October 16th to the 18th

So, i havent been able to get online for a bit now. We have been on the move again.


I was sick for a night in Rome, which wasnt too good. But I didnt let that stop me from going to the show at the castle. The band that played was called the Business. They are an old skin head punk band from the U.K.. I dont quite agree with them, nor the people at the show. But i did agree with the castle though that the show was at. It is a "Castle Squat". Basically the story behind it, the short story at least, is that some punks found an abondoned castle, not being used for anything at all, except to use up space, and they started throwing shows at it. Now it has grown to an official indoor and outdoor venue, a bar, and a resteraunt. All being ran by punk kids, with no help from anyone else, no security, no insurence, nothing. The goverment basically looks at it as "Well, we can control these kids better if they are all in one place, rather than all over the city."

So, thats something that is impossible in america! But this place was insane, crazy. You'd think you would only see it in a wierd si-fi movie or something. You walk in and there is just this long hall way (remember, this is a castle) the walls are covered in grafitti and posters and just huge random things. It is lit by just about every kind of bulb you can find and type of lighting out there, from black lights to green lights to flourecent lights. And you can only imagine the kind of people there.


And thats just the entrance in it. The hall way breaks a couple times into these long rooms and in the second long rooms is where they have the indoor shows. Right outside of those is a kind of courtyard where they have outdoor shows. Thats as far as i got in the castle. But i think it would have been a bit of an overload if i were to have seen the rest.

The show was good, regardless of the beliefs and horible stomach ache. I wont let that stop me from having a good time and listening to music.

So, the next morning was supposed to be the morning that Morganne and I were going to leave, but we decided to stay one more day. We went to the Vatican, and to much suprise it was very confusing. The Vatican Museum is NOT in the Vatican. The only place you can go IN the Vatican is where they keep the tombs of past Popes. So we went to that and then to the rest of the museums.




They dont let you take pictures in the most impressive part though, the Sistin Chapel. Which blew me away. From top to bottom, it is covered in amazing paintings. To think that someone spent time painting all of that!

I am also using some of Morganne's pictures too, her camera is better and the battery lasts longer on it.

But the whole Vatican experiance was rather impressive. As was the entire Rome expiriance.

So, yesterday: We voted, we took our ballots back to the embassy and forced them to take them. They did, so, we did our part in the election! After that we went back to Inti's house and I packed up my stuff. We headed to the train station and jumped on the next train going to Naples. While on the train going to Naples, I had the third presidential debat downloaded on my computer, so we watched it. Even though we had already voted. But we watched it....and we still felt good about our decision.

We get to Naples and we just kind of hung around. We knew that we wanted to eat pizza. Pizza came from Italy, from Naples, Italy. So this was the place to get pizza. Unfortunatly, the adapter plug that i got for my camera charger sucks and i wasnt able to take pictures in Naples. But trust me, your not missing much. It was a rather shock when we got there. Kinda dirty, kinda chaotic, definatly not very impressive after Rome. If you ever want to see how a city runs with out the use of any traffic signals or lights or lanes, go to Naples. There was no order to how the cars got around there.

So we got off the train and we just wanted to chill out for a bit. Arriving in a new unfamiliar city has quite the impact on the mental system iv learned. We checked our bags in at the train station so we could just walk around without having to worry about getting mugged or anything, well, we still worried but we just didnt have to worry about our bags.

Morganne asked a group of girls about where to get the best pizza. They didnt quite understand us, but they point us to a pizza place at least, the one they thought was good. "Go there, then left." Okay, so thats what we did, we went "there" then left. Left being, the rest of the city...

We walked for a bit, left, and suprisingly we actually found the pizza place they were talking about. It was closed. So we decided to continue to walk and wait for abit. Alot of resteraunts here in Italy wont open untill 7 or 7:30 at night. So we went to a park. pretty run down. It was where all the kids hung out after school also, driving their scooters around, playing soccer (futball) with a basketball, and looking at each others cell phone. We decided to play a game of cards. No one bothered us, and it was kind of interesting watching the kids interact with eachother.

After about an hour we headed back to the pizza place, its about 6:30. Its still not open. So we went down the side walk and asked again "Where can we get really really good Pizza here?". The guy didnt understand. He just pointed us down the block further, to another resteraunt, a mexican bar called Mexican Bar. So we just kept walking knowing that the best pizza in the world was definatly not coming from a Mexican Bar. So a little further down the block and we see a guy unloading his trunk of Water bottles and taking them into a dance club that was just about to open.

Morganne: "Do you speak english?"

Man: "Umm, yes."

Morganne: "Do you know where we can get some really good pizza?"

Man: "umm, yes. Where are you guys from?"

Morganne: "New York" (This is where Morganne is from, not the city, but the state. And i figured in a situation like this we can just leave it at that, rather than explaining to him where Michigan is and that I dont live in Detroit. Because that is what happens.)

Man: "Oh, well, yeah. You want the best pizza in the world? Well *pause* you just wait, about 5 minutes and i will take you there. The best pizza in the world. But the neighborhood is a bit a rough"

We waited about 2 minutes and the guy was ready. We were on our way, driving through chaotic Naples with some stranger guy that actually likes to help out American because he used to live in the states and we helped him out so much, thats what he said.
We enter into this area of the city and he says "This place is kind of like Harlem....but with white people....and chinese."

Iv never been to harlem, but this area was pretty bad, shattered windows in store fronts, literally, piles of garbage on the corners of streets. I saw a washer and dryer just thrown in the middle of the street. It was bad. He told us how to get back to the trainstation which was pretty simple and he told us that if we did have to ask for help that we should pretty much ask only old ladies, no men of any age, and no young woman, otherwise we have a large risk of getting robbed. He also told us that we shouldnt ask them if they speak english, and he told us the proper way of asking how to get to the train staion. Because in Naples people speak a different dialect of Italian. Even if you speak Italian, normal, you are at risk of being robbed in Naples. Let alone English.
He also taught us how to properly order a pizza at this place. I asked him "Well, what about a pizza with no cheese?" and he told me "Oh no, they wont put any cheese on these pizzas. They put Mozarella."
Mozarella here in Italy, is not cheese. It is of a substance on its own, not cheese though. So he drops us off infront of the best pizza place in the world. They're not open yet. So we are stuck in a pretty horible part of an already rough city, one american guy and one american girl. We decide that we shouldnt talk that loudly and we should just keep our heads down and walk, not making eye contact with anyone. We walk back to the train station making sure we know the way and then we walk back. By the time we get back its open and we are the first ones in. We get the menu and half is in italian and half is in american. Perfect. so we order. About 4 mintues later two massive pizzas are sitting infront of us. We eat them, and it is, indeed the best pizza iv ever had. Even with no cheese, this pizza beat every cheese pizza iv ever had. The sauce was perfect and the crust was perfect. It was soo good actually that we i oredered another one and ate it right there! No joke. Not only was it the best pizza iv ever had it was also the cheapest. For 3 euros i got a huge pizza all to myself that was the best pizza ever. So i ate two of them.

After dinner we head back to the train station and hop on the next train going to Palermo. We arrived this morning in Palermo, Sicily. And it is great. Some how through out the night they got the train that we were riding in over onto a ferry and across water without us knowing, i dont know what the deal is with that. But here we are now, in Sicily. Its really warm and there is a large body of water and we are at a great hostel. We just went down to this massive market right down the road and baught everything we needed to make pasta (for the next few days) for about 5 euros, including a bundle of bananas, a baquett, a bottle of Mango nectar, and a huge bottle of water. We are here for a couple days and then we head to the other side of the island where we will hopfully see more nature than city. Something that i have come to miss alot on this journey. After Sicily we have more travel plans but i am keeping those secret. I will just tell you that by the 28th we will be back in Rome for a day and then we will head over to Barcelona via 19 hour ferry ride across the Mediteranian.




This is Palermo, Sicily.