Italy Day Three ((Naples: The Tenth Circle of Hell))

I’m going to skip the activities of the morning and delve right into the heart of what happened after the 9.5 hour train ride from Venice to Naples. Billy had left us and stayed another night in Venice, but Jenna had booked a hotel in Naples for herself because she could not stay with us on the ship. Our ship, however, would not arrive in Naples until July 4th at 8AM, so Michelle and I had to stay in the hotel with Jenna for a night, which was not a problem at all.

So, I left Venice with a smile on my lips because I had just experienced life as it should be. I was on a high from everything I had learned and saw. It was one of the most amazing experiences I believe I could have had.

And then we arrived in Naples. Naples is the mafia capital of Italy. Everything (and I mean everything) comes through the port of Naples…fashion, waste, passenger vessels, and drugs. Especially drugs. The Camorra (the big Italian Mafia gang) is littered throughout the city and every surrounding nook and cranny. I’m not making any of this up…it would be a real concern if the entire population of Naples wasn’t involved in the corruption.

Let me try to explain to you the constant stab of fear in my heart as soon as we stepped off of the train. It was around 10PM (we left Venice at 1PM…it was a loooong ride) and the train station was full of people. No one was speaking English and everyone stared. Jenna and I had to be the only women in the station with blonde hair. That was our first unpreventable mistake.

Men with mustaches and poor hygiene sidled up next to us and breathed the words “Taxi, sexy ladies?” into our ears. Men’s eyes bored into the three of us, and I couldn’t help but stare at each of them right back. Jenna had already scolded me for smiling at people, and I stopped. But looking around? I was not about to walk with my head down. I needed to see what was going on around me…and to make sure no one was following us with more than their eyes.

We walked out of the train station into what should be Dante’s tenth circle of Hell. When I say this, I am not exaggerating. We walked without any kind of direction in the vicinity in which we thought we would find our hotel. This was our second mistake.

The streets of Naples at 10PM are like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Trash was everywhere. I stepped on ripped up newspapers, soda cans, aluminum foil, condoms. I walked in unidentifiable puddles of black, sticky gum, half-chewed food, red spots that dotted the sidewalks. We walked past hookers on the side of the road, their body parts hanging out in the night air for all to glimpse. We walked past groups of guys who were dancing at each other in the middle of the streets and stopped to stare at us when we passed. Once we passed, we proceeded to get yelled at and catcalled at which made us walk even faster. Jenna’s poor suitcase had a broken wheel and the sidewalks were part cobblestone, part broken and chipped sidewalk, so you can only imagine the pace we were able to walk when I say “we walked faster”. My overnight bags were digging into my shoulders and my cheeks were flushed with sweat and hunger.

After walking for a half hour desperately trying to find the hotel that we saw from the train window, we asked for directions. Three different people gave us directions, and all three times, they spoke no English. They all pointed fingers and smiled at us as if we knew what they were talking about. Their pointed fingers led us down sketchy alleyways filled with unholy amounts of garbage and homeless people. We were walking in circles.

Eventually, we found a man and two women who looked like angels compared to the rest of the city’s lovely patrons. They spoke no English and when the woman kept pointing at her car and smiling encouragingly, I cannot believe we got into their car. I cannot believe it. I cannot believe that they took us to our hotel with no problem. When the man got out of his car to grab our bags, the two women smiled and then began to scold us in Italian for walking down shady streets. They pointed their fingers at us and shook their heads in the direction that we had come from. We kept saying “grazie” and nodding our heads in thanks.

Exhaustion sometimes makes people do crazy, incredibly stupid things. Like get in cars with strangers who don’t speak your language. Like walk around a city blindly for a half-hour, suffering through harsh catcalls and the mere act of looking behind one’s back every five seconds. Like not calling for a cab right out of the train station (But oh I am glad we did not call a cab. More about that on the 4th day in Italy).

We fell into the hotel beds and I closed my eyes wishing I were anywhere else in the world. It’s ironic because I think about that when I’m in America…but if you have never been to Naples, Italy…if you have never dragged luggage through this terrifying city as a blonde woman at 10PM at night…you could not understand the pounding of my heart, the beads of sweat on my forehead as I sauntered with my eyes wide open to this city’s mafia-ridden, trash-ridden nightscape.

We made it through the first night. Then came good ‘ole July 4th.
A.