We had a three day weekend coming up at the end of April and
were not really sure what to do or where to go. The weather in Munich had been
so cold and rainy going south seemed like a really good idea, but where was the
question.
On Saturday of the weekend before the long weekend Deb
decided to do some clothes shopping and asked me if I wanted to come along.
While I am not a great fan of any sort of clothes shopping, I did want to get
out of the flat and it was another opportunity to see some other areas of
Munich I had not yet visited. We jumped onto the tram and headed in towards
town, getting off after only 4 stops a Reichenbacher Platz and heading south
towards Gartnerplatz. This Platz is really nice, with a car roundabout and six
symmetric roads spread out around it. As you would expect in Munich these are
also outdoor café’s on each section of the Platz, and the center is comprised
of paths and landscaped areas that were full of people on this rather warm and
sunny Saturday.
On our way down to a small, boutique clothing store we
passed an artists’ studio that featured black and white photographs with also some stunning large format pictures in the windows. One of these was of an
old stone bridge in Switzerland that was just spectacular, while others
appeared to be of Italy, including one of Sophia Loren and several of young men
and women in various situations. We stopped and gazed for a bit, started to
move on down the street to the boutique, and then turned around and decided to
enter the studio to learn more about these photos and the artist.
Well it turns out that the owner is an Italian who has been
living in Munich for 30 years and who runs this studio to sell his photographs.
He was once a travel writer, hired to tour and travel and write articles and
take pictures of exotic and interesting places, but with the advent of the
Internet that profession has all but disappeared. We chatted for some time,
looked through his collection, and bought ourselves several of his smaller
photos. As we were getting ready to go, out of the blue I think Deb asked him
“Well if you were to go to one place in Italy where would that be?”. Without
hesitation he said “The Amalfi Coast”, and with that out travel destination for
the upcoming long weekend was decided.
Over the next several days we spent each night looking at
hotels, booking airfare, and renting a car. We used a lot of internet resources
to look for a nice hotel in the Amalfi area, and after several nights of searching we found a hotel that was in the town of Amalfi, was up on the hillside with a view down over
the town and the ocean, and only had 7 rooms in the entire place. We had used
the web site Hotels.com to gather some initial information, and had actually
called them about one hotel, but they really had no information on the hotel
and were rather pushy with Deb to book it right away. On our second attempt I
decided to look the hotel up on the internet and call them directly. We rang
through at about 8PM and got in touch with the night steward at the hotel who
told us yes they had rooms available and that we only needed to send them an
email with our contact information and our request to reserve the room.
Additionally, the room, while listed at 270 euro’s per night on Hotels.com, was
only 140 euro’s per night when we spoke with them directly. The moral of the story here is pretty clear,
book direct and not through the web site and you’ll save a lot of money.
After haggling with my company and my expense group over approvals and what not we were
also able to finally book our flights direct from Munich to Naples, leaving
Munich on Thursday night about 6pm, and getting into Naples around 7:30 PM.
On Thursday we finished up packing and like the rest of
Munich it appeared got onto the S-Bahn and headed up to the airport. While I
expected it to be a nice relaxing ride, the S-Bahn was packed with all other long weekend travelers and we had to stand the entire way. Deb in one location on the S Bahn and me in another, suitcases and all. We arrived at the airport with plenty of
time, checked our bags, and headed into the Lufthansa lounge for a quick (and free
due to my airline status) snack. We then headed down to the gate and waited
only a short while before they loaded us onto a bus and drove us out onto the
runway to board our plane. It was clear that this was a commuter flight, as it
appeared that most of the people on the flight were Italian and were heading
home after working the week in Munich.
We crossed the Alps just as the sun was setting and had a
nice view of the mountains with the sun going down in the west. The flight path took us
down the East coast of Italy and as soon as we saw water I said to Deb, who had
the window seat, that the coastline below looked like Venice. We talked about
this a bit and sure enough the pilot came on the intercom to tell us if we
looked out the right side of the plane (our side) we could indeed see Venice
below. The flight then continued south and the due west, circling around Mount
Vesuvius before landing in Naples.
Naples is a fairly small airport and there was a lot of
noise and chatter as everyone waited for their baggage. It is sometimes nerve
racking to fly into a strange city where you do not know the language or the
geography and have to grab a cab and hope that you can communicate your
destination while also wondering if the taxi driver will take you there
directly or perhaps take you on the longer, more expensive scenic route to your
destination.
Once we picked up our bags we headed outside to grab the cab
and make our way to the Marriott hotel in downtown Naples. As you would expect
there was a long line of Taxi’s waiting for passengers, and we grabbed the next
available one. The driver did not speak English (which it turned out is rather
common in Italy) but we gave him the address and he seemed to know where to go.
I hate to keep saying this, but in Munich the taxi’s are all Mercedes, all in
nice shape, and all reliable and clean.
I have no idea what make of vehicle
this taxi was, but it was also none of the things above either. The truck
closed, with our luggage inside but I am not sure it really locked and I
wondered the entire ride if our luggage was going to suddenly pop out the back as the trunk bumped and rattled the whole way. The car itself was old and beat up, and this in combination with the cobble
stones streets (which all of Naples seems to have) made me feel like I was
going to lose all of my fillings before even getting to the hotel.
While this in itself was a little distressing, the ride to
the hotel was even worse. As we passed through the various parts of the city,
with the cobble stones and the streets jam packed full of cars and scooters,
with the driver beeping his horn constantly at each and every vehicle we
approached and passed or approached, I kept thinking
that sure this looks like a bad neighborhood but surely as we get closer to the
downtown the scene will improve and it will turn out the be a nice, pretty, tropical mediterranean city.
Well that never happened. As we drove on and on the one
thought that kept occurring to me was this place looks like a third world
country. The buildings were all derelict and covered in graffiti, everything
looked old and dirty, and there was trash everywhere. Trash like you could not
believe. Dumpsters full or trash, trash bags piled up here and there, and just
trash everywhere. By comparison, Upper Volta looked clean compared to this
place. We arrived safe and sound at the hotel while the taxi driver charged us
what seemed to me like more than we should have paid, but you get used to this
after a while so I paid him and was glad to be done with his beeping and his
rickety car. The hotel appeared to be nice and clean, but you didn’t need to
look more than 100 or 200 feet in a few different directions in order to see
these massive dumpsters totally full and overflowing with trash. Not one or
two, but masses of them all pushed together and I guess waiting to be picked up
someday in the future.
Our plan was to stay in Naples for Thursday and Friday
nights, to use Friday to see some of the museums and some of the city, and to
pick up our rental car on Saturday morning and then travel south to the Amalfi
coast. We checked in at the desk, and had not been there more than 10 minutes
before Deb asked if we should pick the car up early and leave Naples as quickly
as possible.
By this time it was close to 10PM, so we decided to stay in
the hotel (I am not sure I would have ventured out at night in Naples anyway) and we
grabbed a quick snack and a drink in the lobby as we talked of the city and
what a shock the ride from the airport had been.
The next morning things seemed a bit better, as the sun was
up and it was looking to be a warm and beautiful day. The hotel had a rooftop
restaurant that looked out over the Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius, and we
enjoyed the food and warm weather and the view of this very old and very
unusual city.
When Deb and I travel, we often set out with a very limited
itinerary, and rather than planning to see this and that, we set out
and see what we come upon. In a trip to Naples you need to taste the pizza,
drink some Italian coffee, and see some of the plazas and historic areas. Our
guide book suggested that we needed to see the Piazza del Plebiscito, listed as
one of the most beautiful and spectacular in Italy, so this being only a few
blocks from our hotel, we set this as our first destination. Well, I have come
to realize that guide books somehow often overstate a place or perhaps have not
really been there and are only quoting someone else. This particular plaza,
which might have been nice or perhaps even beautiful under some circumstances,
was full of chain linked fences and tents and looked as if it were hosting some
sort of a green convention, although there really was nothing going on, while the
plaza seemed to be a place for locals to meet and walk their dogs.
In many ways, Italy was very much what I expected. It was
loud, and busy, and the city of Naples must have more scooters than any other
place on earth. The streets are wild with the people and these crazy machines,
and with the traffic and their casual attitude they drive these scooters on the
left, the right, the sidewalk, and anywhere else they need to in order to make
progress through the city. It seems like there is an eternal game of chicken
going on between the scooters and the cars, and the scooters and the people.
They would drive fast and wild and only at the last minute would either the car
move or the pedestrian move as the scooter would zip by beeping and swerving.
After the less than overwhelming Piazza del Plebiscito, we
decided to head into the old part of the city to visit the oldest part of the
town and some of the older churches.
Naples is one of the oldest cities in
Europe, having been founded in the 9th century BC by the Greeks, and
having been continuously inhabited since that time. In the old part of town, the original Greek
road networks are still in place as are many of the original roads themselves.
The streets are extremely narrow (while still allowing auto and scooter
traffic) and with the tall buildings a bustling life and laundry hanging off
each balcony, you really have the sense of a lively and chaotic life. I had
read that Naples has the lowest percentage of parks and open space of any
European city, and therefore life in Naples is lived in the streets. We left
the port area and walked a long way towards Via dei Tribunali which is one of
the main Greek roads through town and where several of the tourist sites we
wanted to visit were. Below are several pictures of the Via dei Tribunali to give you a sense of the full outdoor life people live in Naples.
Our first target was the church of Domu Gemi which is guarded by four skulls outside as
protection but we found that as we arrived at noontime, the church had just
closed.
So, next on our list was the church San Lorenzo Maggiore. This church
is on the Via dei Tribunali as well, sort of diagonally across from the first
church. This part of Naples is like one continuous bizarre or flea market, with
hawkers, and booths, and stores and people seemingly everywhere. As we
approached the church, which is rather un-imposing from the outside, the small open
plaza out front was full or carts and benches and pigeons and graffiti and
people everywhere. Rather off-setting at first but like everyone else we just
plowed through and went on inside. The church is at the back of this little plaza, not to be confused with the bright orange building on the left.
This church site has been occupied since Greek times, and
actually has the San Lorenzo Maggiore church
sitting on top of a medieval church, sitting on top of a byzantine church, on an old Roman forum, which
was built on top of a former Greek temple. All-in-all the site goes back from
the present to over 800 BC when the Greeks first settled Naples. We entered
first the major court yard and proceeded from there into the Chapter Hall, with
large frescos on the wall showing the entire Franciscan family tree, all the
way back to their founder Saint Francis. From there we moved into the Sixtus V
Hall, which was named after one of the Franciscan priests who eventually became
pope in the late 1200’s.
The complex seemed to be mostly empty, as this was a Friday
and I am not really sure how large of an attraction this place is. We wandered
around from room to room and saw numerous empty sarcophagus, several very large
intricately carved tomb stones, and many objects which clearly had been dug up,
but were just sort of lying around waiting for cleaning or presentation somewhere
in the museum.
Our intention was to find the underground catacombs, and we
tried numerous stairways and entrances but could not seem to find the entrance.
Finally, after 15 or 20 minutes of poking around, we identified a narrow, steep
stairway that lead down into the excavated catacombs.
This site, as noted, contains almost a complete history of the
development of Naples, from the early Greek Temple in the 8th century
BC, to the Roman Forum and Roman streets from 200 BC up to about 600 AD, then
on to the medieval byzantine church in to 6th century, followed by a makeover
in the mid 1200’s to a gothic church, and finally in the early 1300’s with the
development of the existing Franciscan citadel.
Upon getting underground, the major excavations are of the
Roman time, complete with an old roman road and numerous shops built off of this
road. The pictures below show the roman road (note the main large stones on the
floor of the road) and an area comprised of arches and at one time a roof most
likely of fabric that was an avenue with many shops off to each side. One of the
photo’s shows me in a bakeshop next to the old beehive stove.
Further down in the excavation you could also see remnants
of the old Greek roads and temples, but these were generally not accessible to
visitors.
Our final stop in Naples was to visit to the Duomo, or the major
cathedral in town. This is off of a quiet street and we actually sort of just stumbled
upon it. There were in fact many tourists here, so we did not really stay that
long. I took a few shots of the inside, and the magnificent ceiling paintings.
That night we went to dinner at a nice restaurant on the
bay, and wandered around one of the castles that sits right on the water. There
were lots of pleasure boats, but surprisingly not many seemed to be getting
ready for the weekend.
