"I don't understand why they can't just put a plug in it"

I haven't had much time to blog after my slightly? tipsy wine rant of 2 weeks ago, so there are many adventures that need to be covered aka Naples & Paris. I just got back from the land of bonjour, baguettes and berets (gotta love alliteration) this morning and I am le tired (end of ze world anyone?) so Naples today and then Paris tomorrow, ready set go.

So after two weekends in Rome it was time for a little getaway weekend before the big Paris trip, so we decided to head south and hit up Naples & Pompeii. Now until coming to Italy, I had always associated Naples, Italy with Naples, Florida (cute, quiet, lots of old people), but no. Home to the Mafia and birthplace of organized crime, Naples is apparently one of the most dangerous cities in Italy. We were given our fair share of warnings against spending the night there from everyone we talked to, but being the badasses we are, we decided to give it a shot. 

Highlights of the weekend:

#1- Going To The World Famous Pizza Place, L' Antica Pizzeria da Michele

standard picture of me with a large portion of food

If you are currently saying to yourself "Wow that looks like the most delicious thing ever created" I would say you are correct. It was. And if you draw your attention away from the pizza and behind my head you will see a picture of a certain actress. Yes that is Julia Roberts. For those of you who have read/seen the book/movie Eat Pray Love this was the pizza place she goes to. Upon realizing this, the eight of us got really excited and took a bajillion pictures while all of the Italians in the one room pizzeria stared at us. #americantoursits

#2- Pompeii and Our Adopted Best Friend Alex

After pizza we set off for Pompeii, an ancient Roman town buried under ash after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79AD (thanks wikipedia!). So we walked around and saw lots of cool stuff ....but warning some of the following material may not be suitable for young children.

I see dead people

The above picture is from the Pompeii brothel (prostitution is one of the world's oldest professions you know). It took us a while to find because it was hidden in a maze of janky narrow hidden streets, standard. But this  fresco was one of the many possible options for customers that hung above different doorways with stone beds inside. 

sooo comfy!!

One of the best parts of our visit was the new friend we made. Pompeii has some sort of program where they just have random dogs that live there and then tourists can adopt them? I don't really understand it but I definitely preferred it over all the smelly cats that live in the ruins in Rome. Gina named him Alex and he followed us around all day and showed us around his home.

Isn't he so cute!!

He was a great tour guide

Family Photo

#3- Getting Serenaded at Dinner

Since Naples was supposed to be a sketchy place we decided it was best that we didn't go out out to the bars/clubs there so instead we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner. We all order personal bottles of wine and lots of food. Since Naples is on the coast they are known for their seafood so I decided to get shrimp. What I didn't realize was that they would be legit shrimp with eyes, legs, whiskers and antenna still attached, yum. Towards the end of dinner when our vino was really kicking in some man came upstairs in the restaurant and started serenading Ellen with "That's Amore" as well as some other classic Italian songs. We all sang along (obvi off key) while the rest of the restaurant stared at us...again.

Last but certainly not least....HIKING MT. VESUVIUS!!!

If you were wondering about the origin of my title for this blog, this is what it refers to. One of my roommates asked the rest of us why they couldn't just plug up active volcanos so that they wouldn't erupt...it was a serious question.
We had to take a bus partially up the mountain because there weren't trails and that car ride was 10x scarier than hiking up a steep trail on the side of a volcano. Once we got to the trails it was a solid 45 min hike up to the top up.

Such #athletes

Naples and the Bay

Once we got back down the volcano we realized that we had 45 min to make the 4:30 train back to Rome otherwise we'd have to wait a few hours later so we sprinted from the train station to our hostel to grab our stuff/check out and then sprinted back to the train station, the whole time getting stared at by all of the Italians. But we made it so win.

Long blog, sorry bout it, but stay tuned for all of my Parisian adventures from this past weekend!!