I leave Naples tomorrow and I decided to go for one more pizza. This will be my last pizza for a while. If I was to stay in Italy any longer I would have to buy new clothes because the food is very fattening and not so healthy.  I’ve walked miles here and I’d hate to think what size I’d  be if I hadn’t walked so much. But anyway I thought today is my last day and I’m very happy to be leaving Naples in the morn. It has a few interesting places of course and Pompeii is one of them,  but if you have no need to come here then I say avoid it like the plague. 

I’ve just spent the last few hours here and apart from the other million tourists it was ok.  I queued for a ticket and I waited for about 1 hour and had to listen to two girls talking about where they had been and how much they drank, but it saved me using the phone to keep me amused.

There were two queues to join when you arrive and of course one is if you have already bought a ticket and so you can go to the front of the queue,  but there were also the other people,  the tour group people. These were the ones that I disliked on my visit here. They are very annoying creatures indeed. From the first moment when they cast an eye towards us there is a definite smugness in the air and then they jump the queue and there gone. But that is really their only victory here because they have to follow a tour guide and listen to them dribble on for two hours before they can escape which I would call purgatory. The strange thing was that there was not a sense of smugness from the ones that had pre booked tickets. 

Anyway the tour groups, move through the corridors enmasse and block the place just like a big fat burger does in the sewers. 

Mind you if you can just keep in between these blockages then you can use it to your advantage and then this is where the smugness changes sides. Now we can be smug and we can stay a little longer to linger and as they get dragged away by the guide into another chamber.

Sometimes you will then have that area to yourself to enjoy and there are also rooms that the tour guide will not take them and so you have the freedom to move around and they do not. 

Having a tour guide of course can be a good thing but I have come here to look and to appreciate the wonders of the history that lies here and I want to do it at my own pace. I can also get an audio guide if need be. But sometimes I do listen in if I hear them mention something of interest, I steal a little nugget of information.

The Vatican Museum is amazing and you could spend days in here.  There are so many interesting pieces and it just goes to show you that many of the early civilisations that have come and gone have also been very clever and technically advanced. I enjoyed the Egyptian and the Roman galleries the most. 

But there was another gallery full of stone tablets convered with incredible intricate script and as you look at them you ask yourself” How the hell could they inscribe this, what did they use? ” the writing is very small, neat and straighter than most of my writing. The scribes that wrote these were very skilled indeed and yet do we know how they did it? We can hazard a guess but I’m not sure there are too many people that could produce such work today and in a time frame that would be acceptable.
But there is so much to see and so much to say but I think that if you have the opportunity to see it for yourself then you should go. 

As you get nearer to the end of your tour here you will be guided down long corridors filled with statues and tapestries and paintings. 

There is even one with huge maps. But beyond this,the galleries themselves are impressive and in some cases more impressive than the art they contain.

This is the final part of the museum that we can see and of course the visit here culminates with entering the Sistine Chapel. No selfie sticks here or cameras. There is a lot of security here to prevent such things and you know it’s actually refreshing to see people absorbed in the art and not themselves.

I sat for a while along with everyone else looking at this space but to be honest I was more impressed with some of the galleries that we had come through to reach this sacred place.  It is spectacular but for me I also like the architecture of a building and so I felt a little let down by this space.  On saying that it’s also possible that I’m getting a little bit jaded to the religious art that is everywhere in Italy. Even although the best man in the business worked here and his work is flawless I still left here thinking it was just another interesting religious space.

If you had made it this far with your tour group then you could use the secret passage as you were promised to go straight to Saint Peters Basilica, I of course had to exit the museum and take the long way round which gave me the chance for lunch before moving on. 

In 1972 Pink Floyd did a documentary which was set in Pompeii. I went to the Kelburne Cinema around 1978 with Ken Lightbody and I’m not sure who else was there but we were going to see a movie marathon that started near midnight. 

We were going to see Woodstock, Pink Floyd at Pompeii and The Song Remains the Same.  This movie marathon went onto about 6 in the morning. People brought sleeping bags, food and drink and of course drugs.  Having a wee toke of Paki Black in the Kelburne Cinema with hundreds of other folk watching three of the greatest music events of all time was really quite amazing.

Forty years later I have finally made it to Pompeii and they are still celebrating that moment in time. There is an exhibition in one of the corridors that was once used to let the rich and famous reach the expensive and the best seats first. 

Coming to Pompeii has been a life long dream  of mine and to be honest it did not disappoint, which I’m really glad about because I have seen a few places on this trip that did. 

I’m sure we all know about Pompeii and so I’m not going to give my version of events, but a few comments nonetheless.

The buildings look so familiar and you will recognise most things as you walk around. Add electricity and you could move in to many of these villas.

The frescoes on the wall are still fresh and you can still see the detail. The mosaics on the floor could have been finished yesterday. 

I also visited a tiny brothel with some interesting images and it had a little bed that was not so comfy looking.

There is one image though that I found very moving and brings home the thoughts and feelings of that day. This image is more powerful than words. This poor soul has resigned himself to his fate.

What was this poor soul thinking? 

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Oh no I was wrong it’s Naples 

As my odyssey through Italy comes to an end I have decided to come to Naples to visit Pompeii. My hotel is a 10 minute walk from the train station.  As you leave the relative safety of the station you will run a gauntlet of Black Businessmen and this time they are well organised and it looks like they run most of the business here.
I stepped into the road to make it easier to pull my case. I checked Google for the hotel location and then put my phone into my jacket pocket and then zipped the pocket up. Within seconds a white guy came up on my left, I never saw him right away but he tried to go for my phone in my pocket, luckily I had the sense to zip it up or my phone would have been long gone.  And he said “sorry ” and then walked on and then doubled back to stand on the street corner to look for his next victim. I mentioned this to the hotel reception and he shrugged his shoulders and said that’s Naples. He did also ask if I was ok and did he get anything.
Naples has a very unsafe feeling about it and I’ll be glad to leave here on Saturday.  I went for a walk to get my bearings after I checked in. I had a coffee and then went for a walk through the old quarter, found a supermarket and got supplies. I even saw two guys fighting and one was kicking and hitting the other with a large umbrella.

It began to rain and it was getting cold so I headed back to the hotel and all the while being very vigilant. I got back ok but another thing I noticed about Naples is how much of a shit hole it is. Walking down the streets you have to look out for the dog shit and as you do you also notice the amount of fag ends lying in the cracks of the pavements and gutters. I just hope that Pompeii is worth it tomorrow.

You get beggars in every country that you go to and Italy is not the only country to have them, but I saw one old lady that was priceless. Since I arrived in Italy I’ve mostly seen our Black Business Men doing this kind of work, but when I reached Rome is seems that there are many more different ethnic groups doing this kind of work and their is a lot more competition for your Euro. Now some are quite genuine, you only have to look at them and see the sadness and despair in their faces. Their whole demeanour tells you that they are having a bad time.

But then you get the other ones, the chancers and they are no more a beggar than I am. This old dear pictured below was a prime example. Her clothes were very clean but made to look old. She moved with such perfect grace in are shaking of the walking stick and crying “Grazie Grazie” and other things that I don’t understand. She knew how to work a crowd, but I noticed that she kept her face well covered, but her scarf slipped a little and you could see that the eyes behind this wee woman were very shiny and there was no sign of despair or sadness. The rhythm of her voice matched the rocking and shaking of her frail body, in my opinion she was full of shit and this was her day job and no doubt makes quite a bit of money by doing so. I should have got her on video to let you see this Oscar winning performance. And you know when they say” Grazie” their voices just break enough to make you think they are going to greet. There were about 3 old women working at St Peter’s but this one was the most active, the others were either sitting or begging beside a pillar. This guy above, well I don’t what he was on.

Around the Coliseum our Black Business men, or BB for short, were selling the usual selfie sticks but they had sub contracted some lighter skinned workers to help. They had moved into selling bracelets and cubes with etchings, you know the kind of thing? I just ignore all of them when they approach me as I find it the easiest way and to be honest you get sick of saying no. But one tactic they were doing here was this, they come up and say “Hey I like your shoes” “Hey I like your hat, beard, whatever……..” “are you from……..?” Now I know they want to engage you in conversation but I was not sure after that what angle they were playing, but as I did not speak to them I will never know. If you do speak with them you will not get rid of them so easily, it’s a bit like stepping on shit and you have to scrape it from the sole of your shoe, you will get rid of it eventually but it will stay with you for quite a while. My advice………ignore them.

Oh I did hear one of them saying, “Why won’t you help me feed my baby in Africa?’  and this is another scam that you will see more with younger women. They approach their mark and then show a picture of young children and/or baby and plead with them to help. As soon as the money has exchanged hands she is off like a shot to her next victim, the urgency that was there moments before has disappeared in the wind. This is also a big problem in London and it seems to one ethnic minority to blame but of course these days you are not allowed to point the finger at the blinding obvious.

When you are standing in one of the many queues to get into venues you are approached by another kind of leech, and these are the kind folk that will let you jump the queue by joining a group tour. Now these guys are not all bad but remember that you are just a means of a making money, you’re another meal so don’t be coerced into something you may later regret. I have been on some tours in my life but to be honest, after listening in to a couple of tour guides in Italy rambling on I know it’s not for me, especially when English is not their first language. A racist you say, I say no it’s just bloody annoying if you have to listen for an hour to someone killing the language when it’s supposed to be informative and especially if their idea of fluent is different to yours.

For fucks sake,  not only did they steal ma erms but they stole ma dick!!!!!