First Stop, Naples!
⚠️ this particular post is very long.
Thinking about how to separate all of these: 35 (1/d) posts feels far too big, and 1/country (Italy is two weeks!) felt too few. This post covers our first three days which were jam packed (but so are many of the others). While it may lend to some very long articles that aren’t fun for you, reader, it’s a good exercise for me.
In lieu of being a better author for a shared audience, I’m treating the sabbatical-2024 series as a journaling excercise. Feel free to skip!
Day 1
To begin our sabbatical, Gabby and I took off work a little early on a Friday — and caught a plane from the nearby Newark Airport. By 7 a.m., we were on the ground in Naples, Italy. (Although we normally sleep well on flights, this time was the exception. We were both exhausted from the flight, and just couldn’t wait to sleep… in another 12 hours or so).
With barely any interaction with customs, we were stamped into the country and found our way outside.
As far as planning… we knew we could check-in to our BnB around noon, somewhere in Centro Storico. My plan was to figure it out once we were on the ground, so we had no real ground transportation plans.
After some confusion, we managed to hop on a shuttle (we waited at the “dropoff only” area for a little too long) and made our way to Napoli Centrale - the train station.
From the train station, we knew we could walk to our BnB. Gabby wanted to set eyes on the place before we started exploring, so we walked the 15 minutes to the location. We had an address, and we were told it was across from “Bar Bruno’s.” We found the address, but no “Bar Bruno’s” in sight. After circling the area a few times, we finally gave up and Google Map’s Bar Bruno’s. Sure enough, there’s a place with that name 11 minutes downhill. OK!
We walked to Bar Bruno’s, and it looked even more wrong. We’re getting slightly worried that we’ve been scammed (a theme that will keep coming up). After another Google Maps search for the address, we found Bruno’s Food Drink & Coffee directly across! 🤦
Walking back uphill, we finally found our BnB!
Relieved to have a place to sleep the first night on our adventure, we took our bags off at a nearby cafe, relaxed, and had our first meal!
Our first culture shock was trying to leave the cafe. As sheltered Americans, we weren’t quite sure how to pay for our meal. We sat for nearly an hour waiting to see how other patrons handled it, and they were even more relaxed than we were (and stayed much longer)! We eventually walked up to the counter, put on my best Google Translate Italian face, and said pago per favore. The cashier laughed, and we paid and were released from the awkwardness.
We finally met our BnB host, and crashed. We still woke up with enough time (maybe 3 p.m.?) to explore a little and get a late lunch.
It turns out, we were adjacent to a very fun street in Naples with plenty of food. We walked up a block or two to find Alimentari where we found these two beautiful sandwiches:
Filled up with salty meats, we decided to walk around Naples a bit more before getting a longer nap in.
It turns out there was going to be an outdoor concert that night, but we could not muster up enough energy to stay up that late, disappointingly.
When we finally turned around to head back to the BnB, we were stopped in our tracks due to a… Renaissance walk? We’re not sure what it was, but it was very cool to see!
After another nap at the BnB, we headed back out for our first pizza experience:
And(which started a ritual that would last two weeks!) our nightly gelato:
We were exhausted from the day, and we crashed again. Unfortunately, tomorrow comes early, because we have to catch a train!
Day 2
The reason we wanted to start our trip in Italy (and Naples) in particular is that the Calabrian Chili Pepper Festival was ongoing — and our second (really, the first full day) of the trip was also the last day of the festival.
Today, we’re off to Diamante in the Calabrian region (~3h south).
We quickly learned that trains in Italy will can be particularly confusing, but the morning rush was the easy part. We already traveled the distance between the BnB and train station before, so we had a rough idea where to go. And the EURail app didn’t do a bad job of telling us what trains were available.
We slept and read on the train, it was pretty uneventful.
Diamante is absolutely stunning once we get there.
Peppers were absolutely the theme, and the Festival was a blast:
The Festival had plenty of vendors for us to window shop at, but we didn’t have room for any souvenirs. I bought a bottle opener, but that was all we could really carry!
For lunch, we stopped at this small place where we had a Fileja Nduja (a Calabrian pasta with a pepper sauce):
We planned to grab an early dinner before we hopped on the train as well, until we were met with another culture shock: Siesta. Everything shuts down mid-day! We’ll have to get dinner back in Naples.
The train ride back was both confusing, and delayed. We thought we saw our train on the tracks that didn’t let us board, and then eventually left. An hour later, another train appeared and we hopped on. We were nervous because we did not have a reservation for this train, but it was also one of the last trains out of Diamante… and the only place for us to sleep is ~3h back north in Naples! We were relieved to find out that the trains had been delayed by an hour all day; the train we had seen that left the station exactly when ours was supposed to happened to be an earlier train, and the train that arrived exactly when another should have was our original train. Go figure. I slept great on that train while Gabby kept a vigilant watch for our stop.
Back home, we made sure to grab some street food for dinner, Pizza Portafoglio (folded pizza):
… and of course, some gelato.
Day 3
For our final full day in Naples, we took a tour of Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvio. Gabby had booked the tour for us pretty early in our planning process. Admittedly I wasn’t as sold on tours, preferring to explore on our own. I learned quickly on this trip that my approach was wrong — for cultural sites, the tours were more enjoyable (see: Rome, whenever I post that).
Pompeii
One of the more interesting aspects of Pompeii was the brothels - Lupanares. As a port city, Pompeii supposedly had a lot of quick sailor traffic and the brothels were pretty popular.
Today, our cities have VIP recruiters — those folks in Las Vegas that hand out risque flyers and point you to the direction for a good time — in Pompei, there were permanent fixtures in the ground, pointing you in the right direction:
The rooms and beds looked to be very cramped and uncomfortable - our tour guide said this was to encourage patrons to perform their business and leave, rather than hang out for a while.
Our tour guide called this part of the “menu” — pick and choose based on pictures, some of which are still in good condition today:
Mt. Vesuvio
We left Pompeii and headed to Mt. Vesuvio. The bus ride was harrowing to say the least. I don’t enjoy driving, and hoo boy would I be terrified to drive a BUS up a mountain on effectively a one lane road with two directions of traffic. Our driver was cut from a different cloth.
The bus stopped at a ticket booth about 2km from the top. Gabby and I went into hiking mode, and made it up in about 15-20 minutes.
And of course, the view outward was beautiful
Back in Naples
After an uneventful (I think we both fell asleep) bus ride back to Naples, we grabbed some dinner (and gelato):
Especially in Naples, but even in further parts of our trip, we came to three anecdotal rules to get the best food:
- A small place with a 2-4 tables outside, right on the street
- Menu is not in English, or at least not as the primary language
- The place is not busy — the busiest places always underwhelmed; presumably they’re tourist traps.
After that, we headed off to bed. Early next morning, we needed to figure out a way to Positano!