This is the last review from my trip to Italy and it is going to be about Napoli. The english name of the city is actually Naples, but the Italian one is Napoli (the same as the Greek) so i am going to use its original one.
Italy in general is a rich country but all the wealth is northen than Rome while Napoli is southern. This means that visiting Napoli you should not expect big things! The city is a little bit more crowded than Thessaloniki, meaning that there live about 1,6 million people.
The city was quite dark! But lets take the story form the beginning. I arrived in Napoli’s train station from Rome. The train station is exactly the same as Romes’. Actually, i am wondering if all the Italian train stations are similar but anyway. I got out of the station and took my way to the port which was not easy at all, but i described the whole “adventure” in a previous chapter (the second if i am not mistaken).
Just outside of the train station there is the main bus park (there should be around 100 buses there) and next to it there was a wide pavement. On this pavement there was a kind of public market (laiki in Greek words) but not as we know it in Greece. There were a lot of people selling things on their own. Well… i was quite experienced on this things because of Greece so when the first man arrived to sell sunglasses i said “no thank you” so he left. After him, there were 3 more guys selling similar things, radio players, some other small electronic devices and stuff like this. Near the end of the street (where my bus stop was supposed to be) there was an other guy selling something a little bit more precious (but just a little bit)…. a Sony Vaiio laptop!!! Ok… that was too much, i may buy glasses on the street, i may buy cds or cassette recorder, but come on… who is going to believe that man and give him 600 euro to get the laptop (instead of 2000 that costs in a store)!
After a while i found myself in the port. Needless to say that the roads where a chaos. Imagine Thessalonikis’ traffic multiply it by 4 or 5 add some more and you get Napoli. This city is a chaos. By the way, on the tram you couldn’t even move a centimeter because of the crowd and we complain about OASTH. The port was totally unorganised since you had to “smell your fingers” to find your boat. There were no signs or something to indicate which ship goes where! I asked some people until i found my boat!
On my way back I arrived in Napoli (with the ferry) at 23.40 and i took my way to my friends house (see chapter 4 for more details). Everything was dark in the city. Very few lights in the streets, very few people walking around, garbages and dirty everywhere around. It was very spooky that city. I have to admit that there were a lot of fantastic squares, some old enough churches and some house with intresting architecture but because of the time i couldn’t really enjoy them or take any pictures!
An intresting thing that is not that common in Greece where the way young people have fun in the night. In every square (at least in the big ones) there were companies of 5-6 young people (young: 18-30) around a car having fun discussing with each other and listening to music from the cars radio player. For me this wasn’t enjoyable enough but since they prefer it…
The house of my friend was in an extremly narrow road, where there couldn’t walk three people one in the side of the other! This area was the old city in a way. All the buildings where unattended and seemed to be in bad condition. The architecture, though, was amazing. We arrived in the building, we opened the front door and inside the house there was a garden. Like in ancient Greece or in Roman empire. Around the garden there was the building with all the apartments. The apartment was nothing special at all, really old and not in good condition (not because of the people that live there, but because of the building itself).
Some hours later I went to Napoli’s airport. It was the worst airport i had ever seen. Nothing interesting at all, really small and all the flights were to Italian cities, not even one was going abroad. The worst thing in the airport was the Internet service. There was a machine that you had to pay 1 euro for 5 minutes. Come on! This is madness. Anyway, i said to myself lets give them a euro to see what Internet looks like in Italy. After some options in the screen (and before i give the euro) the machine had to take a photo of my passport (the page that has my personal information) in order to let me proceed. OK… this was the time that i thought this is by far too much. In order to check my e-mails i have to have my data compared to that of interpol or something? And pay 1 euro for 5 minutes? So, no internet at all…
Fortunately, i left that airport some hours later and i found myself in Rome’s airport which is by far better. More or less, this is my opinion about Napoli, a city that doesn’t worth more than 5 hours of someones lifetime even though the inhabitants had a different point of view!
This is the end of my review from my trip to Italy. I am not sure when or where will my next trip take place. So, until then… Ciao.
By the way, you can see all the reviews together here.