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Thursday, Jul 12, 2018
Today would be another electric bike ride -- at 9am, after cappuccinos of course.
The owners were late again by 45 minutes! It’s certainly a very lazy town in regards to business. Punctuality does not appear to be a thing there. We rented electric bikes and headed out. But my bike had no brakes--at least not to the ability of stopping on a hill or at a decent speed. We returned to get them adjusted. Big difference. Now, I could trust my bike. We went down to the Marina, and then my chain derailed. I began to realize that these were not great bikes. After fixing the chain, we went up the hill again.
Next we headed along some side hills to reach the cliff roads to the west of the city. The roads have these cool tall stone walls. Pretty great effect, as you lose the era you’re currently in. Could be the 17th century for all we knew. The elevation increased a lot.
It was now too steep to continued peddling even with the electric motor. We had to push the bikes for a while. We finally reached the views and took photos. Would have made for some really good photos at night.
Returning to the main square was easy. Downhill and coasting. Again, thankful for my working brakes. We meandered around the town a bit. Was still a novel thing to be on an electric bike. Just a whole new experience. But then our time was up. We returned the bikes and headed back to the flat.
We had options for the afternoon, but I suggested seeing Naples. We would not be there for long, though it would be nice to get an idea of the city. I packed up my gear and we headed to the train station. Just in time too as we barely caught the train to Naples.
It was a long ride with quite a few stops for a train that was supposed to be an “express.” At the Naples train station, I stowed my bags to make it easier to get around the city.
We began walking. Naples is certainly grittier than Sorrento and Rome. Well, this is from the areas I experienced. Naples likely has very fancy upscale areas too. This was just the less affluent part of Naples.
One quest was for pizza. Our driver a couple of days prior had talked of how Naples was the birthplace of pizza and how it was so awesome. So hey, why not find our for ourselves? We looked up a couple of top-rated pizza places to seek out.
We found a renowned and highly rated place. There was a line of course, so we received a ticket number and waited outside. I grabbed a beer nearby. In time, our number was called, so went in and were given a table. The menu was pretty small and we pretty much already knew what we wanted: pizza.
The prices were very low. We ordered two pizzas. Soon, we were presented with authentic Naples pizza. It’s a lot different from pizza elsewhere. The dough is very soft, and it’s more like bread. The taste was...okay. Not bad, but nothing especially great. I was happy to have at least tried it. But I like modern pizza much more.
Afterwards, we explored the area. We came across a nice pastry shop with far too many choices to make for an easy decision. We were actually just there for the restrooms, but did buy some treats too.
On the streets we passed, most of the people seemed to be locals. We didn’t see many tourists in that part of town. In some ways, those older neighborhoods seemed to be free of time. Looking around, the buildings seemed like they would look the same 100 or 200 years ago.
Time was growing short, so we walked back to the train station. I retrieved my bags and said good-bye to the others. Vacation was almost over. I paid five euros for a bus ride back to the airport.
I had a long wait at the airport. My flight was likely the last flight of the night. One neat thing was that we boarded on the front and back of the plane. I slept through most of the flight, which was about three hours long.
Arriving at London Gatwick, there was almost no line for passport control. Though what did that matter? I had a very long wait ahead. I sat and tried to watch movies on my iPad. That worked for a while. I also ordered coffee but found out my English currency notes had expired and were not usable. Luckily, I had other notes to use to buy coffee. But it is very annoying to have expired cash. That’s very rate in the United States.
Around 5am, I boarded a plane for JFK airport. I was anxious to finally be able to sleep again. We lifted off and headed across the Atlantic.
and duck down. Since others were not up for doing it, I passed too. Though not because of the money.