Naples - Where bad drivers are trained

  Naples, Italy
Monday, June 5, 2006

For our one and only full day in Naples, it rained pretty much all day. We napped and read and went out a couple of times to walk by the ocean and to find a pharmacy.

When we went out for lunch, we walked up and down the sidewalk on our section of the street, to find nothing open except a couple of pastry shops. Sarah won't agree to pastry for every meal, so we settled on a place right by the hostel that opened the third time we tried it. Our waiter was an older guy named Tony, and he was a cool fellow. He got us a seafood salad, after warning us it wasn't fried. When we got it, we realized the octopus wasn't grilled or marinated or in any way changed from the live form except perhaps washed and chopped. We picked at it, but couldn't bring ourselves to eat very much raw octopus. Tony comes back, shakes his head, and takes the salad back, muttering about Americans. We shrug sheepishly. But then about fifteen minutes he comes back, having deep fried some squid for us. We didn't actually want an entire plate of deep fried anything, but that was so nice we had to eat it. He turned out to absolutely love America, and had been there many times when he worked for a cruise line.



During a lull in the rain, our walk took us along the seafront area, where a couple of little carnivals and parks were. The view of the islands was okay, but not all that great, and we pretty much kept walking to see if there was *anything* to see in Naples. On our search for the pharmacy, we went up into the city center and explored for basically the same purpose. There are a few castles and palaces setting around, and the huge indoor mall/court thing is neat, but overall, nothing really worth braving the traffic for.



Naples not only has the worst drivers anywhere, they have a definite lack of sidewalks and operational crosswalks. Traffic is going about seven lanes deep (on a five lane road) at any time of the day or night, and crossing the street involves a careful judgment of a slight gap, so you can weave inbetween cars. It's a whole lot like playing a video game. We didn't get to see the old city center, so we might go there on a trip back through. We did get to see three cars playing chicken down a one lane alley that we happened to be walking down at the time.

Over reheated pizza we chatted with some travellers from Canada who were going through most of western Europe in six weeks. From what we've heard, Berlin is really cool and I'm looking forward to seeing it some day, and Amsterdam is nice, but you have to be careful where you stay. Athens, on the other hand, does not get glowing reviews, but Crete does. Sometimes I feel so bourgeois and pretentious comparing opinions of cities around the world with other youngish backpacker types. I much prefer the "What is the stupidest thing you've done because of cultural differences?" conversation. The former feels too colonialist or imperialist or something else vaguely unpleasant ending in -ist.