Stranded in Naples

As we waved goodbye to Greece and landed in the city of Naples, our first experience of the country went far from swimmingly. It just so happened that the day we arrived was the day that all taxi drives in the city decided to strike. Our Airbnb was not on any bus routes and we had booked it due to it being so close to the airport.. by car.

Rather than mope around, we decided the best thing to do would be to start walking as it was only 40 minutes to our beds for the night. After about 15 minutes, the streets got quieter, the rubbish started piling higher, and the cars driving past us started to give us more and more funny looks.

Something wasn’t right.

We finally decided to stop and change our phone from our Greek SIM cards to our UK sims so see if we could use some data abroad, which (lucky for us) worked in Gemma’s phone. As we were chatting to our Airbnb host on the phone, a car pulled over with a friendly looking man who went on to explain to us that this area was very dangerous and we should not be here.

We decided that the best course of action was to walk back to the airport and wait there as our hosts friend had agreed to do him a favour and come and pick us up. What a gentleman!

Fifteen minutes later and plenty more funny looks, we were right back where we had started, however, by now the sun was setting, and we were very tired and ready for bed. Our ride finally arrived and dropped us at our home for the night, where we unpacked and wandered down to the local pizzeria for dinner before we called it a night.

When we arrived at the pizzeria, who did we meet? The lovely gentleman who stopped to warn us of the dangers of Naples and made sure we turned around before getting into trouble. What are the chances?!

We never had any bad experiences when we were in Naples, but one thing we can attest to is just how friendly and helpful everyone we met was. So far, we were falling in love with Italy all over again.