At any rate, I'll focus tomorrow's post on what I've learned in this past week since technically I arrived Saturday night. Tonight I want to talk about my first Friday in Naples!
This morning I started orientation. I have also decided that this whole experience shadows Cal Poly's WOW (Week of Welcome for you non CalPoly folks). Rather than being a wowie though I'm a newbie, but just like WOW there are a whole lot of other people going through this process with you. My hotel room feels like a dorm room. I have to walk over to the food court (or the restaurant or market) to get meals. I rely on others for rides and/or the shuttle. The forms for processing the various things are just as long. Today I applied for my Italian SSN equivalent, filled out the paperwork for my driver's license, and filled out a housing request. Exciting? Maybe not, but you didn't have to sit through all the lectures so consider yourself lucky. Oh and should you write me a letter PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not write Italy in the address...it screws everything up.
The fun stuff- I finally went exploring! After a short bus trip over to Capo I finally saw Jessica! Yay. After a quick discussion, we decided to head to Casertavecchia as it had been recommended to her. Keep in mind this was 5 o'clock on an Italian holiday (or perhaps a day of rest after the real holiday) so we didn't know what we'd find up there but did know we wouldn't find a place to serve us dinner for several hours so we put ourselves at the mercy of the GPS and headed north. Well, I think it was north.
After some creative driving by both Jessica and other Italians, several narrow roads, and lots of mountain driving complete with switchbacks, we realized we'd climbed rather high. How high? High enough to get this view:
We finally made it down a road and parked the car and got out to find this castle. Jessica was cracking up about my shoes, but seriously....I'm in Italy so I need to be sporting the shoes. Cobble stone paths? No big deal for my Nine West peep toed shoes. I figure after being one of my few pairs with me at this point they will be retired by the end of the summer, so they may as well sight see while they can. On top of the hill we found a chapel and so many amazing windows. Yep, my official windows of Italy folder has been started in iPhoto. We walked around the streets, up and down for a while. Soon I was able to figure out where we were by the cats in one street, dogs in the other, and old men sitting along one. So my landmarks moved some but we had no issues navigating. Finally after 7 we both needed something to eat, but nowhere was open. Nowhere but the dessert bar. Coffee and pastry before dinner? Yes please.
Next stop- Pozzuoli! Sound familiar? Yep. I did talk about it earlier this week from when I first looked at apartments. We took a new route to the town, through Naples. Did you know there are high rise buildings here? There are! I've seen them with my own 2 eyes. The tunnels through the hills were rather entertaining getting there too. At about the same time, Jess and I looked at each other and said how it looked like a video game...Mario Kart to be exact. You know that level right where I think it's called Tokyo something? Bombs, motorcycles, crazy driving in a tunnel? No bombs and traffic wasn't too bad by there were a few bikes with helmet-less drivers flying by.
Pozzuoli looked a lot different at night. After parking the car and paying a few Euros to a young kid to "watch it" we headed down the pathway to hear "scusi" and turn back around. Somehow side lights were on but we couldn't figure out how they turned off. Again after a few minutes of car charades, we decided to leave it, although AAA couldn't have jumped the car if the battery was dead and come to think of it I canceled my roadside membership earlier this week.
The downtown area wasn't too crowded yet but way more people that downtown Monterey! Best part? I didn't go to high school with any of these people and I definitely didn't see anyone I recognized from work. So, so, so many new people. Dinner was yummy- pizza Friday of course! We also braved a caprese salad that had fabulous mozzarella and provolone cheese. Also, I tried a fresh green olive and discovered that I like them that way! Yummy fresh food shared with a friend is always the best. We had some great table conversation too. I think the illustrations below are from my favorite topic...any idea what we were talking about?
Finally we headed back to the car. The same kid (I really wish I remembered his name) I think was explaining to us how the lights that were now off were used to find things on the ground? The world may never know what he was really saying...well any Italian speaker would but we won't. He started to talk to us and when he found out Jessica was from New York started asking about sharks and dolphins. More charades and trying to guess what he was saying in Italian. It was fun and he was really interested about if we'd ever seen sharks.
Were our adventures done yet? No. Why would we call it a night at midnight? Our last adventure involves the GPS unit, me not knowing an address, and lots of closed gas stations. The objective was to get back to the support site and sometime in that process top off the rental car's gasoline. Long story short (because I'm getting sleepy) we picked the town name near where I'm staying but kept letting it "recalculate" every time we'd try to get gasoline at a closed place. Gas stations are off to the side of the roads here...kinda of like rest stops back at home...where you exit then just get back on but without ever being able to actually get off the freeway.
Turns out that the gas stations on the side of the road we were one were closed, but the ones on the other side appeared to be open. Some how during the course of this (well, maybe the way we were being routed) things started to look anything but familiar. We weren't too concerned since we were purposely ignoring some directions in hope of finding a gasoline place. When Ms. TomTom said we were at the destination and we were in the middle of town/a place I'd never been before I really wanted to know where "my home" was. After a loop I started to look for my contact info to see if we could get a real location of the base. Realizing it probably wasn't the best idea to pull over, Jessica started to follow the signs for "US Navy." I still wish I recorded some of this adventure but I have a feeling I'll be doing the same thing when I'm behind the wheel so there will be other chances. All of a sudden I saw some of my land marks (the more permanent kinds- towers) so I knew she had found it. So happy to see it right around 1am!
In summary: Visitor #1*, Jessica, proved to be an excellent travel buddy and a great person to start doing some of this exploring with. I knew it was going to be a great visit but you never know just exactly how it's going to go...but that's what makes it fun. Thanks for a great time out and about (and lots of around too!) today. Can't wait to see you next time when I'll be speaking the Italian (well, trying to) and driving to the sketch looking karaoke place with torch and blue neon lights.
