Never going back to Naples. Never. Never. Never.

Well friends and family, the title of this post may sound a little harsh but considering the incident I encountered the whole 30 minutes I was in Naples, it is justified. You will find out why towards the end of this post...

Spent the day at the beach in Sorrento and then went out for the night.


The night was really fun. We went to this Irish pub and met up with all the other APIers that went a day earlier than us (I refused to miss the Colosseum tour so I made us stay back a day). It is always fun when we all get together but the Italian men (and sometimes Australians) get a little touchy feely?. The following is a great example of what happens when Italians want to take a picture with you.

I guess they just thought that we were so darn cute that they needed a picture. We weren't even talking to them but they were staring (not unusual here) and they finally approached us for a photo. We had some of our guys around us so we thought why not?? Big mistake. Big mistake. So, we were posing like normal human beings and then this Italian boy starts to use inappropriate hand contact south of my waist. I was not going to take that kind of harassment, so I didn't wait for the photo to be taken and I started yelling at these creeps. Don't worry friends and family, we can handle ourselves here. I know that the culture here is much more touchy and loving but after observing how Italian men are with other Italian women, I realized that they are not this way with fellow Italians. It is just gross. That pretty much sums up all the "drama" we experienced in Sorrento.


Fortunately, Capri was perfect. We didn't have any inconveniences (well except for island tax and sit down charge at lunch). It was one of those really great days that I will always remember.


Naples..We took a boat from Capri back to Naples because that is where the train station is. We (Chelsey, Ben and I) went to the restaurant to buy the tram tickets and the clerk said there were no more tram tickets and wouldn't sell us any (oh yeah, she lied). Thankfully, I had my GPS and we thought it would be fine to walk. Ha! Joke was on us. As we made our way towards the train station, we realized how disgusting Naples is in general. There was trash and dog poop (we can only hope) everywhere. We found a main road that led us straight to the train station and just booked it. We were about 10 minutes away from the train station and on a main road when some man on a nice moped decided to "mug"/assault me. He rode up on the sidewalk and started getting really close to me then grabbed my arm and purse handle and just pulled down on it as hard as he could. I guess he thought that either my purse strap would break or that he would make me fall and he could have just rode off with my purse. Thankfully my purse is the greatest purse in the world and wouldn't let that happen. He ended up just yanking my arm around and knocking my sunglasses off my head. He gave me a little bit of whip lash and left a red grip mark on my arm but that is all that went wrong. I was quite surprised with my reaction. I didn't cry and it happened so fast that I didn't even have time to scream. Chelsey and Ben didn't even know what happened until after he was gone and my sunglasses were knotted in my head and in pieces. Pretty crazy huh? We were warned that Naples is known for pick pocketing but this was no sneaky, sly pick pocketing situation. Oh well, things could have gone a lot worse and I definitely credit the grace of God for that.


We finally made it to the train station and I was really on edge. I needed some comfort food so we ate at the McDonalds inside. Once we got on the train Chelsey and I thought we were lucky because there was no one else in our compartment... until the next stop when two Italian men hoped on. We were so exhausted that we fell asleep. I slept with my purse in my lap with my strap wrapped around my arm and the handle in my hand. This was definitely a wake up call on how easily it is to get things taken from you.


Love you and miss you all!