It’s a long train ride from Venice to Naples. I thought we could all rest up on the ride, but the pace of the last couple of stops had caught up with us and we were all still worn out when we rolled into Napoli Centrale after dark. Naples was the city I was most worried about from a logistics perspective. From my research it’s not a physically dangerous city for tourists, but it’s chaotic, loud, riddled with pickpockets and scammers, and generally kind of lawless. Red lights are more a suggestion than rule, for example, and prices can be whatever the seller decides to charge you. And the mopeds!! So many mopeds buzzing by you with only centimeters to spare. It’s overwhelming and sensory overload. When we left the station we found our way to the taxi line and had to differentiate between the rouge taxi guys trying to poach tourists from the line and the way cheaper metered rides. It was hard to find our apartment – the door was hidden halfway down an alley – and all the doors had so many locks that I was feeling pretty on edge once we finally made it in. It was going on 9pm so we dropped our bags off and found the nearest pizza restaurant for a quick dinner. It wasn’t even a particularly well rated restaurant, but OMG it was delicious. Incidentally, I can now vouch that PiNapo, our Naples style pizza restaurant in Charlottesville, is quite authentic. Naples pizza is a little more soggy (in a good way) in the middle, but otherwise very close. After dinner we went back to the apartment for some much needed rest. The kids have been taking turns picking their beds first and this apartment had two nice bedrooms with queen sized beds and then a little cubby at the end of a catwalk hallway with a tiny bed and curtain that we affectionately called the servant’s quarters. It was Penelope’s turn to pick first so Phineas got the cubby.

We had two full days in Naples and had a Pompeii day trip planned for the second day, so when we woke up we were ready to explore Naples. It was only slightly less overwhelming in the daylight, but I was starting to appreciate what the guidebooks call Naples’ “gritty authenticity.” It looks exactly like it does in the pictures: small crooked streets with laundry hanging off every window and sometimes across the span between buildings. Mount Vesuvius, the still-active volcano that destroyed Pompeii looms in the near distance. Additionally, Naples actually sits on top of Campi Flegrei, a subterranean super volcano that regularly causes earthquakes and will erupt at some point, likely devastating Europe. Somehow this contributes to a general feeling of danger and prevalent superstition.

We decided to take a tour of the Naples Underground. Naples sits on top of the Greek and Roman aqueducts, an extensive system of tunnels and cisterns used for centuries to route and store water. The aqueducts were able to be chiseled out because of the soft volcanic rocks from a previous super volcano eruption 15,000 years ago. They were used for drinking water until the 1880s when it was figured out that sewer water was mixing with the drinking water contributing to widespread cholera outbreaks in the city. Luckily a modern water system was already nearly finished. The underground aqueducts were also used as bomb shelters during the world wars. We saw the areas where several thousand Naples residents had to huddle silently during multiple bombings. It was a fascinating tour, and thanks to an engaging guide, both kids rated it as one of their favorite tours in Italy.