By the title of this post, I know what you're probably thinking. To answer your question despite their names sounding eerily similar there is no correlation between Pompeii and former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo besides them both not being active anymore. Ok, now that that's out of the way I can recap my trip to Pompeii. Two weeks ago I was fortunate enough to visit the Lost City of Pompeii. My friend Cam, who is studying abroad in Barcelona, flew into Italy for the weekend. We stayed two nights in Naples and on one of the days we visited Pompeii. To be completely honest when Cam and I first got to Naples I was a little unimpressed but by the time I left, it had become one of my favorite cities to visit. To recap Pompeii, Pompeii is a must-visit if you are in Naples or the surrounding area. I consider myself somewhat of a history buff and the whole time my brain felt like a sponge trying to absorb all the artifacts and information around me. Something I learned while I was there was that Pink Floyd had a concert in one of the stadiums in 2016, so that's pretty cool. The other part of Pompeii that I found fascinating was the blueprint renderings on some of the buildings showing you what the building would have looked like.
To recap Naples, as I mentioned earlier my first impression of Naples was not great, when Cam and I got there it was 10:30 pm there was trash all over the train station, and trying to cross the street felt like we were in Bangkok (full disclosure I've never been there). To give a summary of the trash problem in Naples, in the 90's the mob used Naples and the surrounding area to burn trash, this area became known as the Triangle of Death. The mob would import trash from other cities and eventually other countries and burn it in the triangle of death. Eventually, the mob could not keep up with all the imported trash so the Italian government had to step in. The Italian government has struggled for the last two decades to dispose of trash in both Rome and Naples, in fact in Rome some areas are so bad you can find wild boars in the streets. However despite all of this what Cam and I came to find out was that the people of Naples are some of the kindest and nicest people I have ever met. I want to preface this by saying neither Cam nor I speak Italian, although it sounds corny sometimes you don't need to speak the same language to understand if someone is generous. To give an example of what I'm talking about, Cam and I were looking at places to go for lunch. We had narrowed it down to two places. One place seemed somewhat fancy; they had a full staff, great lighting, and menus in different languages. The other place Cam and I were considering was a small restaurant with only outside seating, the staff was just a mom and her two sons and the menu was only in Italian. As you may have guessed we chose the mom and two sons restaurant. To be completely honest I don't know what we ordered because it was just called the "surprise me sandwich" but what I can tell you is if that sandwich was across from a subway that subway would shut down in no more than 6 months because that sandwich is the definition of Tender loving Care (TLC). I saw a sign while we were in Naples that said "You can't stop crying when you get here and you can't stop crying when you leave". I think this saying is the perfect way to describe Naples, I'm not saying Naples is for everybody but what I can tell you is if you're ever there or anywhere give it a chance before you judge it.
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