10 April 2011
Was this a lawless country, or a lawless part of the country? I thought Europe had a universal smoking ban. But not Naples. Everyone smokes everywhere. On train platforms. In cafes. Outside, inside. Smoking all the time.
Sunday morning C was going to show us the local beach. After last night’s walk through the area, I had some doubts about this ‘beach.’ From what I could see, this area was certainly for locals and not tourists; the downside was, the crumbling roads were peppered with a generous quantity of broken mattresses and over-spilling rubbish bags.
I texted C a couple of a times, then just set off in what I thought was the right direction. C turned up in the street, and told us where to go, but added that he would not be able to show us around today. ‘I’m busy. It’s Sunday,’ he shrugged in a tone that for no particular reason reminded me of Tony Soprano. Sunday? Busy? With what? Church? Visiting his mother? Who knows.
So Lucy and I walked and walked, past the old mattresses and garbage. We stopped in a religious shop, hoping to find Sexton the glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary, or the Pope pocket watch that he requested. Unfortunately the shop only sold candles and other cemetery decorations.
Once we reached the coast, we found the local beach even more littered than the rambling streets. It was like someone dumped
Finding ceramic tiles on the beach
skips full of trash on the beach, but then someone else piled up the rubbish in square pens at 100-meter intervals. It was a little tidier near the town centre, but the sand was sticky and black (volcanic?) and I could still see the piles of rubbish. Dogs roamed freely.
I should not be surprised to see a Dacia car dealer next to some Italian automotive dealer. This place has a lot in common with Romania.
There were very few people on the beach. It was warm and sunny, though I guess still not hot enough for the Italians, as I noticed quite a few puffer jackets.
We settled near some rocks. Lucy was perfectly happy. She found ceramic tiles on the beach that she thought were from Pompeii itself. We had fun collecting the best samples. Lucy paddled in the sea, and we finally found fresh gelato in an ice cream parlour.
The facades along the beach were pretty enough, but when we curiously wandered under an arch into the narrow backstreets we found another place entirely. Never had I seen such filth and squalor in Western Europe. I loved narrow European alleyways, but these were more like medieval England than touristy Prague, chic Barcelona or Brighton’s quaint Lanes.
I recently saw a TV programme about medieval London. The houses were piled so close together that you could lean out from the upper floors on one side of the street and touch the building across the way. Here this Italian town was just like that. The streets were so narrow and the buildings so high that no light came in, and the hot, dry air outside was replaced with a musty dampness. The occasional Vespa doing 50 kph was the only reminder of the 21st century.
Sometimes a street corner would open up and more light would come in, but this was not due to town planning but because a building had half fallen down. Half fallen – the rubble was sitting there like a Roman ruin. Walls crumbled around old rooms. It was like ruins but far more frightening because people were living here, clothes hanging out windows and garbage spewing out on to the bumpy road. The road itself was made from small squares of rock similar to what they must have used 2000 years ago. What struck me was that the town, Herculaneum anyway, (we hadn’t seen Pompeii yet), was much more civilised and well-planned that this ramshackle mess.
Considering what appeared to be such a squalid living conditions, the people looked pretty healthy. Perhaps the houses were nice inside. Maybe it was merely that the city did not spend money on the outside of buildings. The historical ruins are preserved, while the modern low-end housing, city centre, is left to crumble.
After our day on the beach, I was determined to find something to eat other than pizza. We walked even further towards the harbour and finally found a fish restaurant with outdoor tables. The fish was very good though not what I would call cheap.
Afterwards it was time for more ice cream before heading back to the hotel. The sun had just gone down. The previously sleepy town suddenly came alive. Ice cream parlours were like discotheques with bright neon signs and queues of people spilling on the to the pavements. It seemed the local tradition for the entire family to come out for ice cream on Sunday evening. Lucy found the crowds distressing. She wanted ice cream, not local nightlife.
We finally found an empty café that also did gelato, and after more getting lost in back alleyways, we also found a metro station to take us back to the hotel.
I’ve intentionally not named the town. It was a great location for the hotel, near the metro. The hotelier was very kind. We had croissants every morning, and a drink and/or pizza when we got in every evening. The trip was about seeing the sights, so the actual area where we stayed was not important. In fact, having a place to stay that is TOO nice can be a problem; in Bavaria, the house we rented was so great that it was painful to leave to go out every day.
We also saved a lot of money by not staying in a fancier area, or in Pompeii itself. All in all I was happy. I just wished I’d done a little more research about beaches, so that we could have found a slightly tidier one, though without a car we were limited.
Local transport
