I’m in Bari, Italy right now. To get an idea where it is, it’s on the “heel” of the boot of the map of Italy. My goal was to catch a ferry to Greece for the final leg of my trip before heading back to Dubai. Yesterday I caught the bus without any problems, and got to Bari as expected. I found my hostel in a about an hour, so at this point everything is going great. I go to check into the hostel and the guy tells me that I could only stay one night, that my reservation doesn’t count. Huh?? I told him that I was trying to take a ferry so it may not matter, but I won’t know until I try to get a ticket.  I put my stuff down and head to the terminal to buy a ticket, they say no, “It’s full.” I ask about tomorrow, “It’s full.” I try to talk to her, and she starts to get really upset with me, I returned with getting upset with her. When I say, “upset” I pretty much mean raising our voices. I was so angry with her that an hour later I was still cussing her out in my head. One thing that she did suggest before she got “upset” was to try another company across the terminal, when they opened in the morning. So that was the plan. In the meantime I needed to get something to eat as it was getting late and I hadn’t eaten anything for most of the day.

This morning I got up early to get to the terminal to see if I could get passage on the other carrier. I was kind of worried because the company I talked to last night said they were booked for two nights, so I didn’t have much hope that I’d get a ticket. They opened at 9 and I was there about 8 along with about 10 other people. One at a time we talked to the lady behind the counter, and we all got the same answer, “We’re full, but you can come back later an try again.” So damn. I went back to the hostel and tried to get my reservation validated. The excuses this guy gave me was ridiculous. I think the best was that it was an email. Of course it was an email, that’s the way the web site sends confirmation to you. So now I don’t have a place to stay, probably no ticket to Greece, and not a clue of what to do. I eventually decided not to do anything except walk around the city, eventually ending back at the terminal. To my surprise they had room for me, so I bought my ticket. So to sum up for you, things went from hopeful, to despair, and finally working out. I like when that happens.

Bari is an interesting city, it’s fairly small, and has a really nice old town. In fact I love the layout of the city, architecture, and the vibe that I get from it. They do have a problem with businesses though. Last night I searched for a grocery store to get a water and snack before going to bed and couldn’t find one anywhere. I finally asked someone and they said no. The guy kind of laughed when he answered, almost like what a ridiculous question to ask. He suggested that I go to a restaurant.  I guess I understood that because it was Sunday night and I guess it’s expected that many of the small shops would be closed. This morning though everything was still closed. I’m serious, at 10 in the morning there isn’t any businesses open anywhere. Maybe a few restaurants, and some newspaper kiosks, but regular businesses are shuttered. UPDATE: I asked why was everything closed and I was told that it was a holiday.

I’m sitting on the steps of my hotel waiting for the time to leave to catch my bus which is in about an hour and a half. I don’t want to go early because there’s no station to sit in, and I’d be relegated to sitting on the sidewalk. That’s just not an option in this town. I’ve been trying to think of a way to give an image of Naples without being overly harsh and it’s been difficult. I did think that this was a lot like Kenya in many ways. The lack of any order, the feeling of not being safe, and the driving style resemble what I remember about Nairobi.  Not to worry though, I’ll be out of here in no time, but I have to say that I….right now there are 7 guys that look like they are going to get into a fight about 30 yards from me. They’re all yelling and a couple of them are grabbing each other…the hotel reception has come out to see what’s going on. The group took the argument down the street a little, but they are still yelling at each other. Nice neighborhood, huh? So anyway, not to worry, I’m leaving shortly to the other side of Italy

Today was a weird day, I feel as if I want to say that it was an “off” day. A possible alternative is to say that I wasn’t myself today. It started with my trying to book a plane to Dubai from Athens in 10 days from now. Just like it did before, the credit card went on security alert and shut me out. It’s just so irritating when it happens because then I can’t use it for anything. I think that just kind of started my progression into a very negative attitude. Other things happened as well, but they aren’t important, I just wanted to note the kind of day it has been.

I knew that I was going to make a trip to Mt. Vesuvius today, so about 8 I headed out. The subway has a station that takes you to the vans that take you up to the mountain, which made an easy time getting there. I did have to wait a little bit before the taxi left, but we got to the walking point at about 930. The mountain is pretty big, and although the vans/taxis take you up the mountain, there is a remaining 1000 or so meters that you have to climb. Now the 1000 meters refers to the elevation, not the distance, the actual distance that you have to walk is at least a couple of kilometers, probably more like 4 though—it takes about forty minutes to climb it. The crater of the inactive volcano is kind of underwhelming, but the vista of Naples below more than made up for it. On the drive back to the starting point I was talking to two American girls who had just graduated from college and were on a holiday before they started looking for work. They were from Austin, Texas, I left the US from Amarillo, TX, so we had something to talk about. They also mentioned that they were going to Pompeii so I got all the info that I could about it. When I went to the tourist information center, there was lots of information about Vesuvius, but no information about Pompeii. The lack of info kind of made me think that I couldn’t see it. Anyway, I did go, and spent probably about 5 hours walking around. I hate to say it, but it was kind of underwhelming as well. The city is excavated to the point where you see the ruins, but I didn’t get any feeling what so ever of the horrific thing that happened to the people when the volcano blew. In other words, I walked around looking at fallen buildings. I think if they could somehow have left examples of the people or something it would have made for a more dramatic feel. Although it was underwhelming, it was certainly interesting and I’m glad that I went. On the way back I saw forest fires on the side of Mt. Vesuvius complete with airplanes trying to put them out.

I leave for Bari tomorrow at 1330 by bus. I wanted to go to Brindisi by train for my ferry ride to Greece but I couldn’t get a train ticket until 2000, way too late to be traveling to an unfamiliar city. I know that there are ferries from Bari too, so maybe with any luck I’ll be able to score a ticket and be in Greece in a couple of days.

So I’m in my train waiting at the station for it to leave, and all the normal fears that I have are surfacing. You know, am I on the right train, what about the car, or for that matter the seat? Actually I know that I’m in the right seat, it’s the train that I’m concerned about. I guess we’ll find out eventually.

This time around I have to say that I feel completely different about Rome than I did three years ago. The last time I was here I felt that it was a little too ghetto for me. It seemed too dirty, too big, and had all the negatives that any big city had. This time though I started to like it. The architecture is the biggest draw for me, it was simply beautiful in most situations. The only thing that I don’t like, and this goes for most of the places that I’ve been in Southern Europe is that it’s way too expensive. I can’t imagine ever living here unless I made twice the money than I do now.

The train leaves in about four minutes and I’m ready to go. Where? I guess we’ll see. It’s kind of funny, there is a young girl on the train that must be curious about me. She’s staring, almost like she wants to talk to me but doesn’t speak English. Kids are cute.

Naples? I wasn’t prepared for this! I guess that I just thought it would be like all the other Italian cities that I’ve been to. You know, old buildings, lots of tourists, a typical European city with an Italian flavor. What I found out was this place is a madhouse. I don’t think that I’ve been to a city quite like it this summer. There are people everywhere, there seems to be no rule of the road, to cross the street you just start walking and hope that the car stops. I saw a Westerner almost get plowed by a scooter just a few minutes ago. It’s so hectic that it is similar to something that you’d expect in Cairo or Mumbai. Cars are double and triple parked and everybody seems to be in a hurry, that is except for the shopkeepers who are just hanging in the doorway to their shops.

I set out to get a map and then see some sites today, so after checking into the hotel, I headed back to the train station to find a tourist center. There really isn’t anything that I know that I “need” to see here in Naples, but I would like to see Pompeii or/and Mt Vesuvius so a tourist center was the best place to get that information. I think I’ve decided that tomorrow I’ll head to Mt Vesuvius, since I didn’t find any information about Pompeii it must either be too far away or there isn’t anything to see.

After that I headed out to see some of the sites that were listed on the map. It seemed pretty straight forward, go straight from the train station and eventually you’d hit the first site on the map. Geez, after about two minutes of walking I realized that there wasn’t anyway that I be able to find my way back without my gps, so I headed back to the hotel. Can you believe it, I got lost just about five blocks from the train station? Instead of backtracking to the station, I went in the direction of the hotel, and after making a few wrong turns, eventually I ended up at the hotel by accident.

Today started as a day to not really much of anything day. I walked so much yesterday that I was still stiff and really wasn’t up for another 15 mile walk. To be honest, I don’t know how far I actually walked yesterday, but I think it was around 10 to 15 miles.

There weren’t any sites that I planned to see since I think I covered most of them at least once already, and with the Vatican out of the way today was more or less a free day to explore. So at about 8 this morning I was out the door. The first stop had to get a coffee. Since I’ve been here I haven’t had a coffee in the morning, in fact I don’t think I’ve had a coffee at all. It’s not like I haven’t wanted one, it’s just that the coffee here is really strong, too strong for an instant coffee kind of guy like me. Nevertheless my first mission was to score a coffee and find someplace just to sit and watch people. I’m embarrassed to admit where I found a coffee, but I did and found a nice place on the steps of a Medieval looking church. It was the perfect way to officially start the morning.

One place that I saw on the map that I wanted to see was the Pantheon. I don’t know why I put it so low on my “must see” list considering it was in my art history book in undergrad, so that was going to be my starting point, or first stop. So I’m following the map on my way to the Pantheon, when I turn a corner and there is a mass of people all taking pictures of this really impressive building with a fountain. It was really impressive too. The first thing I do is take a panorama of the square and walk over to a corner to take a one-shot and that’s when my camera turned off. Ugg! The batter was dead. So I head back to the hotel to get my spare battery, and while I’m at it I decided to see how far it was to the square from my hotel. Turns out it was 1.6 miles, almost 2 miles that I walked to, then back to the hotel, and then to the square a total of about 5 miles and it was only about 930 in the morning, my day hadn’t even gotten started. That’s really all I wanted to talk about, three photos and my battery dies…. ☺

From there I walked everywhere in the area taking photos and generally follow the streams of other tourists. They led me to areas that I’m glad I got the chance to see, and if not for them I wouldn’t have. So today was a good day for seeing things, completely the opposite of what I was expecting.

I finally made it home, err, hotel at about 3, and although I turned my gps off, I figure today was about the same as yesterday, about 15 miles. I spent the rest of the day nursing my tired legs, doing laundry, and watching a movie. Yeah, I know, lots of fun huh? Tomorrow morning at about 930 I leave for Naples for two nights.