Mediterranean — 2010

Naples

Our last day on this cruise started with breakfast with Marylee in the dining room.  She’s going with us today to visit two museums, and Ward isn’t interested.  Our first stop, which was a longer walk than we expected and took us by Piazza Dante, was the Archeological Museum, where most artifacts from Pompeii are exhibited.  Unfortunately the Secret Room (erotic art) and the mosaic collection were closed because of renovation.  After a couple of hours we left the museum and went on a long, convoluted walk that took us through many narrow back streets where we had to dodge cars and motorcycles as we searched for the Capella Sansevero.  We found it in spite of bad directions of several locals.  The last, who spoke mostly Italian, finally gave us good directions (we were about three blocks away).  Two amazing sculptures are in this chapel; one called the Veiled Christ (Rick Steves says it is carved of marble by Giuseppe “Howdeedoodat” Sammartino in 1753), and the second a statue called Despair that includes a rope net that was carved out of the same piece of marble as the rest of the sculpture.  Photos were not allowed in the chapel, so we bought postcards of the sculptures.  On our walk back to the ship we looked for a restaurant to have lunch but didn’t find any pizzeria open, so we had a late lunch on the ship, then packed our bags.  We played trivia one last time on the Noordam (we really liked the cruise director Glenn who hosts the game) but didn’t come close to winning.  Glenn choose very obscure questions but it was always fun in spite of how many questions we got wrong.  We had dinner in the dining room, did a little gambling and went to bed early.

© Jay 2020