Highlights Cruise Day 6-Naples
I passed on the official excursion and was off the ship by 1130 for a Ralph Excursion of Naples. I wanted to focus on the archeology museum and walk through the older part of the city without having to follow a red paddle. I sampled pizza in Naples (spoiler alert: a gloppy, flat mess).
National Archeological Museum-Naples
What is a food mile?
The folly of human wishes
Someone spent a lot of money on this mausoleum box only to get evicted by an archeologist!
Notable Items
I took another self-designed excursion. This time in Naples. Guidebooks raved about its museum of archeology, so I wanted to see for myself. By this point in the cruise, I had learned that self-paced exploration is incompatible with cruise ship excursions (not a complaint).
Emerging from the Metro at the Museo stop, I immediately had a problem. The eSIM I installed the day before refused to have anything to do with the cellular signal that was clearly available (Yup, you have bars. Nope, I’m not working with them.).
I took stock of my situation. The lack of cellular functionality wasn’t a “showstopper” as we liked to say in the Navy. I was several Metro stops from the ship, but I could have returned at any time even without phone navigation. I could see the water. I was at the stop for the museum, according to the guidebook. I could troubleshoot the eSIM issue later.
I didn’t see a sign for the museum. Hey, Roman stuff here! would have been nice. Perhaps the way to the museum was more subtle because they were trying to weed out tourists who can’t function without their cell phones. Perhaps, as my brother likes to say, this was an intelligence test.
I decided to use the Vortex Location System. This is what a friend of mine calls “wandering around until you find it.” I was next to a long building. Was that the world renowned museum? I walked along its side until I reached the corner. There was a doorway with a tiny “Museo” sign and a line stretching toward the street. Bingo!
I got in the line for entry. Sometimes this works and sometimes not. At the Tate Modern in London, I did the same thing, but realized after some standing around (it was a long line) that there was a second entrance without a line.
The line at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples was special. It was long (no surprise) and it wasn’t moving. Not. At. All. What were they doing at the ticket desk? CAT scans?
Standing in line for thirty minutes without getting close enough to see the ticket counter, I reevaluated my priorities. I hadn’t come this far to experience line failure. Taking the total lack of line movement as a cue to raise the priority of solving my eSIM problem, I identified the problem and fixed it (obscure setting). I purchased a ticket online, moved to the head of the line, and left the other line standers in the dust.
Once inside, I used the Rick Steves free audio tour for most of the two and a half hours I toured the exhibits, most of which had been unearthed from towns covered by the Vesuvius eruption (Pompeii, Herculaneum). This made me wonder if those towns were completely submerged by lava and other flows, how did anyone know where to dig seventeen hundred years later? It’s not like they had signs or maps (those were submerged too).
I had my answer in a quote from the audio tour, “His main purpose in excavating the baths was to scavenge quality building stone.” That nicely sums up the 18th century interest in antiquities: scavenging ancient building stones for new structures. The statues and artifacts they found were a decorative bonus.
Since I didn’t eat on the ship before I debarked (that’s so much more cool than left), I was hungry when I arrived. I looked into the café and saw another long line. Nope. I didn’t just stand for thirty minutes in a line that did not move to take my chances on another one! I pressed on to the exhibits.
The museum had the standard “old stuff in cases” (“This is how the Romans ate soup.”). It also had artwork and a model of Herculaneum, the other city that Vesuvius wiped out. Pompeii had a better tourism promotion board because nobody talks about Herculaneum.
Before departing the museum, I practiced my most important travel maxim, “Never pass up a bathroom.” In practice, it means “don’t leave a location with a bathroom before you use it.”
This was where the trouble started. I couldn’t find the bathrooms. Oh come on readers might be thinking. Look for the signs! The museum had signs (British English, “Toilets”), but they didn’t help. At least they didn’t help me! I walked all over the ground floor of the museum and even used the downloaded floor plan. I was about to go around a second time (I felt like the horse in a round barn looking for the corner) when I noticed a hall with stairs down at the far end. What could those be? The bathrooms weren’t on the ground floor. They were down the stairs on level -2 (minus two)! I never saw a sign until I was immediately outside the facilities. Like that was useful.
I’m sure the women reading this are thinking, You dope, just ask someone! What? That’s cheating!
Emerging from the museum at 1515, I did an abbreviated “old statues and buildings” walking tour. The guidebook led me through the older (and graffiti covered) parts of the city where “the real people live.” I shortened the hour tour to return to the ship for the back-on-board time of 1730. On the way, I stopped for Pizza di Napoli (very flat, I preferred the Rome version).
Instead of returning to my stateroom, I sampled the gravlax in the Living Room bar on the first deck, Atrium area. Although I don’t spend much time in bars, it was part of the “experience.” I had to evacuate when the bar started filling up with people returning from shore excursions. Bar conversation is loud and boring even before people start drinking.