We hit the road again around 7:30. We wanted to get the rest of the way to Napoli that day so we didn't stop as often. There wasn't a lot of new stuff to see most of the way anyway.
The closer we got to the city, the more traffic we were riding with but as in Roma, they were very courteous and allowed us enough room to feel like we were risking our lives (too much). We were glad to see some landmarks that we could identify on the map like this lake and the islands in the background.
Once in Napoli the traffic was too dense to ride on the street, but we happily passed cars by riding on one of the only sidewalks in Italy.
As we followed the water front towards the city center, we watched many ships pass on their way to port. Soon after this shot was taken, six navy ships and a submarine cruised by.
A thunder storm had been chasing us for an hour or so and finally caught up with us just as we were speeding downhill into a thick part of the city. We darted under some trees and then were escorted by a little old Italian into a small train station. We waited out the storm as we contemplated the tunnel that lay just ahead. We knew we wouldn't have the same kind of luck missing traffic (as it was now bumper to bumper) that we had the day before (in the four sidewalk-less tunnels we had to pass through), but we decided to keep going just in case there was a sidewalk we could use. To our happy surprise, there was a pedestrian sidewalk and we road through.
A few minutes later we were back at the water front. That's where my tire went flat. We pulled a piece of glass out of the tire and patched the tube in two places but couldn't get it to hold air (and my spare tubes were the wrong size!). It was getting dark and we still hadn't found a place to sleep so we were getting pretty nervous. It wasn't easy but we found a couple of nearby hotels. I say it wasn't easy because the sign for a hotel is typically a one inch label by the door buzzer. But both hotels that we found were full we were running out of time. By this time we were really getting out of our comfort zone as we were pushing our bikes around and the city seemed to be in a crazy frenzy all around us.
Finally we found an unoccupied cab who's driver said he'd take us to a hotel. It actually took two cabs to haul all our stuff but we ended up in a really nice hotel near the central train station. Whew! What a relief. As it turned out, the home football team was returning to the city for their last game and everyone was racing around trying to get to where they would watch the game. On top of that, there was some big deal diplomatic stuff going down which was related to the navy going through and the numerous police escorted motorcades that whizzed by us earlier.
10-June: Pompeii and Capri... Happy B-Day Mom!
In the morning, we hopped on a train and visited Pompeii. This was a surprisingly large archeological site. An entire city. They have about 4/5ths of it excavated and are currently digging out the remainder. They've done a lot of work to "restore" parts of it and parts that have been exposed were damaged in an earth quake but still, you really get a sense of what it must have been like to live there two thousand years ago.
This was one of the best preserved plazas.
Looking across the temple of Apollo with the killer volcano Vesuvius in the background.
Most of the marble carvings were removed and now lie in museums, but there are still a lot of very impressive artifacts to be found. These really bring the city to life as you can imagine the daily life that went on thousands of years ago in the very courtyards that you're standing in.
After returning to Napoli, we walked back down to the water front and took a boat to the island of Capri.
This is a cute little city on the side of a island mountain. We walked a vary narrow street to the city center on top of the hill where there are a lot of very expensive jewelry shops and restaurants. It was nice though, to get in some cleaner air and away from the noise and stinky scooters and busses in Napoli.
We were quite pleased with ourselves for finding a narrow staircase leading all the way back to the waterfront, and were still patting ourselves on our back when we passed the entrance to the tram that whisks people all the way to the top on just minutes. Oops! Note for next time I guess.
This ship was parked in the harbor when we arrived, but it slipped away before we got some pictures. Still worth putting here as it was the grandest tall ship we've ever seen.
We picked up a snack and found a spot on a small skiff to wait for our ride back to the main land.
The sun set just as we were boarding our ship home and it would be dark by the time we got back. We tried walking back to our hotel but took a wrong turn. We asked a cop for directions and he said we had a long way to go. He was quite concerned for our safety and told us to be careful. We took the hint, walked another 50 feet or so and climbed into the cab that was parked there.
June 11: Shifting gears... Travel to Firenze
The next morning, we patched the tube (it was much easier to find the leak in the hotel sink than it was in a puddle of water on the street) and hopped a train for Roma. We wanted to go to Bari and take the ferry to Greece, but didn't have a choice as the only train that would take our bikes was destined for Rome.
Again, the tourist season hasn't picked up yet so Bob got his own seat on the train.
We rode back to our Rome hotel where we stashed our bike boxes, repacked the bikes and headed out again with only our backpacks and a small duffle bag.
We hopped on a semi-bullet train (155 mph) and headed to Firenze (Florence) in the center of the Tuscan region. There we got a very nice B&B and headed out to do some laundry. We were typing e-mail on the internet kiosk while our cloths washed when someone (a couple of British tourists we think) unzipped my backpack that was sitting five feet away, and walked off with my camera. Not the best welcome.