Last day in Naples

Friday 4th April 2025

Maradonna is everywhere here, I can’t describe how much he is hero worshipped! There are murals, football shirts, fridge magnets, drinks to name a few things! But today was a first, a mural of him as a saint? Apparently he was in the team when Naples won the cup twice about 33 years ago, long memories!

Our train tonight is at 10pm so we check out if the hotel, leave our bags and walk up to Certosa e Museo de San Martino, a 14th century monastery. It is higher than we thought, many steps later we arrive! What an absolutely stunning place. Firstly we got there early and seem to be the first people in, secondly it is a marvel of marble, painting and marquetry. It’s hard to describe as it is do elaborate and huge!!

It has beautiful cloisters with many of these rooms round the outside. Wooden doors, covered in metal with a little hatch next to it. The hatch opens to a recess, we presumed that food could be put through the hatch without seeing the person inside. I also noticed there were no fireplaces! Hardy monks I think!! They had a whole section dedicated to the Christmas diaramas, this was the biggest one. Many of the pieces on show were hundreds of years old, amazing. This view is from the priors private quarters, he didn’t live in a cell with a hatch!

We walked back down to the hotel to pick up our bags. It has been difficult to take a picture that really shows how steep it is here, these steps show a bit. Dropped the bags at the station then stopped for lunch. Best pizza ever!!! I am not a huge fan of pizzas, they can be a bit ho hum. But this was great and I ate it all!

We still had a lot of time to kill so went to the archeological museum. Basically it’s where they put all the good bits from Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites. It is stuffed full of marble statues. Some of them are huge. See Robin for scale! There are too many things to comment on and it all becomes a blur but we liked the mosaics best. They are so detailed, with such small pieces, they must have been extremely expensive in their time.

Now off to the station to wait for our train, it’s the overnight sleeper to Catania. How does that work I hear you ask as Sicily is an island! Apparently they break the train into smaller sections and load them on the ferry side by side. Then put them back together the other side. I am so excited!!