Capri and Naples : Heaven and Hell

This past weekend (February 5-6) two friends and I decided to travel south to visit Naples and Capri.  While our visit was not as glamourous as we had hoped, it was still an adventure.

Pizza at Da Michele

We left on a train for Naples at 8:20am, Saturday morning.  We arrived at Naples around 11:00am and decided that our hunger had taken over us and that we better go find the best pizza in Naples (Naples is the birthplace of pizza).  We decided to go straight to Da Michele, infamously known due to its being mentioned in the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love.  At Da Michele you can order only three types of pizza: marinara, margarita, and margarita with extra cheese.  The best decision was ordering the pizza with extra cheese...it was heavenly!  How could such a simple pizza taste so good?  The crust was perfect, doughy and not burnt, and the cheese melted perfectly with a piece of basil sitting in the middle.  It had to be one of the best pizzas I have ever had.  As we left the line to get a table at the resturant had to be 30 people deep!  To top it off one of the cooks came up to my friend, Kendall, and handed her a business card.  It turns out one of the cooks was infatuated with my friend and decided he would give her his email address!  That’s when we first realized Naples was a little different from Rome.

On our way to our hostel, Italian men were constantly cat calling us, especially my friend who is blonde.  At one point, one of the girls shouted at me to walk faster because there was a guy trying to talk to her.  

Mosaic of Alexander the Great

Once we got to the hostel, we decided to drop off our stuff for the rest of the afternoon and go sight seeing.  Kendall and I went into the National Archeological Museum of Naples to see if we could find a mosaic of Alexander the Great fighting Darius.  When we finally found it, Kendall was speechless.  She has had a passion for studying Alexander the Great and was amazed that this mosaic was here in Naples and not in a major art museum, like the Louvre.  After the museum we started walking back to our hostel.  That’s when things turned south and Naples became hell on earth.

We were about to cross the street, in single file, when I noticed my friend in front of me, Molly, stopped short as a group of around 12 eight year old boys came running towards us.  Thats when I realized that they started spraying her with what I imagined was silly string.  It wasn’t silly string but shaving cream!  Kendall soon realizing it wasn’t silly string decided to start sprinting across the street.  Molly and I, being sprayed with shaving cream, run across into the median of the cross walk.  One of the little boys decides it would be funny to follow us.  Kendall is yelling at us to cross the street, while Molly is nervous to cut off traffic since we don’t have the right of way.  I turn to the boy walking towards us and start yelling at him.  I shout, “NO! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING! WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?!”  Want to know what he did? Jumping around like a boxer in a fight, he takes his spray can and points it directly at my face and shoots.  Shaving cream gets all over my face and all in my hair!  I wanted so badly to take the can out of the little boys hand and start beating him with it!  Except I controlled myself and decided that being arrested for beating up an eight year old wasn’t worth it.  I finally get across the street and Kendall starts yelling at me to get the shaving cream off my face.  I’m in shock of what happened and cannot get the shaving cream off my face and keep saying, “It’s all in my hair!”  Looking like crazy people, two Italian woman stopped us and handed us a packet of tissues.  For the rest of the walk back to the hostel, we were all very antsy...not only did we hate Italian men and their forward style of coming up to you and saying your beautiful, but we hated Italian boys and their antics.  

Our lovely night spent at Hostel of the Sun

Thankfully the hostel we stayed at, Hostel of the Sun, had to be one of the best hostels I have ever stayed at.  It was clean, fun, and most importantly, friendly!  The staff were surprised to hear about our day and told us that the month of February was carnival and that young boys usually did mischievous things. 

Sunday morning we decided to take the 9:05 ferry from Naples to Capri.  Of course, we go to the wrong port and have to run to the port the ferry is to leave out of.  We buy our tickets at 9:05 just as the ferry is about to leave.  Thankfully, we were able still to get on.

Capri, is an island off the coast of Italy, near Naples, and is best known for it beautiful scenic views of cliffs and rocks.  It was absolutely breathtaking!!  Going to Capri canceled out negative experience we had the day before.  I would definitely suggest to anyone to go to Capri if they have the chance (even if that means you have to go to Naples to get there).  In a way, Capri reminds me a bit of Bermuda, with its crystal blue water and white stucco houses. 

Capri

We get back from Capri around 5:30 and race from the port to get to the hostel to get our bags and get on a bus to get to the train station.  We raced from the bus to the station, ignoring all the shouts from guys we were getting and jumping over the trash that lined the street.  We run in, find the track and realize we still need to validate our tickets!  In Europe, you need to validate your ticket before you get onto the train by putting it into a machine that prints the time on it.  As we run from the validating machine to the track, our train was leaving! So it turns out we rushed to the train station only to have to wait two more hours until the next train would leave.  

We finally got back to Rome around 11:30pm Sunday night and were so happy to be “home!”  The atmosphere of Naples was different from our perceived notions.  It’s streets are dirty (Naples is having an ongoing trash problem where it is refused to be picked up by municipal workers because landfills are full) and it’s people are dirty.  We didn’t feel all that safe there and were glad to finally return to a place we knew. 

Although our time in Naples wasn’t the best, it was an adventure! And if it wasn’t for Naples, we would never have been able to get to Capri.