Saturday, September 09, 2006
28 August, 2006
We left for Napoli- absolutely disgusting! Do not go or let anyone you know visit Naples let alone plan on staying there. There are no lanes or laws on the roads and if you think the driving is bad in Italy- wait until you see this! It literally is dodgem cars live. We read up about the first pizzeria that is still in existence since 1935, still run by the same family- a few generations down. It was a cute little place in an awful town and the pizzas were excellent. The walk to the restaurant was filthy dirty with wee, and cigareetes and graffiti and I don’t know what else…It really didn’t feel safe walking around or leaving the car for a few hours- probably more unsafe than Hilbrow in Johannesburg. The signage on the roads was so poor that it took us 20 minutes to get out the town after stopping to ask people all along and then another 40 minutes to get to the airport. I am glad we got Nikki and Grant to the airport alive. We then had to make our way to Rome and finding the signage for that was also almost impossible. The drive was easy on the highway and we got to Rome in about 2 and a half hours. I don’t know how we managed but we stumbled into the main area where we wanted to be and find a hotel. It was absolute fluk and because it was already dark there was not much traffic around and parking wasn’t a problem. To cut a long night short, we found a hotel (very nice) called Let Petit Hotel and it was also recommended by out friends. The price was a bit steep but we were in the heart of Rome just off Republica square so we settled for it. Parking was now a problem because everywhere you park you have to pay and this was going to become very costly for 3 days. We drove around for about 1 and a half hours looking for anything other than a blue line- almost impossible. It was now 2am and we were giving up. I was ready to ram the car into the wall when we found a row of cars parked, no coloured lines but it was sort of on the square. We asked the taxi drivers what they thought and a few others and the general consensus was that our car would be fine, no payment needed. So we left it there and got to bed. We would have to deal with the consequences in the morning. Low and behold the car was still there and we decided that if nobody knew if it could be there or not and there were no signs we were going to take the chance. A free parking in Rome!! And as we started walking to our hotel we realized that we had made our way in circles all the way back to the outskirts of our hotel, just on Republika square.
We left for Napoli- absolutely disgusting! Do not go or let anyone you know visit Naples let alone plan on staying there. There are no lanes or laws on the roads and if you think the driving is bad in Italy- wait until you see this! It literally is dodgem cars live. We read up about the first pizzeria that is still in existence since 1935, still run by the same family- a few generations down. It was a cute little place in an awful town and the pizzas were excellent. The walk to the restaurant was filthy dirty with wee, and cigareetes and graffiti and I don’t know what else…It really didn’t feel safe walking around or leaving the car for a few hours- probably more unsafe than Hilbrow in Johannesburg. The signage on the roads was so poor that it took us 20 minutes to get out the town after stopping to ask people all along and then another 40 minutes to get to the airport. I am glad we got Nikki and Grant to the airport alive. We then had to make our way to Rome and finding the signage for that was also almost impossible. The drive was easy on the highway and we got to Rome in about 2 and a half hours. I don’t know how we managed but we stumbled into the main area where we wanted to be and find a hotel. It was absolute fluk and because it was already dark there was not much traffic around and parking wasn’t a problem. To cut a long night short, we found a hotel (very nice) called Let Petit Hotel and it was also recommended by out friends. The price was a bit steep but we were in the heart of Rome just off Republica square so we settled for it. Parking was now a problem because everywhere you park you have to pay and this was going to become very costly for 3 days. We drove around for about 1 and a half hours looking for anything other than a blue line- almost impossible. It was now 2am and we were giving up. I was ready to ram the car into the wall when we found a row of cars parked, no coloured lines but it was sort of on the square. We asked the taxi drivers what they thought and a few others and the general consensus was that our car would be fine, no payment needed. So we left it there and got to bed. We would have to deal with the consequences in the morning. Low and behold the car was still there and we decided that if nobody knew if it could be there or not and there were no signs we were going to take the chance. A free parking in Rome!! And as we started walking to our hotel we realized that we had made our way in circles all the way back to the outskirts of our hotel, just on Republika square.
# posted by Heidi & Richard's travels @ 1:48 PM 
