Full day in Naples

We woke up to a cloudy day here in Southern Italy 

This morning we had breakfast on the top (11th) floor of our hotel on the terrace under the covering.

Since we were going to the museum to see the Pompeii exhibit, it seemed right to take a picture of Mt Vesuvius.

This is one of the looks at the bay of Naples from the top floor of our hotel

Here is a view of the city spreading out

This one is out over the fortress to the bay

It seems street markets are a common thing here. We ran into several on our walk to and from the museum

There were many old building on  walk, but there seems to be a hodgepodge of different styles and ages of the building and they mostly look kind of tired

One of the squares we came across. It is in front of a building with a great deal of statuary across the top

We then arrived at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli

Our first area was statuary

This is one of the few colored ones

There were an entire area of figures in many different poses. They were really impressive, but I can see why Michelangelo’s David is considered so special. It is so much more realistic

I like this set of dogs

This entire piece was carved from one solid piece of marble. To get a perspective, Dale could have stood in front of it and you would still see the gray pedestal base over his head

We now enter the area of things excavated from Pompeii. This is a piece of a fresco. It is believe that most of the places were covered with these type of mosaics

Some of the daily living things they recovered. These are all glass that were created using molds.

This vase was truly impressive with all cameos on the glass. Also that it survived in one piece

They have recover fairly good sections of fresco paintings also

This was there “fire pit”, a large brassiere 

 More pictures and wall art recovered from one of the major villa

Considering these pieces are almost 2000 year old and serviced a volcano burying the city, they are in remarkable shape 

This is a replica of what they think the major house in the city might have been like

This is a birds-eye view

I am not sure what he symbolized, but he was different from most of the other things in this display from Pompeii 

They had recovered walls of  these type of pictures. These represent personification of the seven days of the week

Here are a set of “family” painting

Here is a home heater. A tripod brassiere 

This room contained thing that all came from the same villa

This was a support for a serving platter 

I had to wonder if this was a child of the family. It just felt like that to me.

More of the wall art from another of the villas

This piece was fairly unique as it was a colored etching on marble

This is a plaster casing made from one of the ash forms from Pompeii. It is said to have been a girl whose top and skirt were pushed up as she probably fell. Several people were preserved in ash casing. Many of the people who died there have been recovered. There were about 15,000 to 20,000 those who lived in the two cities destroyed in 79AD. Most survived, it is believe those that stayed were either too poor to leave or had nowhere else to go.

Other pieces of walks recovered

These are horns and trumpets found there

More of the daily household things that have been found

This one is a boiler shaped as a defensive wall

We have now left the Pompeii exhibit and are wandering around some of the rest of the museum. I just found some of these mosaic so impressive

I could not believe they actually had this one on the floor and nothing to keep people from walking on it. It was set into a framing on the floor under the wall mosaic. We did not notice we were on it until I looked down, I felt really bad to be there, but we did not see any signs, it was not roped off,  and no one was there to instruct people. If something was on the wall by the two works it was in Italian, which I don’t read

Then we came across all the Burial urns and sarcophaguses

Another area just had bronze and marble horses

Lastly as we were leaving there were figures of prominent people of the times

Naples reminds me a bit like Rome as far as crazy streets and people not paying much attention to the lines. I will say the cars are good about working with the pedestrians, I guess they have to be as a great number of people walk in the streets if the area is crowded

After we grab something to eat in the early afternoon, we went to the indoor shopping area. It was nice looking and very crowded as it was raining pretty good. We just walked through. In addition to the storefronts, people had spread small tarps out and were trying to interest people in their wares. Some were just carrying trays or bags trying to sell to the people in the area

We went out afore 4pm with the thought to exchange a bit more money and found that all the exchanges and banks were closed. I guess All Saints’ Day might be a banking holiday here. We stopped at another small covered courtyard. The thing I found interesting about this place was their glass ceiling funneled down to a glass tube n the center of the area. All the rain from the roof was running down this tube that vanished into the floor.

At six pm we tried to find somewhere close to eat. Everywhere was closed. It appeared that most places in this area close for part of the afternoon and reopened at 7 or later. We ended up picking up a flatbread style individual pizzas with tomato and cheese from as deli and taking them back to our hotel room.

Tomorrow at around 11:30am we will be headed out for two days in Amalfi just down the coast a ways.

I am sure Naples is a wonderful place, but I would not come back. As enchanted as I was with Florence, I was equally disenchanted here. They have a fairly visible homeless problem, there was trash scattered about most everywhere we went on the sidewalks, dog poop had to be avoid in several places. Florence felt cared for and about, Naples felt unsafe and just this side of heading towards scary. Graffiti graced a good number of the buildings, trash was prevalent, and it did not feel friendly and warm. That is just my take, but not sorry we only spent two days here.