May 29

At around 10:30, Martina, Jason and Nick headed downtown via bus. Jane decided to stay at the Denza to sleep in and fare la ricotta. The downtown threesome got off the bus at a random stop and spent the day walking around. They stopped at a coffee shop along the way and got some croissants, juice and coffee. During this time, Jane was sound asleep.

After realizing they were in a posh-er section of town and couldn’t afford to buy $300 sneakers, the rain started in. They headed into a bookstore, which was like a huge, multilevel Borders or Barnes & Noble. With just three full days remaining on the trip, Jason and Nick made some very key purchases. After stumbling through Italy for three and a half weeks, Jason bought a map of southern Italy and Nick bought an Italian-English dictionary. Just in time.

We explored a little more and found an internet café, with no help from Jason’s map, still folded and tucked securely in his bag. Martina used her USB stick and started to upload the blog. However, there was a probably with our Microsoft Word file and she couldn’t get the text off the drive. So, she uploaded some pics and an apology note to the blog.

It was getting close to “go time” so we started to look for a bus stop. After (unknowingly) walking past our stop and then proceeded for 20 minutes in the wrong direction, we knew we were getting close so we bought some bus tickets. Just to make sure we were close, we asked the ticket man where we could get our bus, number 140. It was at this point that we realized the magnitude of our folly. He pointed us back to where we were 20 minutes ago and our egos were immediately checked. So, we hoofed it back to the stop and caught the bus relatively quickly.

Eugenio (a Rotaractor from Naples) met us at Denza. Jane and Eugenio knew each other because he came to UPenn a few years ago as a visiting scholar doing his PhD in Entrepreneurial Studies. He contacted Jane, as she is the district Rotaract chair, and helped her start a new Rotaract club in Philadelphia. Eugenio will be his club’s president starting in July. We took a taxi down and Eugenio followed us on his scooter, which had a canopy over the seat and was like a convertible.

We headed to the Capodimonte Museum, a national museum in Naples, currently with a Salvator Rosa exhibit on display. Rosa was born in the 1600s and was one of the most famous Baroque artists from Naples. We met up with a few other Rotaractors, including Florentin, a Rotaractor visiting from Benin, and toured the museum.

After a nice walk through the museum, we had some drinks with Eugenio at a restaurant near the Castel dell’Uovo and headed to Hotel Excelsior for a nice Rotary dinner. At the dinner, we viewed a great anti-drug video put together by the local Rotaract club. They spliced together a voiceover, some text and scenes from popular movies to make an interesting piece.