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PLACES VISITED
Date Place Naples
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heads but with a design of flowers, white on a brown background, set in silver with a gold wire decoration. As we only had a little Italian money Peter used English money and amongst the 2 shillings change from £2 pounds was 1 Australian sixpence. We kept it, thinking it would soon be useful at the end of our voyage.
Back in Naples again, we were just in time to go on board ship for lunch at 1.30, after which we determined to explore the town in the few hours left to us. As we went through the dock gates we were literally "set upon" by what seemed to be hundreds of scruffy pedlars all shouting different things
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PLACES VISITED
Date Place Naples
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in our poor ears, and when we refused to take any notice, some of them followed us a little way but, thank goodness, gave up, as no doubt some one more promising came into sight. Even after that odd bods popped out at us from behind cars, and trees determined to sell us "cheap watches" and other "cheap" rubbish, - but we were strong minded!
The main shopping centre was quite reasonable - most of the shops were quite small and an air of squalor seemed to be everywhere, but prices were comparitively low especially shoes and leather goods. I bought a pair of white leather gloves for
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PLACES VISITED
Date Place Naples
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15/- and when we eventually returned to the ship Peter bought a bottle of Chianti for 5/-, but apart from these we contented ourselves with just looking. With the aid of a small map issued to passengers by the ship we found our way to the National Museum where most of the Pompleii collection is housed. Here we saw beautiful mosaics and wall paintings and gold & silver jewellry and statues, all laid out in spacious halls on two floors. There was a scale model of all the Pompeii ruins which made us realise just how large it is especially as the excavated ruins are only a 3rd of the original size.
After an hour of rather hurried
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PLACES VISITED
Date Place Naples
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looking at the museum we had to leave and make our way back down the Villa Roma to the [boat crossed out] ship! We left at 5.0 o'clock and in the setting sun steamed past the docks with Vesuvious just visible behind its curtain of smoky mist.
Out past Ischia and Capri and then as darkness fell we were in the Meditterranean again bound for Port Said & Suez.
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Date 26 Feb Place Port Said
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Apparently Orcades docked at Port Said at 1.0a.m. although I was not actually aware of this at the time. At about 5.0 am we awoke to the hear tremendous noise [bell crossed out] filtering from above and Peter dressed and set off to investigate. Some minutes later he came to the cabin and persuaded me to go on deck. Rather sleepily I staggered up onto deck and was surprised to see dozens of passengers milling around as if they had been there all night, and below on the water were many bum-boats with their owners, all competing at the top of their lungs to draw attention to their goods piled in their boats. There was plenty of