate how great the suit was. For her part, Tobia was happily pacing us up hill, while altogether getting soaked with her small umbrella providing just a bit of relief.

Villa Juvis is atop a steep cliff

We got up to the top, bought two tix, then appreciated the amazing cliff views below, all the while rain dropping harder and harder. The rooms (ruins) in the villa were fairly well preserved, and were nice to walk around. The views everywhere up there were great, it’s no wonder the villa was built in that location.

Emperor Tiberius’ villa			Feeling slick in my slicker

After a while, we started walking down, the path down soaking wet, except that the clever Roman architecture from thousands of years ago was still effective, funneling the water ‘lanes’ to the right and left sides of the path, and the middle was totally walkable. We ran into Sarah and JoAnn shortly after our descent started.

The water effectively funnels to the two channels on the side of the road and it is safe to walk in the middle, despite hard rain

We made it back into town around 1:30pm or so, and had an extremely lovely and delicious lunch at Ristorante da Giorgio, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea well below us. It was still raining hard then, but at least we had shelter and were still on a high from our walk. We enjoyed a very long, leisurely lunch with good conversation, and eventually took the funicular to the bottom of the Island, then the boat back to Sorrento- our timing was random, but lucky as we didn’t have to wait for either mode of transportation.

Having gelato with the Walkers

Once back in Sorrento we walked to the gelato place where we saw the gelato making demo yesterday. We sat outside under the awning enjoying our desserts, when the Walkers: Scott, Elizabeth and Sarah showed up. We chatted and ate with them, then we walked back to our hotel to do laundry, rest and shower.