Monday 4 November 2024

After cleaning the apartment, we headed for Bari to return the car and catch the train to Naples. This is the last of the car hires for Italy and possibly the trip, as we decided to see what travelling by train in Europe is like.

So, having driven in France, Spain, Switzerland and Italy it is interesting to make some observations on driver behaviour. All, apart from the Italians are reasonable drivers. The French tend to be polite - go figure and generally obey the road rules. The Italians, as you would expect, believe that the speed signs are for suggestion only; intersections should be attacked to see who blinks first; double lines mean that you have to go twice as fast to overtake; and pedestrian crossings, that’s just where you play chicken. The remainder are fairly good drivers.

Our train from Bari to Naples in premium economy was clean and comfortable, with assigned seats. This also means nothing to the Italians. Naples centralae station is quite large and surrounded by a large piazza. Our BnB is just across the road, in a dodgy, filthy neighbourhood.

Interesting, that in all the rural towns we stayed, there was no graffiti, daily rubbish collection and a pride in the community to have clean streets. Italian nonas daily washed their front steps. Welcome to Naples. Rubbish everywhere, streets ankle deep in fag ends and discarded food containers, plastic bags and paper. Dodgy looking Africans trying to sell you cheap bangles or thongs (probably something else as well).

It will be interesting to see what other parts of the city are like. We are going on a 3hr food walking tour tomorrow, which will show us other parts of the city, so I will reserve any stronger criticism until after the event.

We have been away from Cairns for 362 days and visited 15 countries and the accommodation arrangements have been flawless. However, when we arrived in Naples, the access to the apartment was delayed due to the lack of 1) the owner not turning up to let us in, 2) not responding to out messages, 3) not sending us the entry codes and standing around with our finger up our arse while the nice gentlemen in the adjacent apartment took her call and gave us the three entry codes.

The surprise was the clean and well presented one bed room apartment on the eight floor. Luckily for Flashy, the lift goes to the 7^th and there is only one flight of steps to the 8^th. Dinner was a quick slink through the ‘hood to the station, where a nice, indoors, sit down pizzeria provided a fresh salad and a pizza, overlooking the gangland below.