What have you heard about Naples? Perhaps like me you have heard a myriad of horror stories about bags being snatched or slashed from passing scooters, mafia, muggings, grime, noise and chaos. Those stories prevented me from visiting Naples last time I was in Europe and led to some serious trepidation on our visit this time.
So it was with some paranoia that we arrived in this city in the hot afternoon sun. The paranoia was only fuelled by arriving at our hotel (in the seedy part of town) and finding a locked gate in front. After getting the bags up 4 flights of stairs we were very concerned when the receptionist told us she needed our passports for at least 10 minutes. What did she need them for? Was this an identity theft scam? After hiding all passports, credit cards and computers around the room,we left to meet John and Joanne in the city centre. I left my hand bag in the room in case a scooter ripped it from my shoulder as we walked up the streets.
As we walked up the streets, paranoia gradually gave way to delight and delight soon grew to joy. Napoli is seedy, beautiful, hot, steamy, grimy, vibrant, decaying, colourful, alive, magnificent, dangerous, noisy, chaotic and incredible! The beautiful and the ugly coexist in the same space and ALL life is out there on the streets for everyone to see. In one moment I saw a man and a woman having a punch up in the street and the in another I would see a couple embracing and kissing passionately.
The streets were alive with people, markets and celebrations for a Saint’s feast day. Scooters roared up the streets and we had to jump out of the way. After some exploring we decided to have dinner at the very first restaurant in the world to serve pizza (if you’ve seen Eat Pray Love you’ll remember this restaurant where Julia Roberts was having pizza) . Inside was white tiles and they only served two types of pizza – for $4 each. I knew it would be good – everyone said it would be fantastic – but the marinara pizza (which doesn’t have seafood – it’s just marguerita pizza without cheese) was the most amazing pizza I have ever tasted.
By the time we emerged from the restaurant it was dark and the vibe in the street had changed. The roads were packed with motorbikes and they were in an aggressive mood. Crowds were spilling out of the footpaths onto the streets forcing us into the path of vehicles. In dark side streets men would sit in the middle if the road on chairs ( what is that all about?) and we’d have to walk past them. I felt relieved to get behind the gate of the hotel (and now I began to understand why we had a gate).
The next day we met John and Joanne after breakfast and did a tour of the underground city. Here we learnt the tunnels had first been fashioned by the Greeks 300 years before Christ as water storage places and later used as refuge by locals during the bombings of WWII. It was a fascinating tour through tunnels so narrow we had to walk sideways holding a candle but the most fascinating part came at the end when we explored the old Roman Theatre from underground. We went though an old house which we learnt dated back to 200AD where an old lady had lived until recently. After she died they discovered her house had a secret – when she rolled her bed back there was a trapdoor underneath, and underground was a wine cellar (where they think she did some black market deals during the war). Further excavations revealed her cellar was part of the “back stage” for the old Roman Theatre which had crumbled long ago. It was a great tour.
After that we had lunch at an amazing bar – for $1 each we had arincini balls stuffed with cheese and mince and fried pizza. Gorgeous! Then we walked to the Spanish Quarter where washing hung out across the narrow streets and scooters raced through intersections. Men with no shirts stood in the streets, women leaned out of their windows and children raced past us on motorbikes. It was clear that life was on the streets. We took a cable car to the top of the hill, looked at an old castle and had an apero looking at this amazing view with Vesuvius in the background.
By this time our feet were killing us. We walked down the hill (probably about 1000 steps) and finished the night with an amazing meal. The food in Naples is beautiful.
