April 21-Happy Easter- Trapani to Naples

Today is a travel day for all of us. Wendy and André are flying to Rome, connecting to Toronto, and final destination is home. If all goes as planned they should get there between 1 and 2 am. As for Ron and me, we are flying to Naples to continue our Italian journey. We will be there for two nights, then on to Pompeii and the Amalfi coast.
Wendy and André’s flight is at noon, but our is only at 5:10. It’s a long day of sitting around and waiting. We only get to get rid of our baggage just after 3:00, then we go through security and we are now at our gate waiting to board. Ron called his mom to let her know that all is good and to make sure that she is ok.
After spending most of the day at the Palermo airport reading, we finally board our flight around 4:30. The plane is only half full and we are ready to leave about 20 minutes early. We land in Naples 30 minutes before our original arrival time. Can’t beat that. We know that we have to take the Alibus to the central train station so we go out, find the bus, hop in, pay 5 Euros each and we are off. About 15 minutes later we are at the station. This is when the wheels fall off. I made a crucial mistake by not carefully rereading the instructions to get to our Airbnb. Instead I googled the address and we started walking as it said that it was only about a 13 minute walk. I try calling the owner as she wanted to know when we were arriving. She wanted to meet us. Well, the phone service was out. We asked someone and he said to try again in about 5 minutes as it was down. It took a good 10 or more minutes to reach her. By this time we are where we think we should be, but it’s not the right place at all. When I finally reach her on the phone through broken English, we realize that this apt is not in the downtown area, but about 40 minutes outside of town. She tells us to go back to the station and catch a specific train. To our dismay, the last train left about 30 minutes before. They stopped regular runs because of it being Easter. Now what?  I call her and ask if there is another way to get there. She says no. We ask a ticket agent and she sends us to another agent who says we can get another train, not the metro. Ok, fine. We buy our tickets. We have about 30 minutes to find the right train. We get to the right platform about 20 minutes later after going in every direction possible. We confirm with a young man that we are indeed in the right place and he tells us exactly which train to get on. Now the next obstacle. The apt is a good 20 minutes from this train station. It’s now going on 9:00 and too dark to walk. The owner says that if we can get there before 9:30, she will pick us up. First good thing we hear in the last two hours. Sure enough she arrives about 3 minutes after we get off the train. Her mother is driving the car and she is sitting in the front seat with a young child in her arms. We finally arrive at our Airbnb around 9:30. What a night. Glad to be here. Tired and hungry.
Tomorrow we will take a metro near here and return to visit Naples. Ron just read that it will probably rain and possibly have thunder storms.. oh well, nothing we can do about that.
Sorry no photos today. Hopefully the rain won’t ruin the pictures tomorrow.