Riding on a Railroad: Return to Napoli

"We are riding on a railroad / singing someone else's song..."

-James Taylor, Riding on a Railroad

We've had a quiet couple of weeks since our return from Ravenna.  Our American neighbor, who is also resident here in anticipation of citizenship recognition) had a birthday - the day before mine, actually - and threw himself a very nice party at the local bar.  It seemed like the whole comune was there at one point or another throughout the evening; we had a chance to talk with some folks we'd never met or had only seen in passing before.  I spent some time chatting with one of the old guys in town, who told me that he "hates Americans" and also "hates religion."  I said:  "Sono Americana e sono Italiana," so maybe he only half hates me?  He was actually a pretty decent guy (if somewhat curmudgeonly); we mostly communicated via translation apps on our respective phones.  He also showed me a picture of himself with (allegedly) Che Guevara's stepmother and half-sister.  Whew.

The same night we met yet another American; she arrived in town back when we were visiting Bologna, so this was the first chance we'd had to talk to her.  She's here by herself right now, but her husband will be joining her soon - he will arrive the same day we leave to return to the US.  She mentioned that her microwave was broken.  Well, one of the first really dumb things we did when we arrived was to buy ourselves a small, cheap microwave - only to get it home and realize we had absolutely nowhere to put it in our kitchen, counterspace being at a premium.  DUH.  We never even took it out of the box.  We were very happy to be able to give it to her, as she will actually get use out of it, and now we don't have to leave it behind in our apartment or otherwise deal with it when we leave.  Win-win.

Since we've been here, we've found that we get by just fine without a microwave, even though it was something we probably used every day in the US.  Here, though, we simply don't have the same access to processed and/or frozen foods.  I wonder if we'll go on not using one, once we are back in our American kitchen...?

One other thing I did was to connect with a cousin - a third cousin, actually (the granddaughter of my grandfather's first cousin - who is 96 years old!  If my grandfather were still alive, he would be 102). She and her family live in Corinaldo (or thereabouts), the town where my great grandfather was born.  She very kindly invited us to visit the family for the Sunday and Monday of Easter weekend (Easter Monday is a public holiday here, although Good Friday is not).  I'm pretty excited to be able to see Corinaldo.  Particularly the Polenta Well.

But:  we're going to squeeze in another little trip between now and then.  I'm writing this from the second of three trains we'll be riding today, making our way back to Napoli.  We spent one day there back in 2018, and we spent one day there back in February; this time we will stay for four nights.  The weather should be OK, if not perfect:  I think it may rain for a bit in the morning on two of the days; Friday should be the nicest, sunniest day.  This is perfect, because I've booked a tour of Pompeii with a former archaeologist for Friday afternoon.  Paolo has always wanted to see Pompeii, so I'm excited to be able to arrange that for him.  I hope the weather cooperates enough that I can take some good pictures of Mount Vesuvius, too.

Incidentally, the weather at home has been a bit dreary the last few days; however, today we woke up to sunshine (of course we did, because we were about to leave town).  I took a couple of quick snaps from the car on the way to the train station in Termoli:

Our train between Foggia and Caserta is running a bit late; it's going to be a very tight connection from Caserta to Napoli; fortunately, they run trains between Caserta and Napoli every 10 minutes or so, and the cost is quite minimal - about 6 or 7 euros, I think, so no big deal if we have to rebook.  The only minor annoyance, really, is that someone else is sitting in the seat I paid for; so my Paolo is stuck in a seat behind me (it appears my seatmate may also be a Paolo).  This is the second time we've had this issue with Trenitalia.  I don't know if it's a ticketing error or if people just generally sit wherever they want to despite what the ticket says, because Italy.  I suspect the latter.  I wouldn't mind nearly so much if I hadn't paid for first class tickets.  Ah, well, I don't have the language skills to press the point, so I'm just going to sit here and look out the window at the beautiful countryside and think about finding somewhere to go for a good dinner tonight...and also see if this time, I can figure out how to get a metro pass that will cover multiple days in Napoli.