The narrow streets, the crazy traffic, cars all dented and parked randomly, rotting rubbish and tents and stalls, row after row of imported cheap goods for sale put you on alert while walking through....the despair is obvious and we could be mistaken for being in a 3rd world country. Our Hotel is just off the main street and only a short walk to the railway station which we are using tomorrow to make our way to Amalfi. The Hotel is quite grand in the big scheme of things, airconditioned, lovely brass and marbled staircase, very spacious room, a working lift and computers (in Italy the computers are always "down" and so their manual system kicks in along with cash). Little English is spoken here, many of the restaurants look dodgy and dirty. We stopped at a pizzeria for late lunch and as we were being seated the waiter quickly whipped away the menu from the table and bought out two in a plastic sleeve...when we compared them to the table next to us, everything on ours was dearer. We settled on sharing a pizza from another menu and left them to their over priced pasta.
We walked to the port area as part of our exploration of the city and where ordered out of the port area by an official, blowing his big whistle...oops. We also happened on a demonstration in the street, with plenty of police and protesters: we are still not sure what the theme was, but at first hoped that the rubbish trucks were just on strike, but later we learned the rubbish collection has been a problem for 17 years!
It may be an early start for us to move on, Napoli has not captured our hearts....not sure what Dean Martin was on about!
We see on the BBC news an emperor pengiun has turned up near Wellington, even we don't get that lost!
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