If you think Washington weather is unpredictible, wait until you hear about Naples! It's cloudy and raining in the morning when you wake up, then a few minutes later, the sun's shining brightly through the clouds. Then it stays that way for a while.
My mother had planned on going to the Capodimante museum, unless, of course it was raining (all the Italian parks, shops and others close when it rains). The museum was quite far away so we just walked right out our gate and waited right there at bus stop. We took two buses as far as we could to get to the museum, but we still were quite a ways away. So of course, we walked. What do we do every day? Walk, and walk, and walk, and walk. I've gotten quite used to it now, and it is becoming easier and easier every day. Especially because we venture up so many stairs. Speaking of stairs, we went up at least 500 of them today!! (steps, not staircases.).
We took a bus to a park (which looked pleasant at first but there were way too many homeless people) than walked up the street a little ways and turned up a hill and- guess what? we found more stairs! Another one of those- OOh! lets see where this goes... so we walked up the stairs, they were absolutly covered in trash and there were empty syringes every where, yuck! We wanted to get up and out of that place as soon as possible!
When we arrived at the gate of the museum and entered, a man at the gate told us something of which we couldn't quite understand, but thought to hear that museum was closed. Great. Just to be sure, we walked through the park to the museum only to find- it was closed. So, we found our way to a stone bench near an overgrown fountain and sat down to eat lunch. We fed the pigeons, ate our lunch, ventured a little, and finally it was time to leave.
We walked down a road until we found ourselves back in the city, then we walked around the streets and found a big pet store-- Yay! Of course, we just had to go in! The store was loud with all of the birds making noises at once. The first thing I saw when we entered the door, was a large cockatoo in a cage. Then we saw two huge birds on a perch which they were chained too, One was a macaw, very intimidating an mean (he tried to bite our fingers off) the other was another white cockatoo who had about the same temperament as our African Grey at home (he would let you pick him up, but he might bite you a little still).
My mom thought it might be fun to hold him for a picture, so she reached out her hand to the bird, and he stepped onto her finger, but when the picture was over and it was time to go look at the other animals, he didn't want to leave her finger. So she struggled with getting the bird back on the perch without him biting her.
Meanwhile, I decided to look around some more. There were some budgies, and many parrots in cages up against a wall, they looked very hostile and untamed, so my guess was that they were caught streight from the wild. Before, I had watched a video about them catching African Greys in the wild and shipping them to Europe and other countries while half of them die on the way. This saddens me still :( I think that birds should just be bred in captivity, besides, birds streight from the wild are usually much too old to train very much.
After we had finished looking around at the pet store (they were closing at the time so they kicked everyone out), we started walking toward a bus stop as it began pouring down rain. Soon it came down so hard, that we were desperatetly trying to find a bus stop with some cover. I think we would have been dryer if we stood behind the shelter in the rain because every time a car came by on the road, we were completly drenched by the puddles that splashed on us, so instead of holding the umbrella over our heads, we held it in front of us to shield us from the splashes. Sometimes, though, we held it a little too low and our faces were drenched in the dirty street water. We all weren't too happy about that. We had waited there, cold and wet at that bus stop, for a very long 30 minutes until the bus finally arrived. We were very happy to be sitting in a nice, warm seat where we couldn't be soaked with the black water constantly. After we stopped at yet another bus stop and waited for an even longer 30 minutes, we decide it would be a good idea to buy an umbrella from one of people on the street, so we bought a nice, big, light blue umbrella for 5 euro. Race and I switched shifts every now and then standing at the edge of the sidewalk and watching for the bus while the others stood under cover of a building. When the bus finally arrived, we got on and went back the house and decided that the rest of the evening would be a lazy, hot cocoa day. :) (we brought the camera only to find that the battery was still charging at home :/ )
Lots of pictures were taken until we reached our destination at Como. 
I think any one would know what this is! It's crazy thinking about how we actually got to see this in person after having seen it in so many history books and stuff.
Those little things in that tree there are tropical birds.... a little out of place I would say (I circled them with Microsoft paint)
;)
