To Naples

12 July

I will have to stop forming my life views from what I have seen in old films....overnight travel is not quite as exotic as those old dramas would have us believe: no wooden lined cabins with individual bathroom; no smooth and silent trip; and certainly no manic, world-dominating criminal mastermind breaking in to kill you.  Last night the train arrived late (as Enrico had advised me it would!) and I got in and found my nominated cabin; three snoring guys were already occupying the other three beds in the small room and I climbed into my bed and settled in for the night.  It was a somewhat disturbed evening; the steady clunking of the rail tracks, the swaying of the train and the occasional screeching of the brakes all prevented you sleeping too long or too deeply.

We arrived at Naples at about 7.30am and I decided to walk to the hotel to get a feel for the city; it was less than a mile away and looked a quite straightforward route.  My first impressions of Naples were that it is still under construction: a large area directly in front of the station was surrounded by construction boards and traffic diversions and the main road towards the hotel seemed to be one long road works.  In fact, during the course of the day it appeared that most of the main routes I walked down had work going on along their length.

I arrived in the old town and at the small hotel (it's quite funky) too early to check in so, after a coffee there, I left my bags and took my rather reesty body off to explore the city until the afternoon when I would be able to get into my room and freshen up.  I managed to cover a few of the sites including the castle, the plebescito square, the archaeological museum (very good with artefacts rescued from Pompeii and Herculaneum and Rome), galleria umberto and my personal favourite, Sanservo Chapel to see the amazing 'veiled Christ' carving.  

I also checked out the theatre but decided that an Italian opera I had never heard of was possibly just a tad too heavy for the evening.  After that it was time to wander back to the hotel to check in and to freshen up with the intention to go and catch the tourist bus around town in the late afternoon.  

Walking around leaves you with an interesting impression of the city. There certainly wasn't the traffic that I expected from the reports I'd previously heard although the main streets more than made up for the lack of traffic with the amount of  roadworks.  The back routes are brooding and tatty and covered in graffiti or political posters or both.  There's the reek of piss and poverty in those narrow and dirty streets and yet there is a certain character there too if you can see past those things.  Nevertheless, it's not a place I would choose to come to for a romantic break.....

Once I got back to the hotel I made for the room and the shower; I definitely needed to refresh myself.  But after that I lay on the bed, relaxed and clean, and fell asleep; last night's trip on the train was not too bad but I had not slept that well.  The trouble with being clean and relaxed is that you find it difficult to motivate yourself to other things and so it was that when I awoke in the late afternoon I realised it was too late to go and get the tourist bus and I was quite happy to lie on the bed catching up on Radio 4 dramas and eating the fruit and cheese I had in my bag rather than go out for dinner.