We arrived in Naples via il treno from Rome Sunday afternoon. Thank goodness we had booked a taxi to get to Roma Termini, because there was a marathon underway and all the buses were delayed, rerouted, etc. The driver told us there is a marathon about once a month. That would have been nerve-wracking!

The train was a low-cost local, the ride was two hours, and it was extremely comfortable. We bought sandwiches in the terminal and the table between our seats was ample. And because we had booked ahead, the fare was about $10/each. All good!!

I do not recommend arriving in Naples on a Sunday without a clear understanding of the transportation system, as, unusually, google maps gave us terrible directions. The first and seemingly simplest was to take the bus. We wandered a bit, had to ask a few people, but found the bus stop. In Rome you pay for buses and trams with a credit card and just ping the device on board. Faulty assumption that Naples would be the same. I asked a woman how to pay for the bus, and after a spirited discussion among the group waiting, the answer was to buy a ticket first—not available on board. Where? Any tabacchi, small stands that are everywhere selling cigarettes and sundries. Open on Sunday in the surroundings of the Garibaldi station? Nope. Second option in google maps—the metro (subway). Directions were to go to MET, walk 8 minutes to Line 2, ride to another stop, transfer to Line 1, get off at Toledo. I asked 3 or 4 people in the station what/where is MET. No one knew. We looked around for a ticket machine, found one, it refused to take any of our cards, and a nice young man (from Brazil, spoke a little English and Spanish, thank goodness) helped us get our tickets. We were hot and tired and relieved that we were on our way at last. We walked around a corner where a transit guard was checking people going through—helping as necessary. I showed him the directions on google. Yes, yes, he said, Line 2, go one stop to Museo, change to Toledo. Great, sounds easy. Alas this wasn’t true—there are only two metro lines in Naples and we were already on Line 1…and we had to ride only a few stops before we saw “Toledo” coming up. Get off here? I asked the two tattooed twenty sometimes sitting next to us. They advised yes, get off. So we did. After two very long escalators (think Dupont Circle in D.C.) and two staircases, we trudged out onto the street and found the Toledo stop is literally in front of the alley where the door to our B&B is. So much running around and fuss for such a simple trip.

Note: the metro is so very deep because of all the buried Greek and Roman streets, requiring public works to keep digging past all of that ancient stuff.

Our B&B is fine…pretty modern, slightly off kilter as Italian places seem to be (loose screws on towel bars, that sort of thing), and I had the instructions to get in. A code at the front door, an elevator that operates only with a €20 coin and is so tiny the two of us with luggage were squeezed into a comical contortion, go to floor 4…elevator labors up and stops on 3. We were rather desperate to get out so did, and yup, we were on floor 4. (We should have known this…ground floors in Europe are floor 0.). A 7 digit code to open the door and everything we needed was on the desk inside. Big room! Good air conditioning! Comfy bed!

We are staying in the recommended Spanish Quarter, the old part of the city, on Via Toledo, a major commercial street that is a pretty constant roar of traffic and motorcycles, honking and beeping as pedestrians weave through intersections while motorcycles and cars weave around them. It is semi-organized bedlam. The sidewalks are especially uneven as are the streets, so walking you must look down and around you at the same time. It’s rather exciting once you get the hang of it. We saw no crashes, no fallen pedestrians, so it all seems to work. Courage required, however.

We had no dinner plan so just wandered the streets behind our B&B, getting hungrier and a little confused. We let ourselves be hawked into one of the gazillion restaurants (it had pretty good reviews) and collapsed at a table on the street and ordered wine and alici fritti and calamari fritti. Delicious. Then, too tired to go looking further for a proper dinner, and a bit, uh, relaxed, we ordered pasta. It was all so good…and we toddled back to our rooms to collapse.