2010 Italy – Naples
We drove the short distance to Naples and arrived at the height of the rush hour in what was the worst traffic chaos I had ever seen. I had recently bought a satnav which was brilliant and took us straight to the hotel doorstep but even though we were standing right outside the hotel we still couldn’t find it. It turned out to be not so much a hotel but what they call a residencia. There were two enormous wooden doors and a row of doorbells on the side. One of them had the name of the place we had booked and after ringing the doorbell someone came down and showed us up two flights of stairs to what was effectively a hotel on one floor of a large apartment block. It had marble floors and very high ceilings. Behind another door with an elaborate locking system, was a small reception area.
Federika checked in while I went down to the van with someone who was going to guide me to our parking space. Although my mother was Italian, none of us were brought up to be bilingual. I did learn Italian when I was working with an Italian band in the 70s but I was far from fluent and hadn’t spoken it much in 30 years so I was very rusty. It didn’t help that the man directing me to the car park spoke a weird kind of Italian. We started by going in a big circle until 20 minutes later we were back where we started but on the other side of the road. After driving a short distance he pointed to a very narrow road and ordered me to go down it. Cars were parked badly on both corners so I got stuck and I couldn’t reverse because of the queue of cars backed up behind me. After 15 minutes of manoeuvring and a lot of being shouted at, we were on our way again. At the next turning, I was ordered to go the wrong way down a one-way street but thankfully that was impossible because of the never-ending stream of cars coming out of the street. While all of this was going on, a million scooters were buzzing around me and coming out of nowhere like flies. We finally got to the garage but they wouldn’t let me in because the van was too high. My guide phoned his boss and I was driving slowly down the middle of a busy street when he told me to stop and suddenly got out, telling me to wait where I was in the middle of the road. Cars were honking all around me and drivers went onto the pavements to get past. I was at the point where I was going to return to the hotel and tell Federika we were going to have to abandon Naples when my guide appeared. He resumed his directions which included going the wrong way down one-way streets but I was pass caring. After more phone calls, another man turned up and told me to follow his car which wasn’t easy as most of the cars looked the same. It was impossible to stay close to him as other cars were continually cutting in front of me. The only way I was able to follow him was because he had a plastic back on his parcel shelf and without that, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. After being instructed to ignore the traffic signs and cut across a three-lane road with cars coming straight at us we finally arrived at the open-air car park. I did the paperwork and the man drove me back to the hotel I had no idea where the van was and having gone through the worst driving experience of my life I really didn’t care. When I arrived at the hotel I broke my golden rule of never drinking from the minibar and lay shell-shocked on the bed. With the windows open the traffic noise was horrendous but there was no problem keeping the window closed as we had air conditioning.
That night we went to the Pizzeria da Michele, claimed to be the oldest pizzeria in the world which opened in 1870. It had recently been made famous by the book Eat, Pray, Love and made into a film starring Julia Roberts. The book said that pizza originated in Naples which is why they had the best pizzas in the world and the best pizza in Naples was in the Pizzeria da Michele. It was quite a small and basic restaurant but a real joy to eat there on our first night. There was only one kind of pizza, cheese and tomato. No starters or desserts, just this one pizza and a choice of one wine which was served in plastic cups. The pizzas were enormous and whilst we just about ate one between the two of us, most people seemed to get through one each with no problem. It was a strange kind of pizza which was so wet that they must have poured the topping on. You had to roll it up to put it in your mouth being careful of the dripping tomato sauce. It must have been one of the most successful and easiest-to-run restaurants in the world. It was packed all day and all night, there were no plates or glasses to wash and no menus or waste. It was a restauranter’s dream come true. 
The main tourist attraction in Naples seemed to be walking around the streets which we were always happy to do. There were a lot of shops selling beautiful little models of houses. Some were built into a mountainside with little higgledy-piggledy doorways in a colourful cartoon style, like something out of Alice in Wonderland. I would have loved to have bought one but apart from the hassle of getting back to Croatia, it was one of those things that would be impossible to find a place for. If I was rich and had enough rooms I would collect those models and have an entire room dedicated to them, in the same way some men will have a room dedicated to train sets. 
We went to the museum which contains a lot of the things found in the Pompeii excavation. At lunchtime, we stopped at a modest-looking restaurant in a large square. I had a simple cannelloni and couldn’t believe how good it tasted. Just basic ingredients and yet they tasted different to anything I had ever known. Federika only had a salad but said how good that was. In the afternoon we went on an open-topped bus tour of the city. We were given headphones so there was a running commentary with a very generous description of Naples saying how generations of adventurers stopped to admire its great beauty. I was sure in the past it was an amazing place but I really couldn’t see it in the present. I had never been anywhere that was so entirely ruined by traffic. Naples was also becoming famous for its mountains of rubbish in the streets which had been going on for years. The Italian government were blaming the mafia but I read that there was an ECC court ruling that the Italian government was to blame for not setting up a proper system of waste disposal. I suppose it was much easier to blame the mafia.
I would have liked to have visited the Palace of Naples as my dad always talked about it. He was a soldier in the liberation of Italy. They stopped in Naples for a while and the troops used to use the Palace as a dining room. Having been brought up in a slum in London, my dad loved the grandeur of the palace. He only ever fired his rifle once during the war and that was at the lock of the front door of the Palace of Naples. Soon after, a little man opened the door from the inside asking what all the noise was and why didn’t they just knock on the door and he would have let them in. My dad always wanted to go back to Naples and was convinced that the marks on the door from the bullets would still be there. When he told me that I laughed and said they would have repaired the door 50 years ago but when I said this to a friend who lived in Italy for many years, he laughed and said that knowing the Neapolitans, the repair was probably still on their to-do list. Unfortunately, the Palace was closed while we were there so we were unable to visit.
2010 Italy
