Napoli!

We made it! And thankfully so did our checked bag with our boots and poles. Essential for the hiking we will be doing. I have been so looking forward to this trip. I’ve been to Italy a few times but never south of Rome. This trip is Naples and hiking the Amalfi coast with my favorite girl🩷 After a long day of travel Keeley and I had a fun first day in Naples. As the third largest city in Italy we knew it would be busy but we were still surprised with how crowded the streets are. Think Times Square times two. Granted it was a beautiful Saturday and the majority of people seemed to be fairly local. As per usual I had done quite a bit of research and read Rick Steves book so knew after we landed and got our luggage our best option was to take the Alibus to the main train station where we could easily walk to our hotel. That worked perfectly and our second bit of luck was that we could check into our hotel and get settled a bit before heading out to explore.

Naples is where pizza was invented and we couldn’t wait to sample it. Not hard to find. It is everywhere and all looks delicious. The place we intended to go at noon had what appeared to be 200 people in line to get in so we went right across the street and got a nice table outside immediately and ordered the traditional pizza. Delicious! We may try the other place during the week if it is less crazy but how much better could it be? Keeley waited somewhat patiently for me to snap this picture before diving in.

Then we just started to wander in the direction we had tickets for a later stop at the most famous museum in town. Naples is an old city and in the late 1800’s was the countries wealthiest city. When the capital was moved to Rome their fortunes plummeted but it’s still so historic and is really the Italy America thinks of as far as pizza, spaghetti and the people that immigrated to the US. Here are a few pictures from our walk.

I was hoping to see evidence of the basket system they use here to make deliveries. Success! The building are tall and most have no elevators, so instead of walking up 5 stories they hang baskets off their balconies for food deliveries. Lower the basket with your list and cash and people shop for you and then you hoist the basket back up to your apartment. Like Door Dash but on foot!

So many churches! Seems like every block or two. Also not uncommon to pass these mini shrines.

Made it to the Archeological Museum that was amazing. Much of the collection is from Pompeii. We decided not to take a day and go there for a bunch of reasons so since they brought the best to the museum we figured it was worth a stop.

This is called the Sundial Hall and was my favorite of the museum. So beautiful!

They also had a room with a cool model of Pompeii and a movie of how it looked originally and then at the end Mount Vesuvius blew up. Keeley’s comment was wow that was dark!

More walking down toward the Bay of Naples. We stopped at the beautiful Galleria Umberto I. It opened in 1890 and is so amazing. That’s me with my favorite travel guide from Rick Steves!

We headed back toward our hotel to grab a quick dinner of salad and shared a piece of lasagna. Not really photo worthy but since we were totally on fumes by then adequate. No sleep and walking close to 20,000 steps will do that to you. Oh wait we forgot to eat gelato! Done! We look exhausted! Off to sleep as another day to explore is coming. Thanks for coming along! 🩷