Napoli - a sum up of this great town

After 4 wonderful days in Napoli it is time for me to pack my bags and head north on my journey once more. I was warned by several people about coming to Naples. Be careful they said, it's dangerous, you’ll be pick pocketed - blah blah blah. Well I have to say how wrong everyone was. Napoli has been amazing! It beats to it’s own drum, has a vibrant rhythm running through it’s streets, beautiful food, lovely scenery and wonderful people.

The city is everything you imagine an Italian city is like. The streets are cobbled, the buildings are painted bright colours with their balconies a complementary colour. The washing is hanging out on lines that crisscross the city and children call out to each other in the windows. Homes mix along side businesses and you could often families, grandparents, parents and children, sitting around tables together.

The traffic in Napoli has a mind of it’s own. Vaspas whip around the streets, cars push and shove into every nook and cranny and pedestrians try not to get run over. There is no such thing as a pedestrian only area. If a vesper can fit and the traffic is moving to slow the vesper will mount the curb and start beeping at you.

Pedestrian crossings are more a decoration then anything else. Nobody stops for you; you just have to walk out saying 'gratias’ with a hand up haha. At first I waited for more experienced or braver people to cross with me. In the end I was leading the others!

Some things I saw on vaspas:
- a dog
- a child standing in front of the ‘driver’
- a passenger holding onto 3 boxes of vegetables
- a driver holding onto their sports gear with one hand and driving with the other
- some people wore helmets others didn’t. Sometime parents had helmets and children didn’t

Everyone loves to talk on their phones and drive a car, bus or vaspa. They love to smoke to. But everyone, and I mean everyone LOVES their horn! Beep, beep, beep = out of the way, beeeeepppp = move! Sometimes they just beep because they haven’t beeped in 5 seconds haha. It gives a melody to the humming traffic as you walk around the streets. Oh, and vaspas don’t go slow. Oh no, they whip around the corners and speed through streets full of pedestrians, you move or the vaspa moves you! Their brake systems here must be amazing!

Taking the train down from Roma to Napoli reminds me of the Tully / Ingham area. There are mountains all around, it’s green, the houses are of similar colouring and design, there is agriculture everywhere and it’s warm. The people are happy and loud and loving. I miss that.

The one thing that I think sums up Napoli perfectly is the graffit found all around the city, espeically on the monuments. The past meets the present. Napoli was once a influential, wealthy town and for whatever reason it has descended into something else. I liked it. It was like, yeah you might be old, but we're making your ours #grafitt tag ... or something like that.

Recommended pizzeras:
Gino’s Sorbello
Starita

Temperature average while I was there: 27-15 degress

Food is cheap! €3 for a beautiful margerita pizzaRead more