Napoli Stands for Pizza

I was able to get off the ship in Naples, Italy this past week. I only had a few hours off, but I knew that I might not ever be back there…so I decided to adventure the city with a few other cruise staff. I went with Tommy, another host, Greg, sports director and Julius, the pool attendant. We started walking away from the terminal and immediately as you step outside the building you see this magnificent castle up on a hill. Then you focus down towards the city…and you realize it’s a metropolitan city.

Actually, I read in my travel guide book that Naples is the third largest city in Italy…and it shows. A lady we met in Rome warned us about Naples. She was British and she put it...”that city is dodgy.” She warned us to be aware at all times because pick-pockets are predominant in the “dodgy” city of Naples. Though, us as a group didn’t have any problems in the city…probably because there’s strength in numbers and I was with all guys…they wouldn’t dare touch me.



We started walking around the city and found several castles. Of course each charged an entry fee…so we just decided to take pictures from the outside and move on. We ventured to the Municipal, which was a big inside market with a beautiful glass ceiling and marble floors. While we were there it seemed as if we couldn’t get away from these vendors begging to sell us tourist junk. The ruder we acted towards them the pushier they became.

We ended up taking our pictures and walking quickly out of the Municipal onto a busy city street lined with bakeries, cafes and boutique shops. You could tell that we had made it to a ritzy part of the city, which made the predominance of homeless begging for money and street performers accepting donations great. We stopped at a bustling bakery (because we knew it would be good) and ordered a Neapolitan (for Naples) which was fresh bread rolled with cheese and proscuitto (or ham). It was quite delicious! We took our snack to go and moved on to the center of the city, which held the governmental buildings.



We walked and took pictures of places we had no idea what it stood for, but it had to be something because other tourists were taking pictures too. Actually, we got caught in some type of strike/parade/riot. It was organized because the police were escorting these people through the city streets. I had no idea what they were shouting for, what their signs said or what purpose they had to be there, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from them…and I snapped many pictures.

Then we moved to the shore side to another castle sitting right on the water. The castle was in a shape of an oval and translated from Italian to English meant “the oval castle.” How original…right? It seemed as though there were a thousand high-end hotels lining the coast and the locals were bathing in the sun and enjoying the nice afternoon weather. We walked around the castle because I wanted to get a better view and we ended up walking into a private dock. Before we knew it there was a car of Italian guys yelling and screaming at us. We just played dumb…because we couldn’t understand them and we walked away very quickly. Oops!



By this time, we had to be getting back to the ship so we grabbed some pizza at a local restaurant, ate fast and walked back to the ship. Supposedly, pizza was invented in Naples, so of course we had to try out the pizza. It was made of thin, chewy crust with a little cheese and lots of fresh tomato sauce with proscuitto ham slices scattered on the top. The Italians eat their pizza by rolling it up from the end first kind of like a burrito…and we decided to try it out. Even though we rolled it up, the slice was so huge I only needed one to fill me up.

Naples was a fine city to visit, but the majority of the attractions our shore excursions sold were outside of the city including the Amalfi Coast, Isle of Capri, Pompeii (the city that was covered by lava in 79 AD) and Positano (it’s a real city not just from the movie Under the Tuscan Sun). Hopefully the next time we visit Naples, I’ll have enough time to take an excursion outside of city.