Visiting Naples wasn’t on our agenda at all, we didn’t even think we would make it down this far, or even have enough time. But there we were going from Rome to Naples on another quick1 hour or so train. Need any Tips For Rome? Leaving the big train stations in the major cities are always interesting and can look dangerous sometimes. And this one definitely gave us that feeling. We didn’t feel like we were in Italy anymore; the big gotty McDonald is there, and a more diverse ethnic groups then we have seen anywhere else across Italy. Holding our bags close, we mapped our way over to our hotel which was only 4 blocks away from the main train station. Next time we will book further away from the big busy train station.
Naples Travel Tip – Train stations in large cities can attract the less fortunate people. Don’t let that intimidate you, the rest of the city is 10x better.
Our hotel in Naples had a great view over the city at night, and had everything we needed. We had discovered that any sort of “life” in this city was down at the water front, and that was a bit of a walk, but we had at least check it out. From our hotel to the waterfront was unique, sometimes it was only us on the street or sometimes is was all variety cultures rushing about their day. Our hotel was located in the other part of town you could say, and we had questioned what part of town we picked to stay in once we were there because of the groups of people hanging around but they never once bugged us, day or night!
Shoes anyone?
Once we were down at the ocean we soon released this is a very popular port town for boats, and that’s where the life of the city is at. When the sun disappears, the fun starts…. for the kids! We kid you not, it was a small theme park with go-carts (big and small) which you can practically drive any where you want, just keep adding coins. Shooting games (Tyler’s favourite), candy, ice cream, freshly cooked corn on the cob (we had to indulge on some of that), plus any other random foods they could get that day. But this is also when all of the night time vendors come out and set up their products for sale. They spend so much time, laying their blankets out on the side walk with “brand name” goods for sale, which is very attractable to anyone passing through. This must be illegal, because when the police come by on patrol, they grab the blanket scooping up their products and vanish. We discovered this is a very active town at night till around 12, and it’s not the trouble makers out, but the entire family enjoy the evening summer.
Naples has more than one castle, and one that you can’t miss is right on the ocean front – Castel dell’Ovo. If you are down on the ocean front it’s worth a visit, the views are really good from there. Across the bridge, and up the ramps and few steps you can stop at the one point to look out across the water, but just a little further you can reach the top and it’s huge up there. So you don’t really bump into many people, and it’s usually bloodly hot from the sun beating down on it all day. From the top of the castle we realized that Mt. Vesuvius was right there. We didn’t know that the mountain that destroyed a small city many years ago was that close. The only reason we came this far was to check another place off our list – Pompeii. If you look in the picture beside this paragraph, you will see Mount Vesuvius to the left of the Castle. If the wind was blowing the other way, it could of been Naples instead of Pompeii that was frozen in time.
After spending 2 days in Naples the city really grew on both of us. It wasn’t what we were expecting when we arrived in this city, but we were glad it wasn’t like every other big city we had visited on the Europe Trip. But we both can’t believe how our impression of it had changed from the moment we arrived to the moment we jumped back on the train. Next stop Pompeii!
Want to visit more great cities in Italy? There is always Venice, The Sinking City, and Travel Tips For Venice too! Or The Leaning Tower of Pisa, we got engaged there!
