Naples was noisy!  Sirens wailing, police cars whizzing by 3, 4, 5, or 6 in a row like Daytona 500 race cars.  It was also chaotic, and gritty. I’m glad we went to Naples!

On the online travel forums Naples Archeological Museum was called the best little known museum in Italy. It has some amazing sculpture, antiquities and is known for it’s Secret Room of erotic art from Pompeii.  We visited the museum but the Secret Room was closed the day we were there!

One of the highlights of Naples was the Cappello Sansevero which I learned about on Rick Steves’ TV show.  The marble sculptures of the Veiled Christ, and Disallusion with its fishing net carved out of one piece of marble are fantastic!  No photos were allowed.  Please check it out online at:  http://www.museosansevero.it/inglese/photogallery.html

We were headed for the famous San Michele Pizzeria featured on Samantha Brown’s show and in Rick Steves’guidebooks, but because there was such a crowd outside and we were starving and didn’t feel like a long wait, we continued to Pizzeria Trianon, just around the corner and also mentioned in Rick Steves’ guidebook, where we ate the best pizza EVER!  Yum!  

The Campania Artecard was worth every euro.  We purchased it in the Naples Train Station.  It covered all our transportation in Naples and Sorrento, on the Circumvesuviana train, the Amalfi Coast bus, train to and from Paestum and entrances to The Archeological Museum and Pompei.

We returned to the train station to catch the Circumvesuviana train for Sorrento which was crowded with tourists and luggage clogging the aisles the entire trip.  That evening we did laundry and instead of waiting at the laundry mat we hopped on a bus thinking we could just ride through Sorrento to get the lay of the land, but we had quite the adventure when the bus headed out of town and down the coast in the dark of night. We got off the bus hoping another one heading back to town would soon come from the opposite direction.  We waited at a bus stop, then walked to the next bus stop and waited, and walked and wondered if we would have to walk all the way back to Sorrento along a very narrow winding road.  We were rescued when a bus finally arrived. We returned to pick up our laundry about the same time that the manager arrived to lock up for the night!

 We did find ourselves in Italy and made extra effort to return for pizza.  Read about it here: A Return to Napoli and Footsteps of Paul in Italy