Naples, the city of trash and pizza and Mafia guys and more trash

Stop three on our recent little trek was Naples, Italy.  You might think that "Naples, Italy" has such a singsongy ring to it and sounds like a nice, romantic little town and you would be utterly, dead wrong.  Naples specializes in the following:

• Streets overflowing with trash (because the Mafia runs trash collection)
• Pickpockets
• Filthy buildings
• An astonishingly rude populace
• A particularly brutal organized crime ring known as the Camorra

It also has the distinction of having the worst metro system I have ever beheld - one that has no maps at all, multiple names for each station that are rotated according to whim, and old lumbering passenger trains doubling as metro lines. 

When we checked into our hostel in Naples, the receptionist was a young Canadian guy (He said "Let me tell you aboot the hostel" and I said "oh, where in Canada are you from?" and he said "Dang, I thought I was hiding it so well").  We asked him how he came to be there and he said that he had come for a few weeks, but oh you know, "Naples is a charming city" and so he stayed on to find work.  The Mister and I chuckled at this repartee, only to wipe the smirks of our faces when we realized he was entirely serious.  Charming?  The Mister confessed later that he was thinking "where have you BEEN lately?  Riyadh? Pyongyang? Baghdad? Darfur?"

Now at this point in the blog post you must be thinking that Naples sounds like it was a bust.  But here's the real genius: we did not go to Naples because we thought it would be charming or beautiful or polite. We went because they have the best pizza in the world.  And in this, my friends, we were not disappointed.  We were there for two and a half days and I am proud to say that we imbibed nothing except pizza for every.single.meal.  And I left wanting more.

Pizzeria da Michelle is known by the locals as having the best pie in Naples, and was made famous internationally when a little book called Eat, Pray, Love happened to mention that the pizza there was better than...well, you get the drift. We ate there on a dark cold night, next to a guy that looked rather startlingly like Frodo Baggins, and made plans to come back the next night before we even finished our first slice.  Cripes, that pizza was good.

We did do one respectable activity during our time in Naples, and that was to visit Pompeii.  The old Roman city was completely wiped out when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 and was buried in volcanic ash  well enough that it's surprisingly well preserved.  

Mount Vesuvius looming over the ruins of Pompeii

Our twinkly-eyed Italian guide was in his eighties at least and tottered around rather gingerly in some parts, but he gleefully pointed out every instance of phallic symbols carved into the rock (and called them "lucky").  Ancient Pompeii was a rather racy place, it seems.  His favorite is the one below, which is carved right into the road and it points in the direction of the brothel.  World's oldest highway sign? Billboard? Compass pointing to true north?



I loved this hitching ring for horses' reigns.  I kept thinking, I wonder who used this last? Where were they going? What did they look like? What did they eat for breakfast that morning? Were they wearing socks? And so on.

So we were glad to escape Naples with our safety and property intact, and I doubt it will make our list again.

But seriously, guys, that was some RIGHTEOUS pizza.