Given my penchant for disaster-ology (wish that was a real thing), I obviously wanted to see the volcano up close and personal.

The easiest way for us, without a car, to get to Vesuvius was to take a quick bus from the Ercolano-Scavi stop on the Circumvesuviana. The bus we took literally leaves from right outside the station exist. I think it was about 13€ per person, which included the park fee.  There were a bunch of people waiting, but they brought more buses around in about 25 minutes to take us all up.

While I have no fear of volcanoes, I do have a fear of windy roads in minivans. I was too busy trying not to throw up (from motion sickness, not scary driving, just to be clear), so I can’t really tell you what the drive up is like, though I’m sure it’s pretty. It doesn’t take more than 30 minutes.You have a little more than an hour to walk to the top of Vesuvius (don’t worry, you get dropped off very close to the crater), and wander around. There are a few places you can stop to shop and grab a snack or a drink.  The hike up isn’t strenuous if you are in any type of shape (tennis shoes nice, but I could have made it in flip flops if needed), and I also liked looking down on the sides where the ash from the last eruption is still visible.

(Also, weirdest trinket stores ever, with weirdest tchotchkes. Think bedazzled ash/plastic statues. They must be somebody’s thing, which is good, because they sure aren’t mine. Wish I had taken a photo.)

We didn’t have any wine at the top, but the internet peeps generally report its not so great.

The views however, were fantastic! It wasn’t super clear but it was still fun to see the city from above.  Also, the crater of the volcano was super cool. It’s actually smaller than I was expecting. It was fun to look for the steaming vents.  Apparently there is some way, with a guide, you can enter the crater of the volcano.  If we had more time, I think we would have looked into that.

Vesuvius was fun.  Sure, it’s not THAT exciting since its just a sitting cone of rocks/rubble right now, but I enjoyed it and was glad to see the mountain that ultimately left the archaeological wonders of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

So we took advantage of the many, many men standing around the dock trying to sell us a boat ride, and asked them where they would recommend.  Sure, they might get a kick-back from the restaurant, but we were hoping for something a bit more authentic.

One helpful fellow recommended Verginiello, and with some waving hands and general directions, we figured we could find it. I mean, Capri is a small island.  We aren’t that directionally dysfunctional.

I’m not quite ready to start taking pictures of every random dish I consume, so I apologize for the lack of photos, but I can vouch for its deliciousness. In fact, it was one of those places where the food wasn’t pretty.  But it was great.  We had fresh fish, mussels, clams, and calamari.

And the oh, so priceless moment…when dear husband asked waiter for some marinara to go with his calamari.  Waiter stammers…says yes…looks bewildered.  Husband feels sort of embarrassed for asking, but wants marinara too badly to care.  Waiter returns with huge bowl of marinara—think gigantic soup bowl. Said bowl happens to be sooooo delicious, that my husband, my mom, and I devour it—by itself—with bread.

Even perhaps more shockingly for Italy—they didn’t charge us for it.  But we would have gladly paid. Note for the future: order marinara in Italy even when you don’t want pasta (or calamari) to go with it.

We then wandered around Capri, looking at the coastline, the lemon trees, and obviously checking out each and every gelato shop before settling on the chosen one.  And in cute little fishy cups! I’m a sucker for animal printed things, no matter how silly.

We hemmed and hawed about whether to go to Anacapri, but in the end, we didn’t make it.  While still low season, lines were building at the funicular, so we decided to head down to the port. Thank goodness we did, as the high speed ferry was already sold out for the next two times, and the regular speed ferry (which takes vehicles and such) sold out soon after we purchased our tickets.  The regular ferry was a bit less expensive, and we were able to sit upstairs on the open deck which was nice.  It took probably an hour and half to return to Naples. If it’s high season, I’d definitely recommend purchasing ahead of time if you want to get back to Naples at a specific hour.

I’m so glad we spent a full day in Capri.  There is so much more to see and do (swim in the summer, explore old churches), but it was great just to relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Despite being off-season, meaning all the high-end designer boutiques were mostly closed (because I can afford a bunch of $600 pants, obvi), Capri was stunning.  In fact, I think it was even more stunning with less people.

We hadn’t really planned that far ahead…we knew we wanted to go to Capri, but didn’t know what specifically we wanted to do. In fact, we sort of purposely hadn’t planned, so we had the flexibility to wander, enjoy the scenery, and obviously eat copious amounts of gelato.

So we took the high-speed (which is more like medium-speed) ferry to Capri, around 7am.  It was an hour or so trip with some brilliant salespeople who were very good at persuading the large Chinese tour group to purchase wildly unnecessary numbers of bags and hats.

The boat tour was actually a lot of fun. It was a clear day, and the water was absolutely beautiful. I didn’t get seasick which also made it a win-win.

I had read mixed reviews of the Grotta Azzurra (Blue Grotto); some visitors said it wasn’t worth the 13€, which covers a small boat/oarsman, and the entrance fee.  I guess I can see their point of view, but part of the fun of the Grotta Azzurra, is actually getting in the Grotta Azzurra. You pull up in your larger boat (you switch to a small rowboat), and you see a little hole in the cliff.  That is your entrance.  They pulled our boats through by a chain on the side of the rocks, slightly depressing the boat in the water, with everyone lying down to make it through the hole. It was really pretty inside, too. Knowing what I do now, I definitely would have been disappointed to miss it.

There were many other sites visible from the tour, including the I Faraglioni, the famous and recognizable rocks jutting from the ocean (pictured above).

I also thought the Green Grotta was beautiful.

The color of the water throughout the tour was so different from anything I’ve seen.  It’s hard to describe, doesn’t like to photograph well (at least by a non-professional that gets tired fiddling with aperture and exposure), but it’s gorgeous.  And incredibly, surprisingly, crazily clean: I actually never even saw trash floating in the harbor, even by the ferries.

Our morning in Capri definitely fulfilled expectations! But now we were hungry…for beer and gelato, of course.  Balanced meals people, balanced meals.

Oh Naples.  It was our first time to Naples, and actually my first time to Italy.  Thanks to the crazywebs (internet), if anything I had relatively low expectations for Naples.You can’t possibly read the TripAdvisor forums without reading about how horrible the pickpockets are in Naples, particularly on the Circumvesuviana (the train from Naples to Pompeii, that continues all the way to Sorrento).Considering I dressed up as a pickpocket (for real) in 3rd grade, I was almost disappointed that we didn’t see any potential pickpocketing action in Naples.  Kidding.
First, I can see how when the Circumvesuviana trains are busy you could get into trouble and be pushed/crushed to the point where it’s easy for someone to get into a purse or pocket.  Second, I’m sure tourists are probably targeted. They do stick out, and Italian women we saw on the train left their purses wide open and rummaged around in them constantly.  Third, it might be worse during high season.  But seriously, we saw no one that even eyed us in a way that made us feel uneasy; no one that even bothered or distracted a tourist on the train looking for an opportunity to use their sticky hands.  We took the Circumvesuviana to both Pompeii and Herculaneum (stop at Ercolano-Scavi) and felt completely comfortable.

I am an err on the side of caution type person, and I did purchase one of the small Pacsafe bags to go to Naples (and for future trips), after the many stories of “I’m so careful and I’ve traveled the world and I got robbed in Naples!”.  Was it needed for safety/security? Probably not.  Did it work well as a bag? Yes.  It was the perfect size for my camera, guide book, credit cards, and my trusty wet wipes.  I would have been fine with the other bag (a compressible Patagonia crossbody), but the Pacsafe was nice to have. I did appreciate having the RFID pockets that I could just stick my credit cards in (and my passport when in transit, though I don’t carry that with me during the day).  I’ll use it again for future trips because of its size and functionality.

Naples is a city. There are the drug addicts near the subway stations, there are homeless people asking for money/food, etc.  I repeat, this is a city. I see the same things in my city, nearly every day.  I mind my own business, smile if needed, don’t aggravate or escalate, and generally nothing happens.  I think I’ve been able to put these issues in much more perspective after moving to a city myself.

Besides taking a cab from the airport, we walked everywhere within the cities, though their subway/metro seems to be user-friendly enough. I’m a big fan of walking in cities—you get to see so much more, you never know what you’ll find, and it’s good exercise (I also get motion-sickness, so there’s that…).  If you plan on going to Pompeii or Herculaneum, I’d advise walking—albeit through a bit of a seedy area—to the main station (Napoli Centrale) instead of Garibaldi—because it’s easier to get a seat for the 40-or-so minute ride to the sites if you get on at the first station on the route.  The main station is only about 5 minutes farther.

GET A MAP.  If you’ve not gotten lost in Naples, you must have amazing internal GPS.  Good for you. I do not. And I also hate being one of the tourists pulling out my trusty map in areas where I don’t think that’s a great idea…look like you know where you are going at all times, right?  Yea well, we got lost.  There are like a million streets that only exist for a few blocks.  I’m not saying it’s worse than many other European cities (cities can’t all be built on a perfect grid, I know).  The toughest part is that because of the million little streets, sometimes we had a hard time (in the dark) even locating ourselves on the map.  But we made it back to our hotel, un-mugged and a bit exhausted.

I had the Eyewitness Travel book “Naples and the Amalfi Coast”. It had some useful tidbits on the city, as well as on Vesuvius, Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Capri. Their city map was excellent, once we could find ourselves (literally, not figuratively).  Maybe one day I’ll get lost enough overseas to convince myself that paying for data on my iphone is a good idea.  Until then…it’s part of the experience.

But as for the trash…and the dog poop…you’ve been warned.  I was warned, and I’m glad. I’m a flip flops everywhere type person, and I was thrilled to have shoes, closed-toed as they were, at all times.  If you can block out the trash and distracting graffiti, Naples is really a beautiful city, and one I wish we had a bit more time to explore.  It certainly has character.