Monday, December 29, 2008

Padua and Naples

So Padua is a pretty chill University town. The dissection lab closes at 11:45 on Saturdays, so we miss that, but we are able to make it over to see the observatory from which the astronomers of Padua University observed for a few hundred years. Galileo lived and did observations while living here, but at that time the tower was a dungeon, so he carried out his observations from a house in the town.
We find a pretty chill bar to get some paninni and beer in and then head over to the train station after stopping to grab some salami and cheese and bread for dinner on the train. Somehow we end up walking east instead of north after leaving the super market, so we have to kinda hustle to make it to a train that will get us up to Milan for the night train to Naples.
We make it with 10 minutes to spare and get reservations with about 5 to go.
Eat some dinner on the train, hang out in Milan for an hour while waiting for the night train and then hop on that.
We share our compartment with a few kids from Switzerland and talk to them for a bit, we share our wine and they give us some chocolate. we pass out in our couchettes (think sleeping on some one's couch) and wake up the next morning in Naples.
We take the trains out to Herculano and Pompeii and see the amazingly preserved mosaics in the houses there. we come back check into our hotel and go out an get some pizza. The pizzeria we go to claims to be the originator of pizza in 1838 and they have 2 kinds of pizza, Margarita and marinara, and coke, beer and fanta on the menu. That's it.
They do it well, and its 3 beers and 2 big pizzas for 12€.
We wake up grab our free breakfast and wander around Naples looking for a place to sit and have an espresso or two, as its really nice out. We found a place over by the docks to read and drink coffee and sit in the sun for about an hour and a half.
We walk back to the pizza places from yesterday, and the line is out the door and down the block. We must have been really early for dinner yesterday, at least in Napoli time. so we sit down at a sidewalk cafe for beer and sandwiches and head back to the trainstation for Miriam to grab her train to Rome for her flight home tomorrow and my night train with connection to Munich.
Next stop Germany.

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