A Quick trip to Rome and a Slow trip Home

Today was Kel's appointment day to collect his temporary passport from the Embassy in Rome. We didn't have to leave the apartment until 10.45 am so we stayed indoors in air conditioned comfort. So here are a few photos showing the curious life of living in inner city Naples. The first is the front door to the building; note the strange door and the graffiti.

The second gives a close up of the door, the step over board and the iron gate.

Inside the floors and stairs are all marble, it has been a lovely building once.

The third photo shows how the insides of these old palazzi have been renovated to a high standard.

We have two beautiful little balconies but this one overlooking part of the Norlana market is the favourite. As well as the cute little fold down table it has the most entertaining views.

 

The very helpful young lady at the Embassy suggested that we travel with Italo rail when travelling from Naples to collect the passport. Italo is a private company that runs very fast trains at competitive prices. It certainly was fast! We covered approximately 230 kms in one and a quarter hours, smoooth, comfortable leather recliner seats, wi-fi and vending machines selling all sorts of coffees, cold drinks and snacks.

The photo shows us almost flying at 300 km/h.

The process was seamless today. From train to Metro, 700 metre walk, gelati stop and arrived right on time at the Embassy. A repeat of all the security checks and the new passport was in hand.

We returned via the Metro to Termini Station where they have a new, huge food experience hall and stopped for some lunch. What a fantastic place. We had already ascertained that returning to Naples on the fast trains was going to be too expensive so tried to get seats on the 3.59 Regionale but there were no seats available. So it was a long wait for the 4.57 Reg. The train was huge (at least fourteen carriages), it was packed and the air con didn't seem to be working. Once the train started to move water started dripping from the ceiling, then it became heavier, the floors were awash and we were all getting wet.

The pics below were taken early on, it got much worse, the water flowing on to the next carriage. Eventually the conductor asked us to move as it wasn't save: it seems it was safe to stand hanging on to the centre pole on a long distance train. We did get seats eventually, and arrived back in Naples at 7.40 pm. Quite a bit of time difference between the two trips.

So after all my praising the Regionale trains they let me down today. It was entertaining and cooled down the carriages, and we survived to tell the story.