The city of Naples is not something I knew much about, other than LaRae and Sarah raving about it being the place they were most excited for over our spring break travel plans. However, before we left Holland, our host brother made a reference to Naples being a very interesting destination. Oh, and the mafia was pretty much founded there, he mentioned casually. I assumed he was just trying to scare us. Well, joke was on me, that's for sure. We landed in Naples and used Sarah's bargaining skills to get a cheaper taxi to our hotel. We asked our very friendly taxi drive what we should do/see while we were in Naples. He had tons of suggestions, but strangely very few were actually in Naples. That's weird; why would he keep encouraging us to leave the city? Thinking nothing of it, we continued to weave through the insane traffic of the very crowded streets to the hotel and unloaded our bags. As I paid him, he said, "It's not safe here at night." Well, thanks for telling us after you dropped us off and we paid you. But alas, nothing we could do. We were here and we had already paid for our hotel. So, we continued to check into our hotel, but again, had to leave Katie outside. Sneaking her into this hotel was going to be a bit tricky. Every time we left the hotel, we had to turn in our key (which also encouraged us more than usual to carry our valuables with us at all times). We began to wander the streets of Naples, not really sure how to deal with the way we were being treated by locals.
Let me try to explain it to you: 5 very beautiful, fair-skinned, light-haired American girls are very, very interesting to Europeans, especially Italians. These Napolean Italians were not what we were expecting. In the movies, Italians are suave and very romantic. These ones treated us like specimen, coming within inches of our faces, staring intensely, and continuing to walk by. Being stared at is one thing, but by all ages and genders, that's just not normal. Feeling a little uneasy already, after being told twice more that we had to watch our valuables and not carry our documents was enough reason for us to come up with an escape route ASAP. All I could think was LaRae and Sarah's idea of a dream destination were so very different than mine. As we discussed our options, we decided the best thing to do was escape the trashy ghetto and find the coast. We took a metro (avoiding walking through the dirty, crowded streets) and wound up in the heart of Naples. This looked a bit more cozy and allowed us all a chance to breath and recollect. We walked around, snapped some photos, and found a great little restaurant to enjoy some pizza in the pizza capital of the world. Not only did we dine by the water, but we also dined with the Italian waiters and the man who made our pizza-- classic, and worth the hidden 4 euro service and cover charge.
As night approached, we realized we would soon have to return to Mafia land. Luckily we had come up with a wonderful plan to leave the next morning: a ferry to the island of Capri, a trip we had already planned to make 2 days later. So, we grabbed some gelato in the Royal center and proceeded to walk back to our hotel. Unfortunately, my camera couldn't handle the idea of returning to the ghetto, resulting in the lack of photos of our sketchy hotel scene (just know that is added a whole new meaning to the "hide your kids, hide your wife song. No pictures could have truly captured the stress this city caused us girls). We spent the rest of our evening hidden away in our tiny hotel, trying to cancel our hotel for the next night, and booking a new one. Deciding that even though we couldn't cancel the room, it was worth the 8 euro loss, rather than the potential to lose much more valuable things (like our passports or heads) and book an extra night at our bed and breakfast in Sorrento.
From 6pm-10:30pm, we were tucked away in our hotel, preparing ourselves for our sweet escape to what would hopefully be a much better place: CAPRI!
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