I highly recommend visiting Naples. Fly in, tour the city for a few hours, and then go somewhere else.
Naples is a great city, but it reminds me a lot of New York City, and not in a good way. It’s crowded and dirty. I was expecting Venice to smell funny, but it didn’t. I expected Naples to be nice, and it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad city. But it’s clearly a city. After spending nearly a week in Venice and the Amalfi Coast, Naples was a rude return to civilization. If you need to cover a lot of distance in Naples, do not drive. Get a taxi or a private driver, but for the love of all that’s holy, do not drive. I have never seen anything as crazy as traffic in Naples.
I saw cars cutting each other off and other cars racing through traffic lights, ignorant of the color. Of the 3 different drivers we had in Naples, I caught at least 2 of them running red lights. I don’t know how many more they ran that I missed, or if the third also ran some without me noticing. The cars are crazy in Naples, but the mopeds are worse. I saw entire families on mopeds with the kids standing between dad’s legs and mom on the back. Sometimes everyone had helmets, sometimes nobody did. I saw dozens of unbuckled helmets on peoples heads. There were even moped drivers holding cell phones to their ears and talking while they drove. How the party at the other end could hear anything over the noise of the traffic, I have no idea. There was one street that we drove down with a lane I couldn’t figure out. I wasn’t sure which direction traffic was supposed to go because cars and mopeds were going in both directions at the same time. It was a violation of all laws of physics, but the cars wove in and out of each others’ way as though they were choreographed by Cirque du Soleil. It was frightening and beautiful at the same time.
Naples is a fairly walkable city, though. Sometimes the crosswalks get a little hairy, because of the lunatic drivers, but the sidewalks are mostly safe. People are friendly and are happy to point you in the right direction if you stop and ask for help. If you can, go to Sorbillo. I’m not entirely positive that we ate there; there are two restaurants with the same name within 50 feet of each other. One had a much longer line, so we went to the other. There was still a several minute wait, so I went to a storefront in between them where an old woman sold me 2 bottles of Peroni for 2 Euro. At the current exchange rate, that’s about $1.15 per beer. I can handle that. We were about halfway through the beers when they seated us at the restaurant. We took our beers in and I figured we’d either chug them or dump them out if they complained, but they didn’t say anything, so we sipped our beers while we waited for service. The service was slow, since there was one waitress for about 20 tables. But she moved like a ferret on speed, never slowing down, but always smiling and polite when she helped people. We got a margherita pizza and a lasagne pizza. The latter was good, but the former is the way to go. No doubt. Much like the Venetian pizzas, it’s a light, thin, soft dough with mild flavors and delicious ingredients, but far better than anything we had in Venice. If you go there, which I highly recommend that you do, get the margherita pizza. It was only 6 euro. A fantastic meal for under 10 bucks, including a beer. Try to get that in DC.
From there, head east towards the duomo. You can go in if you want, or take a picture from the outside, check the checkbox in your travel guide and move on. From the duomo, head south towards the water, then west along the waterfront. You’ll see cruise ships and the usual city traffic. You’ll also pass the Castel Nuovo and a nice little park. Along the way, there are plenty of small bars and restaurants to grab a drink. Enjoy the walk and the scenery. We spent about 6 hours in Naples, walking, eating, drinking and talking. I think 6 hours covered enough of Naples for me. Fun city, but nothing spectacular.
