(written 11/4/06 16:55 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
After paying up, the farmhouse owner man proudly showed us his wine cellar, babbling on in Italian and occasionally getting his point across to us. We think we gathered that he made it, it was strong wine (14%), and, of course, it was good! Not wanting to taste any, or really being able to afford any, we thanked him and got on the roads.
Being cheaper and coastal, we used slower roads all day on our way south towards Napoli (Naples), leaving the motorways much further inland. While some of this was scenic, most was just slow going. In retrospect the motorways would have been a much better option.
We stopped in a servo for some lunch, before heading onto Roma's ring road - we weren't going in this time around, having spent several days there
last time. Very tempting though.
The general idea was to look for a camping ground slightly out of Napoli and use that as a base for exploring the city via bus, and the surrounding areas of Sorrento, Capri and the Amalfi coast. The areas looked very dodgy from about 40km north of Napoli along the coast, with lots of derelict buildings, hotels nobody would want to stay at and what were reasonably obviously prostitutes offering their business. It was getting on in the afternoon, so found a camping ground but nobody wanted to answer the bell. I guess from a sign that they opened from Easter, but there were plenty of other people living there.
From here the drivers started to get completely crazy. They were driving whatever speed they wanted, overtaking anywhere, pushing you off the road (which was not much better than a dirt track in places) and pulling out in front of you at every intersection regardless of what speed you were traveling. In fact, in several cases people looked to see if you were coming, saw they didn't have enough room to pull out and did so anyway! There really were road rules that we could make out in about a 60km radius around Napoli. Also in the same radius, it seemed like there had been no rubbish collected for about six months, with huge piles of trash overflowing every bin.
We battled our way into the crazy packed seaside place of Pozzuoli, and after not really moving much at all and loosing our sanity rather rapidly, we went straight back out again. Not really knowing what to do next, we headed straight north from there and found a campsite. At least differently to the one in Mar Menor a while back, the guy flat out stated that we couldn't put tents up there, even though there was some beautiful perfectly flat grassy areas! To do with his licensing apparently, but still very annoying. There was a train station just down the road and everything.
So, there was nothing for it but to go further. We didn't even slightly feel like driving into Napoli proper after seeing what it was like on the outskirts, so we jumped on the motorway and for the best 2euros we've ever spent sailed around all the crazyness below us.
It was getting darker by now, so camping was pretty much out of the question, plus after the long drive and crazy traffic we just wanted a nice soft bed to crash on. We got off the freeway on the eastern side of naples, turning towards the coast at Ercolano. Straight back into the insane traffic, I really didn't like the effect it was having on me - making me make crazy decisions I would never take elsewhere or get totally surrounded by honking Italians. We pushed on for another 45 minutes or so, seeing at least a million pizzerias but not one hotel.
When we finally did spot one further south in Torre del Greco, we pulled in as quickly as we could manage, and I went inside to investigate the poorly-named
Holidays Hotel. There were two room types on offer, one with a view of the Bay of Napoli and another cheaper on on the other side. Cheap was good at the rates they were charging so we went with that.
Liz was overjoyed when I returned to the car with one room key and one TV remote, and we drove the car into the secure parking lot, happy to get out of the thing and lug our backpack and plastic bags up to our room.
Not really liking the look of the dinner on offer, we wandered in search of what we really wanted - two big pizzas and two big beers. Even though this was only the outskirts of Napoli (where pizza was invented), the pizza was amazing and so so cheap. Combined with a couple of huge gelatos a bit further up the road at Gelateria Gallo, it was exactly what we needed to cap off one of our less enjoyable days away.
We walked back past half a street lined with bags of rubbish that could house enough rats to spread the plague, but we didn't care, collapsing exhausted in our room.