Napoli turned out to be a lot of fun. Rome is a more conventional international city that has compromised much of its own personality o accommodate the standards and expectations of visitors (tourists, business people, &c.); whereas Naples remains very much its own place. The center at least, where I spent most of my time, is very much university town. Very vibrant, full of smartly-dressed and attractive people, and non-stop events (concerts, plays, film screenings and political events [like a major Palestine conference on the 28th]). The center is full of bars, cafes, piazzas, and little independent shops. The traffic is utterly chaotic and takes some getting used to, for example if you want to cross the street – any street – you really do have to just walk out into oncoming traffic and hope they stop (they do).
Even though I wasn't able to get hosted through CouchSurfing at first (I did later) and got a very cheap room for my first five days, I did get to meet a lot of great people through a CS event that happened my second day in town. This made an enormous difference. Though I am sure I would have had a good time just by myself, meeting cool people that live here and really love the city and have an endless supply of ideas of interesting things to do made my time there better in every respect.
I guess there is a big NATO base here with a lot of Americans at it, but knowing my views on things, I pretty much avoided that crowd. The last thing I want to do is travel half way around the world to hang out with a bunch of US soldiers and sailors. I did meet a few Americans – three to be precise – that I enjoyed hanging out with; but for the most part I hung around with British and Italian people.
Naples is a very ancient city and you could easily spend a month here visiting interesting sites. But assuming you want to get a feel for the place, you have to take it slower and spend at least some time doing as the people who live here do. he one thing that takes a bit of getting used to is that all the restaurants and the like close in the afternoon and then re-open in the evening, everyone eats much later than I am used to. I still managed to do some touristy things: we went to the top of Mt. Vesuvius (the volcano that over looks the city), visited a number of the major castles and piazzas, went to Pompei (the ancient Roman city that was buried by an eruption of Vesuvius and has now been largely excavated) and did the tour of the ancient Greek and Roman water system deep (30 meters, so about 100 ft) under the city. [There are a LOT of photos in my Napoli folder in MySpace]
Through Dario, the Italian couchsurfer who hosted me the last three days, I got to sample some of the uniquely Neapolitan things like their excellent pizza (which has virtually nothing in common with what we call "pizza" in the States) and Lemonciello (a sweet, lemon liquor).
When I originally wrote this I was on the train back to Rome to catch my flight to Bucharest, but I wasn't able to actually type it up and upload it until now, my first full day in Bucharest.
2 comments:
Have you had good experiences with CouchSurfing? I've heard a lot of people talking about it but would be concerned about security, especially as a woman travelling alone. A friend told me to use crashpadder.com as there is more security (though you have to pay!)
Nikki
Actually, in my experience CS has been completely safe; even for solo women travelers (several of whom come across here and there). Just pay close attention to who you send requests to, read their references and make sure they have plenty (often times the people who have ulterior motives will receive negative references so they delete their profile and create new ones). And of course you can always meet the host first and if you get a bad vibe, just don't stay there. I would suggest you always have a backup plan in whatever place (like the # & address of a hostel); but generally it works well. Further, even if you choose not to couchsurf, by being a member of the community, you can find CS events going on in that place and meet local CSers without obligation, which sometimes turns into a place to stay and sometimes doesn't but always leads to helpful people that can give you advice for getting along where ever you are. Here in Bucharest I am not actually couchsurfing, but met a lot of very nice and helpful people at a CS event here in town the other day. In my experience, if you use common sense, CS is brilliant and it is a much larger network than most of the others, so many moire participants so your odds improve for finding people you want to meet.
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