Naples(ugh) to Sorrento(ah)

My experience of 15hrs in Naples: 

-Biking in, total chaos, madness, cobblestone, and fury. 

-Couldn’t find a slice of ‘Za after hours of biking at 5pm. Devastatingly walking the streets. 

-Somebody tried to steal my backpack OFF of my back. 

-I ate a stale oat cookie from my backpack to get my blood sugar up and a man cornered me demanding a high-five, whom I had to push past to leave the situation. 

- After everything, I came back to my hostel,  I layed my head on my pillow reading “Irma Voth” on my cellphone and the light of my phone illuminated not one, not three, but five Bedbugs on my pillow.  

I left Naples the next morning. Thinking, it would be easier to throw everything I own in a dryer in a town outside of this godforsaken city where my bike was bound to be stolen at any second. The lady at the laundry mat was kind but she pat my clothes shouting “Dry! These dry?” While I’m laughing it off while stuffing everything in the giant barrel and giving her Euros. 

Naples is a rough town (everyone on my way down kept warning me). I came hoping to prove them wrong, or at the very least find some light shinning through the cobblestone cracks, instead i mostly found shit on the streets and my ego humbled. 

The laundromat angel gave me a sweet shot of espresso and urged me to return to Naples and give it another shot. “Stay near the university!” she said “its an epicentre of food!” I gave her some oranges to say thankyou for her kindness and headed to Mount Vesuvius to a campsite where Taylor recommended me to stay at, as soon as I left the city limits, I felt lighter. 

I biked up towards the volcano and flew down a little pathway and almost got hit by a car. I waved sorry and the car followed me, I thought to yell at me (deservingly) but that tiny beaten up white car was being driven by the owner of Branditos, the campground I was headed to and the owner yelled out “You’re a hero!!!”

Branditos is a steady climb still way at the base of Mount Versuvius. There’s plastic chairs tipped up against wooden tables and lamps made from flashlights on top of alcohol bottles. There’s changing lights, glowing, and cheap signs like chill out zone hanging, and the crickets operate at such a high frequency it’s like they’re aliens phoning home.  

I was the only person staying at the campground and within the hour I was singing with his rockstar son on the little stage of their campground that comes alive in the summer and hosts big music events.  

I told him I liked to sing, he told me let’s sing now, I said no im too shy, and he started playing Queen and waiting till I joined in. Brando is truly an amazing musician with brilliant stage presence, he is eighteen and shinning. I was left alone at the camp site at night and I’d hop on the stage and vent to the moon to feel less lonely. 

I stayed an extra day, I was sitting at the base of mountains in every direction, scared like hell to go up them with my bike. I am not an athlete, nor was I moving my body much at all before leaving home. I get reallt in my head about my abilities and am working on my first instinct not to tell myself I can’t do it, that I have to try, it’s my first time ever doing something, I have to let myself havw the experience of trying. 

Brando senior told me to stay in the air b and b no cost, and I crawled into the attic bed of the 200 year old home. (I naively asked Brando the next morning if he built it himself and he laughed). Alone in the house i said to myself: “You could just stay here you know, you could stay right here forever.”  and  I felt comforted like the place was at least asking. 

After a couple days of rest I felt ready to try. 

 And now I will never be able to use warm showers again. Nothing will ever top Alessio Sorrento (the name forward to me from Danilo.) where had my own little house painted in Italian flag colours with blinking fairy lights and notes from past bikers with incredible roots and countries outlined on them from people from all over the world. My room had beer, Coca-Cola, a Bueno bar (I devoured and now love) fruit, and towels and air conditioning. 

There’s two Milky Way dogs here, sweet like cream and so many cats, one with the biggest puff ball head I’ve ever seen. “None of these are mine.” Alessio tells me through Google translate. He doesn’t speak a lick of English. He tells me this over ravioli with fresh tomatoes from his garden, paired with cheese and bread and homemade wine and a homemade white fennel aperitif that his mother makes. He lives on a lemon and olive orchard with his mother, father and Nona. In his house he has a bike packing room, a fishing room beside there’s so many rooms i wonder if they host parties in the beautiful 1700 home. I paint in the sun, taking a rest day as Nona slowly mops the entire house, a mop in one hand her cane in the other.  

That night i wasn’t sure if Alessio and I were having a very romantic evening, or that Im just a romantic and the landscape was making it feel that way. 

We hiked stone steps up to a delapotated church. To the right there is a rich deep blue darkness with a streak of warm light from a solo boat like its own lighthouse out at sea. To the left, a valley of stretching lights, including the twinkling ones of Mount Vesuvius, where I think there’s a boy there who is practising his guitar and he will become a rockstar. Alessio and I stand with our arms touching passing Google translate back-and-forth. I think he’s about to ask to kiss me under the upside down and he passes me his phone that reads “I am just so sorry I don’t speak English…”

He takes me to a restaurant for dinner and it’s alive with a family from France cheers’ing glasses of wine, the owner who walks like his legs are turned backwards and are dragging behind him kept telling to put my phone down and eat. “You will learn Napoleon in three days” he says. One finger missing. Cats are sleeping in empty chairs, and two dogs are lined up outside the glass door, tails wagging like patrons of Bar Eugene. 

It was the most happening place in town, and amongst all of that Alessio passes me his phone and tells I just missed his girlfriend, that she came from France and was on her way to Turkey, they met when she stayed with him on warm showers and they had an instant connection, and she ended up staying for two weeks.  I swallowed a humbled laugh, along with a famous courgette pasta made with almond pesto finished with wine and lemoncello and Alessio tells me this meal is free “Because are biking.” 

He tells me for dessert, he wants me to meet his father. And he takes me to his family’s famous bar, made famous from his grandfather who taught his cat to smoke and it became home to the “smoking cat” there was a measurable economic boom in the town at the time and in the summer they serve around 600 costumers a day.  A video plays in the background of the bar in black and white with English words explaining the story. 

 I feel that same feeling crawl back in as I lay in bed, anxious again for the mountains, and to leave, telling myself I could stay if I wanted too, I met Alessios friends who quickly became my friends too, I swam with the fish and saw an octopus the size of my head, I had found a home that felt exactly like the island I was living on back home felt, but if I had never left Branditos, I would be never arrive here, and thats the unwritten rule about the journey isn’t it, you have to trust that it’s taking you were you need to go. 

The next day I biked the Amalfi coast. People’s eyes asking me “why are you doing this?” My eyes looking back asking “why am I doing this?” Until I come around the first mountain and am in absolute, bike stopping awe. A whole doing of going up mountains flying all the way back down to sea level and going all the way up again, above a blue thag matches the dark blue in my watercolour kit, with sparkles and one jagged cliff after another. My mouth gaping and my eyes now saying: oh ya, that’s why, I wouldn’t want to have enjoyed the day any other way than on a bike. 

I also passed my first other bikepacker!!! He was flying down the hill I was inching up. we waved and called Ciao and I spent the next day praying for a bike friend along the way soon.