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Sunday, September 25, 2022
We woke up to a wet and wild world. Thunderstorms were everywhere. The forecast is for rain the entire day and most of tomorrow. At least we have hot water!
We took the morning to catch up on some personal business. Our time is running short here and still have a few things we want to do in the Naples. We are thinking about day trips to Capri, Caserta, and would like to go swimming amongst the Roman ruins.
We spent the afternoon booking places for our next couple of destinations. We’re all set until the end of October. Given the precipitous drop of the Pound Sterling we’re considering changing our plans and spending a full three months in the UK. We’ll keep an eye on the situation. Because the Fed keeps raising interest rates the exchange rate keeps moving in our favor. Most foreign currencies are at historic lows against the dollar. At least that works in our favor. Afterwards we continued to binge watch Suits on Netflix. We’re up to season five now.
Monday, September 26, 2022
Another rainy day. Once again we stayed in.
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
We heard from AirBNB this morning. They’re thrilled that everything has been fixed. They offered us $50.00 compensation (30% of a day for three days). I’m not sure how they came up with that. I’ll be speaking to them later this morning. In the five years we’ve been using them we’ve had very few problems, but when we have had issues, their support has been non-existent. The hosts seem to have no accountability and the guests have no recourse and appear entitled only to trivial compensation.
We had an incident in Bucharest, Romania in 2018. One day the stove stopped working because there was no more gas. That same day the Internet and the TV stopped working, too. We contacted our host every day for a week. He told some vague story about how services were unreliable there. AirBNB support was useless. One day, just out of boredom, we translated the error message on the TV. It seems he hadn’t paid the bill. An hour after we brought this to the host’s attention the services were back. Coincidence? We were outraged. AirBNB said that it was great that everything was working again. When pressed they offered $50.00 as compensation and said that’s the maximum that they were allowed to offer. I guess that’s their magic number.
It’s rather wet outside this morning. There is a small chance of rain until the afternoon when the likelihood of rain significantly increases. We had talked about going to Caserta today but it turns out that the Royal Palace there is closed on Tuesdays. Our backup plan is to go to Capri. We’ll evaluate again after breakfast to see if it’s worth going.
It’s nasty, wet, and rainy. We decided to just take another day off. We went to a local restaurant for lunch and, of course, ate pizza. It may seem odd but the main dish on every restaurant’s menu is pizza. Afterwards we went to get dessert at a shop that makes graffe, Italian donuts. In Italian I ordered a plain donut and one filled with Nutella. The clerk quite literally laughed at me and then responded in perfect English. I was a little insulted.
They have freshly made plain donuts that are covered in sugar. They also serve stuffed donuts. The plain ones are lengths of rolled dough formed into a large circle. The stuffed ones are round, like traditional jelly donuts. When you order a stuffed donut they take a pair of scissors, cut in open, and fill it while you wait. The clerk emptied half a pastry bag of Nutella into ours. We took them home to eat later. They were absolutely delicious.
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Today was forecast to be similar to the previous days but instead of striking out we took it easy. We both felt like we might be getting colds. It’s probably just the weather and/or allergies but we decided not to press our luck.
We went out for lunch to a restaurant we’d been to twice before. We saw our usual waitress arguing with another waiter. She seemed out of sorts. When she came to take our order it didn’t look like she was paying attention at all. Deborah ordered a pork Milanese and I ordered the spaghetti with clams. We also ordered an appetizer. We watched as people at several tables who’d arrived after us were served. We wondered if we were going to get any food at all. Finally our waitress delivered two pork Milanese. That wasn’t what we ordered and, what happened to our appetizer? We told her that it was wrong and she was fit to be tied. She insisted that this was what we ordered. We pointed to the items on the menu that we had ordered and she went away in a huff. It wasn’t clear what was going to happen next.
Deborah ate hers and I waited for my food. About ten minutes later our appetizer arrived. It wasn’t exactly what we ordered but we let it go. Another ten minutes later my spaghetti with clams arrived. It was cold. I told the waitress. She felt the bottom on my plate and said it was fine. I repeated that it was cold. She walked over to the manager and had a dramatic conversation in Italian. I’d had enough. I had no doubt that my next plate was going to have spit in it. I walked up to them and said I wanted the check. The manager, who only spoke Italian, said he would have another plate made up. I insisted on the check. He saw I was unhappy and that I wasn’t going to change my mind. We paid and left.
On the way back we stopped a the donut place again. The clerk remembered us. We told him that his donuts were delicious and he broke out in a huge smile. We just made a new friend. We ordered one plain and one filled donut. There were a bunch ready to be sold but he said if we were willing to wait he’d make some fresh for us. We waited!
We ordered a filled donut with creme topped with cherries. This time he cut a hole in the middle, filled it with creme, and then topped it with even more creme before adding the cherries. We said it was beautiful. He said, “yes, like me”. It was obvious we couldn’t take that home so we ate it right then and there. We also took two plain donuts home for later. Surprisingly they weren’t greasy at all. They were, however, rolled in more sugar than one should eat in an entire lifetime.
Thursday, September 29, 2022
Yeah, we both have colds. The prediction is for more rain. We’re going to stay in again today. Our time in Naples is almost over. We’re leaving tomorrow. We have tickets on the 11:45 am train to Salerno. For some odd reason the first class tickets were cheaper than the coach tickets so we decided to treat ourselves. It really doesn’t matter because the trip is less than 40 minutes. It doesn’t look like we’ll get to Caserta or swim amongst the Roman ruins but we can still get a ferry to Capri from Salerno.
I told our host we would be leaving the apartment around 10:30 am tomorrow. We haven’t seen or spoken with him since the hot water was finally fixed. He said he would come over to say goodbye. I think he really just wants to convince me not to give him a bad review. That’s the only thing he really seems to care about. We’ll see. Frankly, he’s always late and we have no intention of waiting for him. Once we get a cab we’ll be gone. It’s very likely we won’t see him at all.
Actually, we had originally booked this place through AirBNB until the 27th. We made a private deal with him to extend our trip. We wanted an extra week but he could only give us three days. We wondered, based on all the complaining we did, whether he would just kick us out. I’m happy to say he didn’t.
We tried to schedule an UBER for tomorrow morning. The app made me go through the entire process before telling me that scheduling in this area is unavailable. There aren’t any dedicated UBER drivers in Naples. If you call for a car you’ll get a taxi and taxis don’t do scheduling. We’ve seen this before in our travels. It’ll be fine.
We went out to a local restaurant we’ve eaten in several times before. While we were there a couple came in and asked the waiter in broken English how long the wait would be for a pizza. He didn’t understand their question. I asked him for them in Italian and he responded to them in Italian. It turns out the couple was from Russia. When we found that out I said to them, “pet minut”, which means five minutes in Russian. They laughed. That seems to happen to me a lot. I’ve seen the Hunt for Red October enough to know that one. Actually, we’ve spent a lot of time in the Balkans and picked up quite a few phrases. The people there would deny it but Bulgarian, Serbo-Croation, and Russian are all very similar.