Arrivo in Napoli

A nice relaxed start, this morning. We were due to leave our Rome home, and go to our Napoli hostelry. We were awake before 7, so there was plenty of time of repack and tidy, even before breakfast at 8.30. We left at 9.30 to be in plenty of time for the train at 10.35. We are mostly working with electronic tickets, and I'm booking and paying using an app on my phone a few days ahead of each trip. But we haven't used the central station before today, so we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to find what we needed to find. At first we couldn't figure out what platform to go to, but it turned out that that wasn't our fault: the train was delayed about 20 minutes and they only put the platform number up on the information board about three minutes before it pulled in. But we had guessed close enough as to its likely arrival platform and we surged towards it with everyone else when the information was finally given. Our carriage was way down the far end and the train had pulled in by the time we made it that far.

Fast train from Rome

It was a good, comfortable, high-speed train, and we were nearing Naples after an hour. Even from the outside you could see that Naples has quite a different character to Rome. Although the suburbs and outskirts of Rome have some modern buildings, they are still low (5-6 floors max) and seem to built of traditional stone, or at least in traditional colours. Naples has no qualms about going straight to full-on tall cement apartment blocks. There were even some pretty flash-looking high-rise glass office blocks, which gave me a jolt when I remembered this was Italy. It's not what you see on the telly at all.

We took a taxi to the AirBnB flat we had booked. And again, Naples showed its differences. In six days in Rome, we had heard maybe two or three times, raised voices that could have been arguments or could have been Italians having a discussion. But in front of us at the taxi stand, 5 or 6 drivers were bustling around yelling at each other and flailing their arms, and apparently only just stopping short of going for each others' throats. Apparently they were deciding which driver would get the next fare. Without losing any tempo or volume, one of them started indicating for us to get in one of the taxis, and as that one pulled in towards us, others glided up to take its place, like a well-oiled yet extremely noisy machine.

Courtyard of our flat's house

It's not far from the station to the flat, but some roadworks made the trip longer than it could have been. The owners of the flat were waiting outside, because the house numbers are not clear. They brought us through the courtyard and up to the first floor to a very nice flat (2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, but no living room, just kitchen with dining table.) But very modern and comfortable, with high, high ceilings (3 - 4m?) with original rafters.  The hosts, Carlo and Giuliana, stayed on for an hour or more, giving us information about the neighbourhood and the city. They also provided some pastries as a welcome. This meant that we didn't need lunch, because we'd also had some snacks on the train.

The man in the hat is a golden statue of St Gennero,
Naples' patron saint. Because he's gold, the people call him "Yellow Face."

You'd think that such an easy morning would mean we'd be raring to go, but no, we were quite tired, and we weren't raring to go until about 4 o'clock, after a jolly good nap. But then we were up and out, because we are in the heart of the Centro Storico, or Historic Centre. The house we're in is on a tiny cobbled lane, which is off a tiny cobbled street, which is actually a fairly important thoroughfare down to a more modern main road about a kilometre away. We're exactly behind the Duomo, the basilica of Naples' patron saint, and immediately round the corner is a church with arguably Naples' most important painting, Caravaggio's 7 Acts of Mercy. (7 or 8? Not sure now.) So we went and sow both of those, and as we walked there was another church, and another one and another one. How can there possibly ever have been enough people for all those churches? All that money spent? There was an offering box in one ridiculously ornate chapel of the Duomo, and I wondered how the Holy Roman Church could have the nerve to ask people for more money in the midst of all that ostentation.

We came to the modern part of the city and turned left. Carlo had mentioned a funicular train, which didn't seem to be too far away really. We headed for that, and it was pleasing to see that the shopping here was a bit more accessible for the likes of us. We never even considered doing any shopping in Rome: I don't remember seeing any clothes shop that didn't seem to be designer goods. But this city is a lot more ordinary. Some might say even worse. It looks tatty and shabby, sure, but behind the grimy facades are some very nice residences, and some of the outsides are nicely tarted up too.

Funicular station

We found the funicular station almost by accident, and we figured out the ticket machine just in time to hop on the 6.30 before it left. (There would have been another in 10 minutes, but we didn't know that.) It was inside a tunnel almost all the way - there was maybe a 5-10 second view of the bay as we went up, but then it was tunnel again. So when we got out at the top, in a busy area of shops and restaurants, we walked in a direction that looked as if it might lead to a view of the bay. We got some glimpses, but no great panorama, and the road just kept going downhill. We hadn't intended to walk all the way back down but we started to think we might have to. Luckily there were some stairs to come back up by, which we did, and we worked our way back round to a busy area of shops and restaurants. But not the same one as had the funicular station. Still, we were sick of walking, so we stopped at a juice shop that had a free table or two (not many places did). Across the road was a Metro station. It had never occurred to me before that it was possible to have a subway station at the top of a hill. A rise, maybe, an elevated part of a city, yes, but the top of a hill? Especially a steepish one, going directly up from the sea... Apparently yes, it is possible. We had a Metro map on hand, and fortunately, the line that that station was on would take us quite close to the flat. An the funicular tickets were part of the network, so we didn't even have to pay

Typical Neopolitan street

again.

4 stops later we were a few hundred meters from the flat, and  Google Maps led us home, from big modern streets, into the cobbled streets and finally along the tiny cobbled alleyways. We stopped for pizza on the way (couldn't finish them - maybe one between the two of us next time) and then found we were only about 50m from the flat. There are a few sounds round about (it's 11pm as I write): it sounds like an old man shouting, there is a dog barking, now the old man is grumbling and maybe discussing, maybe arguing with an old lady. The square courtyard below is probably amplifying it somewhat, but they both seem quite definite in whatever their respective opinions are. Certainly a different vibe from Rome, but not that different from Ho Chi Minh City.

Our best view so far of Naples Bay