naples, italy

Naples, naples, naples.. what is there to say about Naples. Naples was an experience all right! We changed our itinerary around a little bit due to the fact that we found a cheap flight from Rome to Athens, which meant that we made Rome our last stop in Italy and went to Naples first instead. It was such a relief to find that flight because we really didn't want to have to take a 5 hour train to the east coast of Italy, then a 10 hour ferry ride over to Greece on top of that. A two hour flight sounded a lot nicer!

Anyways, back to Naples. Our guidebook (which we read only a couple days before we got there) went to great lengths to warn us that Naples is probably the dirtiest, noisiest, congested and most crime-ridden city in Italy.. one in three people is unemployed there. We did not know this. We thought we had the worst behind us when we left Barcelona! haha.. As soon as we walked out of the train station there were people trying to sell us stuff (like laptops!) out of briefcases. It was just general chaos. We finally found the city bus we had to take to get to our hostel and dropped off our things. It seemed like the whole town was an outdoor market.. every street in this one area was just crammed with little stalls and trinkets. There were SO many people trying to fit down all these narrow little streets. We were planning on walking through the market street on the way to the Archaelogical Museum, but it took us so long to make our way through those crowds that by the time we had finished and grabbed some quick food there wasn't enough time for the museum..hehe.

The pizza we had for dinner was from this small little place and it was delicious. We were pretty much sick of pizza by the time we got to Naples, but Naples is the birthplace of pizza, so we had to give it a shot there! It was definitely good pizza.. and we got to watch them make it too, throwing them into the woodburning oven with the big long sticks.. The following night we went to their rival pizzeria across the street, which I think was better, haha. The second place was really popular with the locals too, and there was a line just to get in and get a table on one of their THREE floors. It was funny, guys on each floor would stick their head out the windows and yell down to the girl at the door when tables became available.

I'm glad we went to Naples because it was like nothing we've seen on this trip. It was a total circus of scooters zipping around, cars honking constantly at the people crossing in front of them, little gangs of kids playing in the streets, and beggers. There reallly weren't any open spaces or parks, which made the streets that much more crowded. It all seemed to work and makes sense to the locals though. We never really felt in danger, and the types of crimes that take place there were more petty things like pickpocketing. It's not like there were gangs roaming the streets with guns or anything. The whole experience was kind of exciting, but I think the small dose we got was just enough. I don't think we could have spent much longer than the two nights.