Dracula and Castle

Actually not Dracula’s Castle (that’s in Transylvania) but Dracula’s putative tomb in the church of Santa Maria Nuevo.  Actually the evidence of it actually being related to Vlad himself seems a bit tenuous to me (you would need to read all the details on Wikipedia), but it makes a good story and the grave is interesting.

Apparently there are other “esoteric symbols” in the church – perhaps I was thinking about this too much in connection with Great Old ones, but once we started looking we found Great Cthulhu

The Yellow Sign

And someone who was obviously being devoured by something nameless.

Just joking.  It was actually a really beautiful church, and R and I were discussing how if it had been in Scotland it would be a number one tourist attraction (Roslyn Chapel eat your heart out), whilst in Naples it was completely empty.

We spent quite a lot of time here, partially because it was lovely, and partially because it was pouring with rain outside.  After a bit we thought it had subsided so we went back outside to go to the Palazzo Reale, at which point the heavens opened again.  R and I nearly had our only argument of the trip at this point, as I wanted to head on, and he wanted to go back to the apartment and dry off.  In the end, he got his way, which was just as well, as when it did stop raining in the afternoon we did go back only to find that the palace is closed on Wednesdays.  So my name would have been mud.

So instead we went to Castel San Elmo which is a huge fortress on the skyline of Napoli.  We went up in the funicular as we were getting a little footsore by now.  You can’t go inside, but the views are absolutely fantastic.