Naples Italy and what looks like at times the Third World

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 9^th 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 8^th 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 6^th 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.