Rosemary's Travels: Italy

By Rosemary O'Donoghue

Italy is the second destination in Rosemary's Travels: 2016. Experience the sights and food in Naples, stroll through Pompeii and climb Mount Vesuvius in wind and rain. Visit the picturesque towns of the Amalfi Coast and wander through the streets of Rome, while you're amused by the quaint ways of Stavros, her coeliac travelling companion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rosemary O'Donoghue
• Release date: Jul 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370986903

Rosemary O'Donoghue

Rosemary O'Donoghue writes for work and for fun. A Technical Writer with a science background, she has published travel books and a business book, Clarity out of Complexity: Writing Effective Workplace Procedures, to share some of the wisdom she has learned from many years of writing for a wide range of industries. She gets excited about how good procedures (as opposed to longwinded, boring, repetitive procedures) can dramatically lift the performance of a business. In between (and often during) jobs, Rosemary enjoys travelling and writes daily to capture her experiences and entertain friends, family and random people she meets. In recent years she has discovered a passion for sailing and spends months at a times on a boat coastal cruising along the NSW and Queensland coast of Australia. She has written about her experiences along the way in her book North on Rocinante and will soon publish Second Season, also about her sailing experiences. She has published travel stories about Italy, Greece, Malta, Hong Kong & China. Rosemary is currently combining her technical writing and training expertise and her passion for sailing creating a self-discovery learning guide about coastal cruising. When she's not on the water, Rosemary lives with her partner, her cat and her pet python in Sydney, Australia.

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1

Naples

Wednesday 7 Sept 2016

So here I am, after a fantastic time in Greece, travelling to Rome with my friend Stavros.

Back in my school days I’d been fascinated by the story of Pompeii, the ancient city encased in lava and ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD, and only rediscovered in 1748. I’d imagined the people preserved in the middle of their daily activities and longed to see it for myself.

On my previous trip to Europe two years ago I’d taken a whirlwind bus tour of Europe with a travel company, Trafalgar. In Italy we’d visited Florence, Venice and Rome. I loved every minute of it, and wanted to see more. So this time, being able to set my own itinerary, I especially wanted to visit Pompeii. I also wanted to see more of Rome because we’d spent only two nights there and one of the days was almost entirely devoted to Vatican City (which I found absolutely amazing, by the way, especially since I’d grown up Catholic). So  this time we’d planned a visit to Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast and time to just wander in Rome.

Arriving at Roma airport we follow signs to catch the train to Roma Centrale. Following instructions on a machine we buy tickets to Naples, or Napoli as they call it here, then go to find coffee.

After ordering, we wait and wait, and become anxious as the time is slipping by. What we don’t realise is that, after paying, we need to hand the ticket to the person at the coffee machine. When we finally ask, our coffees are made quickly. We carry them as we make a dash for the train, jumping on the first carriage, which happens to be first class, then awkwardly crash-bashing our luggage down the aisles through a number of carriages to get to the one with our allocated seats. There are open luggage racks above the seats and we haul our big heavy bags into them and hope they don’t come crashing down on top of us.

On the high speed train it is just over an hour to Naples, so the time passes quickly. At Napoli Centrale, following the instructions sent to us by our Airbnb host, Luigi, we catch the Metro to Dante station and walk to Piazza del Gesu Nuovo (Square of the new Jesus, Stavros translates). It’s raining lightly in Napoli. The square has a large monument in the middle of it, 2 large churches facing it, and 3 or 4 coffee shops around it. As instructed, we text Eleanora, Luigi’s daughter.

Monument in Piazza del Jesu, Naples

I’ll be 2 minutes, she texts back.

Then in 2 minutes I’m here.

We see a teenage girl with long dark hair, carrying an umbrella, emerge from a gateway from a building on the square and hurry towards us. Yes, it’s Leonora.

She welcomes us and shelters me with her umbrella as she leads us back through the gateway to the building. It’s a big old building, 4 or 5 stories high, with apartments arranged in a U shape around a courtyard.

Courtyard of AirBNB Piazza del Gesù, Napoli

She takes us to an ancient lift, with 2 sets of manual doors. At least this lift is rectangular, not a toilet-room-sized one like most of the others