Naples is ‘As Unforgettable as your First Love’. (Quote from Lonely Planet)
Friday, August 05, 2005
Well they’re certainly right about that, but not in the way you’d think…
Naples has to be the worst City that I have been in the whole world … I have never seen such utter filth, there is rubbish everywhere blowing in the streets – from the overflowing skips, we have seen people just pissing on the sides of buildings, all the cars are scratched and dented as well as graffiti everywhere, basically the people just don’t care for there environment.
We were repulsed by the amount of rubbish in the streets (and this is a good photo!)
As we were getting worried about accommodation we pre-booked a hostel through Hostelbookers.com. This turned out to be the biggest mistake of our trip so far. It was terrible. I have never seen such a disgraceful place to stay, it was so unclean. As we had pre-booked through the internet the manager was insistent that we had to either stay or at least pay for the one night, (we had booked for four) We both feel very uncomfortable about this, as he didn’t speak very good English, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay him because of the quality of the hotel – we couldn’t even close the door properly to the room, and isn’t taking into account what the bathroom was like. This wasn’t cheep accommodation either it was 60 Euros per night, but they have our credit card number as well as our passport numbers, so we are still in the dark with what exactly is going to happen. We have been in contact with the bank and they have said not to worry and if anything is charged that they will be able to sort it out. Consequently I have drastically reduced our available credit and we are just hopping for the best. We really want to get in contact with Hostelbookers, but the internet really isn’t available here that we can find, it was hard enough just to make a phone call to the UK about our credit card.
Anyway we have now got a hotel about two minutes from the main station and are only staying for two nights as we both just want to get the hell out of here, but still don’t want to make it a waste of time as we don’t think that we will ever be back. The main reason for coming down here was Sarah wanting to see Pompeii, and as it’s so close that we will just have to grin and beer it for a day.
The Lonely Planet guide says ‘Expect to be blown away by the disarming energy this city exudes’ so we are not to sure if we are in the right place or not but compared to Thailand its shit. We feel very unsafe and it’s just a really ‘un-cool’ environment to be in. I really hope that tomorrow when we explore the city a little more, that we find out that we are in the wrong place, and there is a lovely city just around the corner but we have been looking at the map and just can’t see it.
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
1 Comments:
-
At Monday, 08 August, 2005,
said...
-
Hi there. Yes I remember feeling unsafe in Naples nearly thirty years ago, as young kids came up to us begging, with their hands under a piece of cardboard, trying to pickpocket
Sally