ITALY: NAPLES back to ROME and beyond....TO BOLOGNA

Colosseum

After an exhausting day trekking around Pompeii we were looking forward to getting back into the air-con, to having a nice dinner and a relaxing evening before heading back to Rome in the morning around 11 o’clock.  In the lead up time to checking out of Hotel Tiempo we were psyching ourselves up for the walk to the station – mentally chanting “We can do this… We can do this…”.  At least now we knew our way around this area and which sides of the streets to walk on to avoid the rubbish….or so we thought!!

What we didn’t expect was that almost overnight more rubbish seemed to have appeared in the same street as the hotel.  Remember I said in our earlier blog about some “just disgusting” rubbish that we saw.  Now has come the time to say what it was.  As painful as it is to mention….and we hope it doesn’t put you off our Travel Adventures blogs because this is REAL…the comments you are about to read are REAL!! 

Tiber River, Rome

Here goes…..  What we were talking about was a couple of large green heavy duty garbage bags that had split and the contents strewn over the street….it was CONDOMS - used, small, large, different colours, different textures and in different stages of disintegration.  Very confronting!  YUK!  Did I mention it was disgusting.  Maybe once (well maybe 3 times).  What sort of a dirty grub would do that.  Thinking - at different times in our travels we were worried about getting chewing gum, or heaven forbid – Dog Poo stuck on the wheels of our luggage.  How would we explain Condoms rolling around on our wheels? LOL.  Guess it confirms that not only do the Mafia have a strangle hold on the waste disposable contracts, they have a grip on the brothel trade too!  It had to be from a brothel – and about a years (or several years) supply at that.  Just disgusting (OK the word has been mentioned 4 times now).  Suffice to say I DID NOT TAKE A PHOTO.

Goodbye Naples.  We will always remember our visit here….Yeah, for all the WRONG reasons!

Back in Rome and back to the same apartment block where the (WRONG) key was broken in the key hole, we were greeted with a NEW one together with a nice note and some change from our English/Italian speaking Nepalese host about the replacement for the broken one from our last stay here a few days ago.

Our first priority though was to get to the supermarket for some fresh lunch goodies, but Tony insisted…and twisted my arm…and stood his ground…that we should go down to the other supermarket for some of that delicious Gelati we’d tried days before.  Who was I to refuse, besides it was still hot and ice-cream seemed like a good excuse to cool down?  That aside we also needed to get a few snacks for the train trip to Bologna tomorrow.  

Most Delicious Gelati in Italy

 At Roma Termini the next day there were still the long queues of people wanting to buy tickets, the touts who wanted to help people buy their tickets (and scam them out of their cash), the travellers, and the gypsies (who also wanted to scam people out of their cash).  

Trenitalia Ticket Office queues at
Roma Termini

But first we had to stop in for some souvenirs, like T-shirts and the blood red coloured wooden Rosary Beads spotted in shop windows during our walks…the red ones that smell like roses with a picture of Pope John Paul II on the front - just have to have them, along with that cute little black summer dress too! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II)   



Those Must-have Rosary Beads




In the meantime Tony had already managed  to sneak in a couple of Owls to add to his collection.  Very cute!
 

Alabaster Owls



And so our Travel Adventures continue.  Who knows what's about to happen on our train trip from Rome to Bologna.  Keep you posted.  Till then.....

Liz and Tony

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