Well, better late than never I guess. Back end of August into the beginning of September we took a trip to Italy... Sicily to be more specific. We have found this time of year really pleasant when travelling to Europe - weather is still quite nice and usually still fairly hot and there are less crowds as peak tourist season has come to an end. And as with our previous trips to Italy.... Italy never disappoints...
We have wanted to explore the island of Sicily for some time now and when a flight deal to Naples popped onto our radar, we thought it made sense to combine Naples, Sicily and Pompeii.
We flew into Naples and from there we could connect through to Catania in Sicily. As we wanted to spend more of our time in Sicily, we planned to explore Naples for the day after arriving in the morning and before our short evening flight to Catania. We couldn’t fly our usual airline partners for the leg to Sicily so we decided for ease of travel we’d go carry on which worked out quite well. We found luggage storage for the day at the Naples airport which gave us the freedom to explore without hassle of dragging luggage around everywhere we went.
Our flight was not the most direct route, connecting through a couple cities first before flying into Naples. We did try last minute at the airport to switch things up for more of a direct route to save us from multiple connections and also try and get more comfortable seats but we had no such luck. We arrived in Naples early enough in the morning which gave us plenty of time to spend the day exploring the city. We had read to be careful with the taxis at the airport in particular to avoid getting ripped off. We found a shared taxi option that took us from the airport to the train station for a reasonable fare. The traffic getting to and from the airport was chaotic with cars maneuvering everywhere to get ahead and lots of honking. While not my style of driving, it seemed to all work and we got to our destination in one piece.
Naples is a vibrant port city, is the birthplace of pizza and is known for its high-quality cuisine. We were determined to try some traditional Napoli pizza and discovered two tasty traditional Napoli desserts as well: sfogliatella - a custard filled crispy pastry, and baba - a rum soaked cake; both were incredibly good. As we wandered the streets of Naples we noticed it was not necessarily as clean as past trips to different parts of Italy. Walking around for a full day after a fairly long flight in itself wears you out even after enjoying an afternoon cappuccino as a pick me up. We enjoyed strolling through the streets and made our way to the old city centre. As with a lot of European cities, the labyrinth of streets are lined with cafes, restaurants, and shops. Naples is one of the oldest cities in the world yet has a chaotic and energetic atmosphere to it. The architecture speaks to the city's age along with the ancient Roman ruins. From the waterfront you have incredible views of Mount Vesuvius. We did find a traditional Napoli pizza restaurant where we enjoyed a margarita pizza with fresh basil and a meat and collared greens pizza also with fresh basil for lunch. This was probably the start of our over indulgence of Italian cuisine.
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