today!
so! here we are in naples, aka napoli, home of the pizza and also possibly the sketchiest city ever. no, really. so far i've been warned about the sketch factor here by the orchestra manager, the flight crew, AND our waitress at breakfast in montreux this morning. how is that for a reputation! apparently there is a lot of pickpocketing and purse snatching... maybe i'll just not carry anything with me. however the city does so far look like the kind of place where you will get mugged 6 times on your way home every night so yes. perhaps it's warranted.... we're staying in a decent hotel (even though our room is TINY, barely big enough for the beds) and so we're in a better area i think, but some of the spots we drove through on the bus from the airport were nasty -- tons of litter everywhere, graffiti all over everything including public monuments... just overall kind of nasty looking.
anyway, we haven't really done much today. got up bright and early after staying up late packing, which wasn't so hot. checked out, ate breakfast, the usual. got on bus to airport where we boarded our private plane from swiss air. sweet. we have our own private crew for the next week as well! i guess it switches when we go to asia.
flight was okay, but the pilot kept insisting on going around these various tourist side trips (the joys of having a private plane i guess?), which would have been very nice except for the fact thta it meant a lot of turning and turning on planes makes me feel SO SO SO disgustingly ill. but we did get to see mont blanc from above, very cool, as well as a little tour around mt vesuvius of pompeii destruction fame. apparently naples is the nearest large city. anyway, am still shaking off the feeling, took a gravol halfway through the flight in order to survive landing with the contents of my stomach remaining in their proper place. customs took forever and a day, luggage was fine, bus to the hotel also fine and got a good view of how scary naples is to boot. as previously mentioned, hotel is nice but the room is extremely small... there are also no fitness facilities. not cool.
anyway, since nothing is open right now (sunday in catholic country = booooring) i think i am going to take a nap and work off the gravol.
transit time: ~3h.
flying time: 1h 30mins.
anyway, we haven't really done much today. got up bright and early after staying up late packing, which wasn't so hot. checked out, ate breakfast, the usual. got on bus to airport where we boarded our private plane from swiss air. sweet. we have our own private crew for the next week as well! i guess it switches when we go to asia.
flight was okay, but the pilot kept insisting on going around these various tourist side trips (the joys of having a private plane i guess?), which would have been very nice except for the fact thta it meant a lot of turning and turning on planes makes me feel SO SO SO disgustingly ill. but we did get to see mont blanc from above, very cool, as well as a little tour around mt vesuvius of pompeii destruction fame. apparently naples is the nearest large city. anyway, am still shaking off the feeling, took a gravol halfway through the flight in order to survive landing with the contents of my stomach remaining in their proper place. customs took forever and a day, luggage was fine, bus to the hotel also fine and got a good view of how scary naples is to boot. as previously mentioned, hotel is nice but the room is extremely small... there are also no fitness facilities. not cool.
anyway, since nothing is open right now (sunday in catholic country = booooring) i think i am going to take a nap and work off the gravol.
transit time: ~3h.
flying time: 1h 30mins.