Arrive Naples

Tim: Today, Naples. We arrived on the train mid-morning all prepared to be beset by beggars, touts and street criminals but it was not too bad. Naples is very multicultural, with Italians from Africa, the Middle-East and Asia all mixing it in the grubby streets around the station. A large crowd was gathered round a man singing in a carpark; he was singing something that sounded Arabic but with Italian words (or was it in Arabic with an Italian tune?) . We got to our hotel, parked our bags and hit the streets.

Polly: My friend Dave compared Milan to Chapel St, Prahran and Florence to Brunswick St, Fitzroy. Continuing this rather parochial, but quite useful comparison, Naples is Sydney Rd, Coburg. (Tim: Naples is Kalashnikov Street, Beirut)


Wandering around that first afternoon we ended up in a street market. Imagine if you will the Queen Victoria market on the day before Christmas. Then double, or possibly triple the number of people. Then halve the width of the aisles. Finally, just for fun, add motor scooters and - I kid you not - a car driving down said aisles.

Tim: we spent a few hours just wandering around the old town, many of the streets given over to markets. There was some clothing and shoes which Polly pored over; the prices seemed really good. But so soon into the trip, we'd be crazy weighing ourselves down just yet so we decided not to buy anything. The further we walked south the more tat replaced merchandice, and the tat was eventually replaced by food. We found huge pails full of many types of shellfish, prawns and fish, fruit and veges in the open air, bread and cheese in a tiny deli. We bought a few things for lunch, and because I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the crowds, headed back to the rooms where we made some sandwiches on the end of the bed.

It's kinda hard to explain what happened next, but we put our heads down for a nap just after 2pm and woke about 9 hours later, just before midnight. I guess it was just the flight catching up with us, and we felt bad we'd missed the end of the the afternoon - but realised we'd missed our chance to get some dinner (the part of town we were staying in was a try-not-to-go-out-after-dark part - maybe not too bad but don't tempt it). So we just ate what we had, stayed up for two hours and awoke (amazingly) refreshed at 7am.



We spent the day a Pompeii; very interesting and the weather, whilst initially cold was clear and sunny and perfect for exploring this remarkable place.





Polly: Having spent an exhausting day exploring Pompeii, I decided that a nap was necessary prior to a big New Years Eve. But Naples was on to me. No sooner had I turned off the scantily clad lovelies miming to Madonna on the telly and closed my eyes than an air raid began. Or a gun fight between local camorra. In fact, fireworks are still legal here, and apparently no proximity to midnight is required to discharge them. This went on for over 90 minutes, until I declared Naples the winner and got up and dressed. The fireworks immediately ceased for 2 hours - right up until Tim decided to have a nap!

Having suffered from a lovely dose of pleurisy just prior to leaving home, I was a little nervous about how my lungs would cope on the plane. I had been housebound for a few days as Victoria's bushfire haze had made Melbourne's air visible, always a bad sign for a dodgy lung. Fortunately that wasn't an issue at all. But I hadn't counted on the whole of Naples appearing to catch fire on NYE.

Tim: We had decided at New year’s Eve in Naples was going to be a big thing for us so we headed out to Piazza della Peblecito, a couple of kilometres down the main street. We kept looking over our shoulders for a bus that never came, with every few minutes large explosions coming from side streets. I know I will fail to describe the fireworks properly, but I must try – forget the pops and cracks of fireworks of our youth, these were resounding booms that set car alarms wailing and dogs running. A hundred metres from them was way too close. We eventually arrived and started to look around for something to eat. Only a few places were open and they had set menus starting at €50 per person. We settled in the end for a Chinese restaurant for a very reasonable price, only driven out by the loud talk of American sailors. In the Piazza, things were warming up but Polly was starting to feel in trouble with her crook lung and all the cordite in the air. We left early, looking frantically for a taxi as we walked back. She was in a pretty bad way and the fireworks continued to crash around us. It was quite surreal, walking along the main street of this city, with the road almost entirely to ourselves but with explosions, fireworks overhead and people throwing crackers and bottles out of windows. Just as we came within sight of the hotel a taxi stopped for us but it was too late. We got inside, she had a shower, we locked all the doors and windows and she started to get some air into her lungs, and eventually became relaxed enough to sleep. Not entirely pleasant, but I don’t think I’ve had a more memorable New Year’s.