After a wonderful dinner at Manka’s place on Thursday night following a glass of wine at Piazza Campo De’Fiori before we went to bed, on the very next morning at 8, I hopped on the train with Christina and Julie to Naples. This is our student life in Italy--never let go one moment to experience, explore and study (we did our homework on the train :P).

It’s a different train than the one we took before. There was no specific seat, date or time shown on the ticket since it was a regular train that goes through small towns instead of a IC train or a high speed train that goes only between big cities. The regular train is also equipped much older than the IC train and the high speed train that there is no internet or electricity plugs. Two hours later, we arrived Naples. It’s a much bigger city than we expected, and surprisingly, people are much more hospitable than people in Roma. There were people came to ask us if we were looking for direction when we looked confused standing in the middle of the road. Naples is also one of the oldest cities in Italy with a long history like Rome. However, it looked much more modern than Rome to me, which was a little disappointed to me since I don’t like modern looking city. I guess Naples rarely had Asian tourist during this time of the year, especially not as a big tourist group but three girls, we literally had almost every single person stared at us on the street.

After a lunch break, we headed to the coast line where Castle dell Ovo was located. Legend had it that there was a repute sorcerer named Virgil, put a magical egg in a crystal bowl which was in an iron cage and hid it in the castle, and this egg was connected with the fate and the safety of the city. Christian and Middle East people would use an ostrich egg as the symbol of the egg during mosque in ancient time. After coming out from the castle, we sat on the big rocks by the coastline to enjoy the afternoon sunshine with gelato. Half an hour later, we walked toward the Palazzo Reale, which is the royal palace of Bourbon kings back in the 17th century. The House of Bourbon was a European royal house of French origin, and Bourbon kinds ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century, and Spain, Naples, Sicily and Parma in the 18th century. It looked quite small and common from outside, but inside was really big and luxury with many rooms that were decorated in the color of gold that served different purposes. 

A small incident happened before we entered the reale that there were five or six 12 or 13 years old looking boys that just randomly jumped next to us when me and Christina were trying to take a photo together. We actually have got used to this engagement and hospitality of Italians, but the boys took further action that they just grabbed away our sunglasses from our heads. We thought they were local children who lived nearby and were just playing together without parental guardians, but later we saw the adults who were with them but didn’t stop them from grabbing our things. It wasn’t a bad experience, but it was just a little surprising to us since we have never seen such “free parental management” in the U.S. 

We finished our day by seafood pasta and wine and we are getting ready for heading Amalfi tomorrow!