People had been warning us about Naples before we even arrived in Italy. We’ve heard of the so called “murder rooms” or small rooms when you enter a bank where you are held with two stoic guard with machine guns until you are cleared to enter the bank. We’ve gotten a range of warnings from avoid it all together, to go, just go quickly and hold on to your purse for dear life.
But we couldn’t tell how much of this was true and how much was Northern Italians bias against their Southern counterparts. We were a little wary to say the least. In all honesty, Naples was a hoping off point for nearby sites we wanted to see (Pompeii and Capri) so we didn’t plan on spending too much time in the actual city.
Naples is in fact another beast entirely. It was clear as soon as we got out of the train station. The traffic is insane… the only way to cross the street is to walk out in front of cars with purpose, no one will stop for you it’s a complete game of chicken!
And the streets were covered in trash. I mean covered. There are mountains of trash just waiting for someone (who?) to get it, cigarette butts line every crevice, dog poop sitting on sidewalks…Maggie saw a man lean out of his window just to drop trash ONTO the street! What?! It was pretty shocking after the glorious streets of Florence.
We made it to the hostel though, and after making it to our private room (deluxe!) we decided it was time for food…but where? The city of Naples is confusing, our city map was crap, and this is no place to get lost. We felt in order to not get messed with, we should walk in one direction with purpose. That worked! For a bit. We finally ended up at Da Michele, an amazing pizzeria established in 1870 that serves pizza the original style: little to no cheese, in a wood-burning brick oven. IT WAS AMAZING!
The menu had 4 drink options, and 2 food options, and it was good enough to go back! We ended up going back the next day to eat mediums instead of normals..with success of course.
Aside from the amazing pizza, Naples had some cool castles and historic buildings, but for the most part, the town was basically one huge dumpster…we HAD to get out!
We took the 30min train to Pompeii for one day trip, and that was so worth it. We rented the audio guides bet only ended up listening to a few of the tracks. We were both obsessed with the history of Pompei in elementary school and figured we already knew it all! (That is only partially true-we also got sick of the British recording, it was mostly describing the areas that we could plainly see…if we had more money I would’ve enjoyed having an actual guide.)
After a few hours of stumbling around the amazing excavation site, we decided we had enough of looking at old stones, grabbed some pizza, and went home.
We were blessed with great weather, and hope that trend continues as we make our way to Roma for few days and then…*sheds tear* HOME!
jmeurope 