Day 3 - Naples coast

8th July

We didn't start the day fast, but we definitely saw amazing sights today. I would say that that was all we wanted to see anyway. My feet are telling me so ;) 

Here we are waiting for our pizza and salad at a restaurant in a port dock for cruise ships.

Before lunch, we wanted to go shopping. And we wanted to go to an air-conditioned shopping centre, which they don't really do here in Naples, so my mum and Harri thought of going to the shops at the cruise ship port. They had looked at it when researching before we came. 

There was many lovely expensive-looking shops, which we bypassed. And then, right at the end of the centre, there was an outlet store. That was what we wanted ;) And, my goodness, the bags and shoes inside were amazing!! Soft Italian leather bags, and high wedge shoes :D

After 1 hour, we only left with one pair of Italian leather shoes for Harri!! Mum and I saw so many lovely things, but just did not find the one match for us. A shame, really ...

Out of the port, we headed to the castle of Naples. It was an extremely hot day, and the sun makes us feel drowsy, so we were feeling quite tired, even though we hadn't done much!! Shopping must take up a lot of energy ;) 

The entrance to Castel Nuovo.

View from the castle looking out over the peninsula of Sorrento. As you can see,  at the bottom of the image, there are heaps of mopeds. This is the moped country, and small cars, which makes sense with all the small roads, which I will show later.

After this we met with my dad, who had left early from his conference (He had already given his part, and he didn't like the university because there was no air-conditioning). He was hot, and we were hot, so we all had some gelato before deciding what to do together. I had strawberry gelato, which tasted like sorbet. It was super refreshing!!

Starting to walk along the coast line. It was peak-hour traffic, so as we were walking there were 'beep' noises going every few seconds. The mopeds weaved in between the cars, which the cars didn't like, (hence the beeping noises) and there are no lines on the road. The drivers don't seem to be stressed at all, even though cars keep ducking in to lanes ect.

View of Mount Vesuvius.

Another view of Vesuvius. Here Harri was beginning to take a panorama shot.

 We stayed here for a while, just watching the traffic. We could not believe that there were even some bikes among the chaos of the mopeds and cars. There was even two girls with a moped that didn't work, pushing themselves to the hill to roll down. We are thinking perhaps they just needed a push ;)

Here we all are with Vesuvius in the background.

We continued walking along the coast, which was an amazingly cool walk because of the ocean breeze. And we came upon a hotel with heaps of paparazzi and people crowded around it. Apparently there were many famous movie stars and models going to the various events that were on tonight, like a Dolce & Gabbana show, Sophia Loren interview, and Elton John concert. Mum wanted to stay to see if she knew any of the people getting in to cars, because all the paparazzi were there and she thought there would be someone famous. After a while, thigh, we realised that it was pretty much impossible for us to see any faces into the cars, so we left.

After a little while of walking along the coast, we made a split decision to eat dinner at one of the restaurants along there.

This is my pizza. It was called "Pizza of Naples", and it was amazing!! Half of the pizza is margherita, which is from Naples, and the other half was a folded ricotta and ham pizza. Apparently margherita pizza was named after the queen of Italy, who was sick of French gourmet food and wanted the chef to make a new pizza. 

Sunset over the coast.

Panorama of the coast line.

Now you are uptodate,

Laura

xoxo