Naples is a city just before the foot portion of the country’s resemblance of a boot. On the coast of the Medderiterian Sea, it is one of Europe’s major ports and brings in an influx of goods, such as fresh seafood and abundance of counterfeit purses. One of the group members told me about his past experience to this city and to sum it up, he was telling me the same things the required readings had about Naples; to watch out for the Neapolitans (not the ice cream, it’s a the term given to the residents of Naples) driving habits, and the trash. He did also mention the pizza, he told me “Naples has the best pizza in Italy.” Then in our pre-trip class, we met our tour guide who himself was a Neapolitan, taking much pride in his city and only talking good about Naples. So when it was time for us to leave, I was pretty excited; I was going to see a southern city of Italy and eat some good pizza.
I guess living in Rome started to get to me as I forgot all about skyscrapers, the Roman skyline is pretty much all the same level except for the Vatican off in the distance (no building in Rome can be taller than St Peters). Coming into Naples that’s the first thing I noticed was that there were skyscrapers, nothing like the US but they were noticeably high. Later to find out that not a lot of people chose to work in those buildings and prefer working in the old business district. I was actually impressed walking to our hostel since we got to walk down the main strip where all the busy hustle and bustle of any big city was centered at, clothing shops as far as the eye can see and on the sidewalk street vendors selling anything to get a few bucks. This gave me a “homey” feeling, even though back home I hardly spend any time in downtown except to transfer buses. I think it was the construction because Seattle seems to be forever repairing its roads. I did start noticing the garbage though, it was piling up on the sides of the roads and overflowing out of the garbage cans. Alex told us in the pre-trip meeting that Naples does have a problem with trash and the cause of it was because of the North bringing it to Naples, this could be just a north-south rivalry but besides that, there was a lot of trash.
Comparing Naples to Rome could become a hassle as what we learned from Alex on his tour as it was coming from a pro-Naples’ opinion. From my experience walking around the city was that Naples is somewhat like Rome, it has it’s history, it has it’s historical sites, and Naples also has its own black market also known as the street vendors selling bootleg purses. I didn’t notice a presence of the church, they were there but it’s nothing like Rome. The easiest way to put it is comparing each city’s skyline, like I said before nothing can be taller than the St. Peters, so the church is literally higher than any other building. Another aspect of the church presence in Rome is how they used to only allow “Catholic immigrants” and sex isn’t really talked about publicly. I don’t about the immigrant issue down in Naples, I didn’t see any Chinese, but I did see a couple Filipino stores/businesses around our hostel but the sex thing was different, as Alex told us from the castle “it’s what Neapolitans do” when he was telling us about the “fuck park.” The Roma community was also something different from Rome’s, it Rome it is very common to see members of the community around the city. In Naples, I can’t remember if I saw any, we were suppose to see a demonstration in Square of the Plebiscite, a major square where all the protest and demonstrations happen in, but the leader of this was not in town. We did get to see a Roma camp first hand during our stay in Naples, which was very interesting to say the least.
Most of the group decided to stay over the weekend and travel around the area. Saturday, we pretty much spilt into two groups and one going to the island of Capri and the group I was in took a bus to the Amalfi Coast. This is a spectacular experience as the bus took us long roads right along cliffs of the Medderiterian and dipped down to towns that were along the water. We were able to get off and get back on when ever, the stops we made were in Maioro, Amalfi, and Sorrento, all beautiful coastal towns and the ride getting to each of them was just as good. Sunday, all of us went to Pompei to see the ancient city and all the dogs that roamed around there. On our way back there were some mishaps but we all got back to Rome safely. All in all, Naples was a great trip and I enjoyed every bit of it but I’m really glad to be back home…. In Rome.
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