To hell and back

When I left Napoli on Saturday I knew that I would one day return, I didn’t expect that day to be Monday. Hopefully in 7 hours I’ll be back in Rome with passport safely in hand and just going to pick a Vespa up. No hitches please.

With all the train travel today was a good opportunity for a Black Lips marathon, as I had 4 albums to give a listen, first up was the eponymously titled debut (that’d be Black Lips! then). It shows the great promise they had at the time as a garage-rock blues and punk outfit, but it’s just too erratic and the production is awful.

‘Let it Bloom’ is basically more of the same. Some half decent tunes but the it’s sounds like it was recorded in a trash can.

Next up was ‘Los Valientes Del Mundo Nuevo’ and, erm, same again. Except this is a live album, but with the production value of the other two I’ve mentioned so far, they may as well have been also.

Lastly, ‘We Did Not Know the Forest Spirit Made The Flowers Grow’ is just rubbish. There’s maybe a few tunes that are okay but on the whole it’s pointless. I do like Black Lips, the time i saw them live at The Deaf Institute was brilliant, but the only album of their’s I’d have any real interest in listening to again is ‘Good Bad Not Evil’.

Christ, what a complete and utter stress that was and it’s not over yet. The important thing though is that I have my passport back.

Getting it was a bit of a nightmare mind. My train to Napoli just had to be 15 minutes late didn’t it, meaning I had around 55 minutes to get to the hostel (which is probably at least a half hour walk each way at normal pace), pick up the passport and get back in time to make the train to Rome. If I missed that one the next one my ticket was valid for wouldn’t be for 3 or 4 hours meaning I’d be much too late to hire the scooter later and wouldn’t even get any evening at all in Rome.

So this meant I had to combine some serious power walking with sprints when there was enough room (space isn’t something you get much of in Napoli) and then run up the 6 flights of stairs to the hostel and do same all over again on the way back.

When I got into the main square where the station was it looked like I’d be okay for time and I even managed to spare 30 seconds to pick-up a Naples butty for lunch. Then when looking at my ticket I realised that in the usual tired and and stressed state this morning I’d stamped the Napoli – Rome ticket rather than the Rome – Napoli one. I thought well if I can show the other ticket and the stamps it’s pretty obvious what has happened and shouldn’t really be an issue.

Here is where the next problem arose, I could see the train on platform 11 and I had a good 3 minutes before it departed. What I couldn’t see were the little yellow boxes that you use to stamp the tickets, they are on every platform in Rome. I looked about but none were in view so I asked a group of staff and rather than just pointing me in the right direction the guy put his hand out for my ticket and asked where I was going, he would have seen that it was the wrong ticket and with only about 2 minutes left I didn’t really have time to explain so I ran off to look further myself. I found one but it was out of order, arghhh! I found 2 more opposite but there were some girls dawdling and when I did try to use the first one it made the right noises but didn’t print anything. The 2nd one just about printed something but it was barely ledgilble. It would have to do though as I then sprinted and only made the train by about 20 seconds. Napoli station is bobbins!

So now it makes it a lot harder to explain what happened with the tickets. I’ll just play dumb and handover the one I’ve just stamped and see how it goes, if the the inspector does say anything I’ll try to explain and if he does try to fine me I’ll just outright refuse to pay and take it from there. That’s my plan and I’m sticking to it! Maybe my ticket won’t even get checked, it wasn’t on the way here and there were inspectors on board then too.

I can’t wait to get on that Vespa later and ease the tension of today. It will be like a radox on wheels. Even if it is on the mental Roman roads.

Phew, just about got away with it. I thought I was okay as I gave him the ticket and he put it between the clipper before doing a double take and putting his glasses on. He was checking the stamp that you could hardly read, I don’t think he noticed that the from and to points were the wrong way round. He eventually clipped it so crisis over and €50 fine averted.

I picked up the scooter without a problem, a sky blue PX. The clutch is a bit off so I have to watch out for wheelies but it idles and runs well so that will do nicely for the next 24 hours.

So I spent the next 3 hours or so racing round Rome, quite the terrifying experience really. I wanted to visit (at least to see the exteriors, if I’ve time tomorrow I’ll try for the interiors, but the queues can get pretty big and the stuff in Vatican City is priority number one) The Pantheon and The Colosseum (see pic below) and I did, eventually. The problem is that I’d work out a route on the map and then that would rendered obsolete within a turn or two by one way streets, it was also hard to check for the right junction while dealing with the truly crazy Rome traffic. So this often led to me ending up in scary and bendy high speed dual carriageway tunnels and such like, miles from where I actually wanted to be. I did get to see a lot of the city though and I had good fun doing it. Tomorrow will be even better in the day time.

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Tags: Black Lips, Blogsherpa, Europe, Italy, Let it Bloom, Los Valientes Del Mundo Nuevo, Naples, Napoli, Roma, Rome, The Colosseum, The Deaf Institute, The Pantheon, We Did Not Know the Forest Spirit Made The Flowers Grow