Napoli, Sorrento, and the Amalfi Coast

Napoli: The bad boy of the South.

Most tourists who come to Italy are given at least a quick precaution about Napoli. Purported home of a few organized crime factions, it gets something of a bad rap. My host, Giovanni, does something to mitigate these rumors.

Each and every visitor to Giovanni’s Home, his hostel on the 4^th floor of a centuries old building, gets a lesson in pickpockets, crime, and the surrounding area whether they like it or not. I thought it was great, though my new friend Prue was less impressed. He shows several videos of pickpockets in Italy at work and then begins quoting statistics.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/26045/

After he is done with PSA number one, he moves on to the surrounding area. I have to say he was pretty correct with regard to almost everything. Ercolano was the exception for me.

Giovanni gave me a great map of the city and marked numerous things to check out and even the best path to walk in order to see them all. I did just that on my first day in town and was greeted with some lovely views and complete traffic madness.

Napoli also holds the shore where the famed Parthenope washed ashore. She was a Siren driven mad by rejection from Ulysses who threw herself into the sea, eventually washing up on the coast near this castle. Something of a love story.

Even today it is something of a romantic spot.

At the end of my first full day in Napoli, I made a run at the local Carrefour. I managed to get a ton of great fruit and vegetables along with some instant coffee as Giovanni’s house offers no breakfast. (Side note: Hostel of the Sun in Napoli offers a full breakfast spread.) After returning I set to making my closest interpretation of Turkish Dolma, stuffed peppers, and became the talk of the town. I fed myself and a few other people that night, and still had leftover peppers for the next couple days. They were delicious!

Napoli is rather famous for being the birthplace of the often copied but never duplicated Pizza! Gino Sorbillo is noted as being the best pizza place in Napoli and I must say they did not disappoint. If you make it to Napoli, make a point to visit this place. Skip the table wine, though, as it is a bit vinegary.

The second day in town, I decided to do the Ercolano-Vesuivius-Pompeii trip. Ercolano is an old town that was destroyed at the same time as Pompeii when Vesuvius blew it’s top many years ago. Ercolano is very well preserved for a dead town. Ercolano is also stone effing boring. Ercolano was SO boring, in fact, that I decided not to visit Pompeii or Vesuvius as I assumed they would be more of the same.

Instead I rocked down to Sorrento, a place that Giovanni cautioned me against visiting, to rent a motorcycle and go ride the Amalfi Coastline. This was a good idea in theory.

Siesta : Noun S: (n) siesta (a nap in the early afternoon (especially in hot countries))

Anyone who has visited Spain or Italy probably knows about this lovely tradition. In the middle of the day, everyone closes up shop and heads home to take a nap. This is socially acceptable and even understandable from a foreigners standpoint as folks here tend to go to dinner very late. It is also very frustrating if you are trying to do anything in the afternoon.

Most of the shops in Sorrento open sometime in the late morning and close at 1 p.m. They don’t open again until sometime after 5 p.m. This means your options of what to do in the afternoon are severely limited. Add in to that the fact that the public beach area (which I never found except on Google Earth) is about 100 square meters and you are looking at a rather hampered afternoon. I arrived in Sorrento around 1:30.

Eventually, I just hopped the train back to Napoli and vowed to return again before siesta and actually rent a motorbike to take the ride. Ducati Monsters rent out at about 50 euro a day; much less than you can rent them in the USA. This is, of course, if you can actually find them.

I hit the hostel and discovered the rest of Prue’s friends, Team Oz, had arrived and had a chill night talking and went to bed early in preparation for our trip to the Isle of Capri the following morning.

The following morning, it was raining rather heavily. We scrapped the plan around 6:30 and all went back to bed. I have been battling some element of road weariness most of my time in Italy, and decided to simply take a day for myself, back up some of my pictures, and lay low with the guitar hanging in the common room. A guitar which, miraculously, had all 6 strings and was almost in tune.

I was pretty much minding my own business when I noticed I had an audience. A guy from somewhere and a girl from Finland had just posted up at the next table and kept asking me to play another and sing and it was a little awkward for me but they were having fun so I went with it. After a few songs, Giovanni came out and brought another guitar and added all the skill on strings that I have never acquired and we rocked it out for a few songs, till I ran completely out of anything I was able to play. It was an interesting night.

I have to add in a small note of recommendation for Yellow Hostel in Rome. As I write this, I have never actually stayed there, but I have changed my initial reservation to stay with them numerous times to different dates and lengths and each time they handle it without complaint or delay. They really seem to have earned their reputation as the premier backpackers hostel in Rome.

Once Team Oz made it back from Capri, it was on. The 5 of us had a great night talking about everything under the sun and killing somewhere around 10 bottles of wine between us. This did not assist me in making it to the train early the next morning.

It was, in fact, after 11 o’clock by the time I made it to the train station. If you ever do decide to stay a Giovanni’s home, be aware that performs revelry at 10 a.m. every morning so his cleaner can detail the rooms.

Here are some quick details about the train. The line Circumvesuviana runs around Vesuvius, as the name would imply. The dark blue line on the Metro map; it runs through Ercolano, Vesuvius, Pompeii, and all the way to Sorrento. It is not fast, taking nearly 90 minutes to run from one side to the other. As the train does not run with great frequency. The next departure from Napoli for me was at noon. For those of you doing the math, this means I hit Sorrento right after the start of the siesta.

At this point, I just gave in. I let loose of all my expectations and needs and finally embraced the Italian lifestyle. I wandered around the town, found a bathroom to change into my swimsuit and walked down to the port. Lacking any beach, I simply jumped the fence and laid down on a giant black rock and soaked up sunshine for the next couple hours while listening to the iPod. It felt pretty good.

By the time I got back up to the bike rental shop, it was almost time for them to reopen according to the sign on the door. That doesn’t mean they were actually about to open, just that the sign said it. Another guy from England was waiting there to return his 150cc Honda he had rented that morning, About a half an hour of good conversation later, the owner appeared and reopened. Due to my tardiness, they no longer had the Ducati I had emailed them about earlier in the week, nor did they appear to have any other two wheeled means of conveyance available other than the 150cc scooter that my British comrade had just returned. That’ll do.

I was assured that the Amalfi coastal road, much like the scooter itself, was idiot proof. Once again, I set off to prove just how resourceful idiots can be.

Not since I was in Venice had I been that lost that often. Of course, there are signs everywhere. But that doesn’t really simplify the equation. The fact that I was near constantly lost was not really a problem, though. The ride was beautiful. Every minute was enjoyable and thrilling whether I knew where I was heading or not. The freedom that two wheels give a human is near indescribable for one who has never ridden a steel horse. I imagine Icarus felt much the same way before he plunged to his death in the rocks and sea below him.

I would love to say that I rode safely and within the confines of traffic laws as I understand them. I cannot. Towards the end of the day I was riding with the same abandon as every other mad wheeler I have seen in Italy; riding on the wrong side of the road, down the median, practically everywhere but the sidewalk.

After several hours I realized I needed to get back to the office and return my steed. Following signs got me somewhere close to Sorrento, and asking the other madmen in traffic helped me finish up the return trip. Funny thing is, I entered Sorrento from the other side of town. Somehow, I had left Sorrento going south, and returned to Sorrento heading south still. I still don’t really understand what happened.

Returning to Giovanni’s took a while, partly due to the never ending Metro station; you can walk almost a mile underground without surfacing. Finally back, I got to settle in to some more Dolma that I made the day before and relax. One of the girls called me “Master Chef” as I always seemed to be making miracles happen in that limited little kitchen. I loved it.

Eventually, all things good, bad, and just plain strange, must come to an end. Team Oz and I piled out and on to a train to Rome and new adventures. As luck would have it, I wouldn’t be in Rome for long though. Up Next: more motorcycles.

Wrap Up:

Napoli is fun for a short visit, but it mainly serves as a good base for day trips to locations like Sorrento, Capri, and Vesuvius. Plan accordingly and you can really maximize your time here.

Ride the Amalfi coast. This is the best thing I did in Italy. Get up early and maximize your time.

Be aware of your surroundings; make sure someone marks the “bad” neighborhoods on your map of Napoli. Noone wants to lose a passport, money, or pack.

Be open to changes in plans and roll with the punches. You will enjoy yourself more if you don’t stress the little setbacks.