Ken and I decided to go for a walk along the Greenock Cut which you will find on the hills above Greenock. The story goes that a long time a go a mill owner called Thom built a reservoir at the top of the hill and then cut a path for the water down the mountain to deliver fresh water to the town below. 

Today it was a little muddy and of course a little fresh,  but it was great to get out and about on this great walk over looking the Firth of Clyde.

I came through to Edinburgh today to meet Grace and her daughter Ivy, they live in Hong Kong and they are here for two days.

We decided to get an Airbnb apartment which cost £60 for the night.  It’s a two bedroom top floor apartment near Holyrood Palace. 

We met at The Scott Monument and then went for a wander up to the castle wandering around the old streets along  the way. 

It’s nice to be back here for a visit but as usual the weather is the only problem,  especially when the cold turns to rain. 

I went fur a wee run doon by the watter and the sun wus oot, but the wind would cut you in two😎

When I headed out today the wind was blowing a gale and the wind felt like it would cut you in two. 

I walked into town and then later met with Christine and Emma and we went down to Lochwinnoch to have some fish and chips. 

When we sat in the car the rain finally abated and then we saw this wonderful rainbow.

Then the sun came oot……

After a long day of travel, I finally got back to home soil and it feels good. As much as I have enjoyed my Italian odyssey I’m very happy to get back to normality. To come back to a city where gesticulations are only really done in anger. When I first arrived in Italy I found it rather amusing to watch all the cliche movements and gestures but after a while I found it rather irritating. It seems like life is just one big melodrama. Even when they are talking on the phone using hands free they talk as if the other person is in front of them. As I said before, “they walk with purpose and always seem to have somewhere to go and gesticulating on the move.” The Scottish are very different, we don’t really want every Tom Dick and Harry to know what we are on about.

The Italians are certainly a colourful bunch and very different from us Scottish folk.

But I was really surprised by the amount of people that smoke, I thought China was bad for smoking, but in Italy it’s worse because the women smoke more than the men. In China it’s usually only the men that smoke and so with both sexes smoking it feels worse. They also just discard the cigarette without a care, just like in China. But what is worse in Italy is the stench of cigarettes. As I said before you feel like you are walking through a huge ashtray and sometimes a really famous monument has been compromised by this plague.. It’s sometimes very difficult to walk down the street without inhaling second hand smoke. As a reformed smoker I think I’m more sensitive to it than maybe a non smoker, I hate it and this was one of the most annoying things about Italy.

Second most annoying thing, the driving. They are terrible drivers with no due care and attention for their fellow man. In the narrow streets of Naples I witnessed so many close shaves and I’m surprised I never saw bodies and cars collide. Most of the cars you see are damaged to back up this statement. But I will admit that Naples is a special case in many ways and s a little different form the other cities I visited. Venice was great because it’s mostly a car free zone.

Trying to change currency in Italy is next to daylight robbery, if you are lucky they will give around 2/3 of the actual rate on the open market. There is a city tax that must be paid only in cash, only in cash……….who is getting this little kickback I wonder.

Maybe I’m out of touch with the cost of things in the western world but the only thing that seemed cheap in Italy was the coffee.

The food is way too rich for me although very delicious but I will be returning to a more simpler diet now that I have returned home, but I am looking forward to getting back to China for some dumplings and noodles and the many other dishes I like.

I was also very surprised by the amount of African Business men that are all over Italy and they seem to do a bit more business in Naples. The black market, no pun intended has been cornered by them very well. In Naples near the main station you will see many of them just hanging around with no real purpose, but I’m sure they are keeping an eye out for someone.

But would I return to Italy, well yes I would but I would only be interested in the natural beauty that it has to offer. The Cinque Terra was a great place to visit and it was great to get out in the fresh air, but just like China you will come across a discarded cigarette even in the remotest of places. The history is amazing and along with it the architecture that has followed. But where to next? Well I’m going to stay in Scotland for a few weeks and then hopefully return to the east to see what life has to offer there.

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.