Naples, Italy

 Naples was our next stop... this was my least favorite city but I loved the excursion we took... does that make sense? 

Let me explain. The morning we got to Naples, it was gray and rainy and everything was wet. Naples is big city, therefore it was dirty and a little stinky in the rain... basically I felt like I was going to contract some kind of disease if I touched anything. Once we got through the train and bus stations we headed out to Herculaneum. I had never heard of this place before but it is similar to Pompeii. Although instead being buried in lava, it was buried in pyroclastic mud. Our guide told us that the mud was actually a better preservative than the lava because it let less oxygen in, so the paintings and many other things were preserved very true to their original form. 

We found an awesome guide, Victor I think was his name. He was an older guy who spoke numerous languages and had been a tour guide for many years.

 Top view of Herculaneum

 Ancient take out restaurant... the holes are actually the tops of clay pots that held different types of food. People would come and pick out what they wanted!

 The main drag of the town

 Mt. Vesuvius- we had an excursion to go up there but since it was raining they closed it! So like Athens, we looked at it from afar :)

 

 After Herculaneum, we stopped at a local pizza shop to see if pizza really tastes better where it was invented. None of the people who worked here spoke English and their menu was in Italian so we were left to fend for ourselves here. Steve happened to see what someone else ordered and thought it looked good. He asked the waitress what type of pizza it was and she replied "Pizza con tono". Steve told everyone that he was getting the sausage pizza and that it was called pizza con tono. Well turns out almost everyone wanted sausage pizza so I think 5/9 people ordered this type of pizza. When it came out it looked.... well... looked not very sausage like. Turns out pizza con tono is actually cheese pizza with a can of tuna dumped in the middle of it- juices and all. YUM. Not. Actually it stunk and looked disgusting... I was one of the lucky ones that ordered four cheese pizza. Good one Steve, good one.