The journey from Milan to Naples was interesting, it should have taken about 6 hours, but we arrived 30 minutes late. As we traveled south the landscape changed becoming more Mediterranean with olive groves, vineyards and iconic Cyprus trees. We stopped in Florence and Rome, but you can’t see much from the rail track.

On arrival in Naples we caught the metro to the designated station and found ourselves walking along busy cobbled backstreets with no pavements. Eventually we found our hotel down a narrow alley, it took us a while, partly because the picture on the hotel website is ‘from’ the hotel, not ‘of’ the hotel – very confusing.

The hotel (a small establishment on the second floor of a residential block) didn’t get off to a good start, there were no staff on duty, just a note on reception saying “Dear Neighbour, here is your key card.” It didn’t get any better, the room was basic and quite shabby and the promised ‘balcony’ overlooked the stairwell and lift shaft. Was there any kind of welcome pack you ask? No, just a letter asking for card details so they could charge us for breakages!! I sent the travel agents a brief email and some photos and got a very apologetic response and offers of assistance.

Determined to make the most of our brief time in Naples we headed out to explore and find somewhere to eat. The local area was very busy, noisy and  offered mainly bars and pastry shops. Feeling tired and not especially hungry we opted for the most welcoming option which was a mexican restaurant, we shared a snack and headed back to the hotel.

One thing we did find on that first outing was a nearby metro station, just 100m from the hotel along the main shopping street – if only we’d known!

The weather forecast for Sunday was thundery showers, so instead of our planned walk through the old town we headed for the world famous Museum of Archaeology. The museum is free on the first Sunday of every month so lots of other people had the same idea, we had to queue for an hour, the rain held off until he last minute but when it came it poured. The museum was fantastic, it has lots of frescos and artefacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum and some a amazing roman statues and bronzes. We spent several hours there and made the most of a rainy day.

After a drink in a cafe we headed back to the hotel for a break before dinner. We were determined to have pizza whilst in Naples and discovered OWAP (One World,All Pizza) had one of its two branches very nearby. It was highly commended on TripAdvisor so we booked a table. The pizza was amazing, I don’t understand how they made the flavours so rich and the crust so thin they were delicious. We also tried two local delicacies as starters, zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta cheese and deep fried (lovely) and potato croquettes flavoured with salami (ok but not as good as the Spanish version). A glass of local red wine washed it all down and we were ready to head ‘home’.

Monday dawned with bright blue skies. We had heard from our travel agent that our ferry to Palermo would be leaving at 10pm, not 8pm as expected so we had another whole day to spend exploring Naples. We walked down to the ferry port and put our suitcase in storage for the day then headed west along the harbour stopping to watch the jet ferries coming and going from Capri, Ischia the Aeolian Islands and beyond. Mount Vesuvius made an impressive backdrop to all the activity. Continuing west we visited the Piazza Plebiscito and the Galleria Umberto before walking up through the old town to find the Cappella Sansevero, home to the statue known as the Veiled Christ. It was a long walk, mostly uphill through busy crowded streets and unfortunately when we got there tickets had sold out for the day. There was nothing for it but to find a trattoria for a lunch of local meats and cheese in a shady square.

We explored more of the old town during the afternoon but once exhaustion started to catch up with us we headed back to the harbour to watch the boats in the bay and wait for embarkation for our ferry to open.

We are now checked in to our cabin looking forward to arriving in Palermo after breakfast tomorrow.

Distance from Penzance 1671 miles.

Today’s step count 16083.