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Destination: Naples

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Naples — Where the Ship Drops You Off at the Front Door

When you dock in Naples, you don’t have to worry about how to take a train or taxi into town to see the sights. A tourist information desk near where you disembark can give you a map, answer your questions, and send you walking on your way to explore this gritty city.

Here in Naples, the ship docks right in the town center. As in every port we visited, there’s a non-cruise-sponsored, tourist-information desk there staffed only when the cruise ships arrive. While the cruise companies are a bit conflicted about providing information to enable independent travelers to do their own thing smartly, these city tour desks are generally enthusiastic about providing practical info to help independent travelers figure out what to do and where to go. With the help of a city map and a felt pen for taking notes, you can walk into a city within minutes of disembarking.

Some friends that I made on board were new travelers. They walked 100 yards off the ship, went through the cruise-shop terminal, and peered into the urban jungle of Naples. They decided it was too much, turned around, and spent the day on the ship enjoying the pool. They even had a poolside pizza in honor of the city they were missing. Had they kept on walking for fifteen minutes, they would have found themselves in a classic Neapolitan world like this…without a hint of tourism.

Naples is a delight, even without the traditional sightseeing. Skipping Pompeii, Capri, and Naples’ great museums, I spent most of my day simply wandering the streets of perhaps the most gritty and colorful city in Europe. As I found on several occasions, within minutes of disembarking, I was immersed in the wonders of this port town — without a hint of the mass cruise industry. The main downside to cruising: Limited time in each port. Still, you can accomplish a lot in eight hours.
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Naples: Blood for a Dying Baby and the Ultimate Sandwich Show

Girls flirt with passing motorcyclists in Naples’ Spaccanapoli District.
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Garbage takes up valuable parking real estate.
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All my life, Naples has been the symbol of chaos, stress, and culture shock for European travel. I remember my first visit (as a wide-eyed 18-year-old). Gene and I stepped off the train into the same vast Piazza Garibaldi that 35 years later still strikes everyone who visits as a big paved hellhole. On that first visit, a man in a white surgeon’s gown approached me and said, “Please…we need blood for a dying baby.” Gene and I made a U-turn, stepped back into the station, and made a beeline for Greece.

Now I’m flying here from Iran (after a quick change in Paris). And, coming from Tehran, Naples is a model of order and sanity.

But coming from anywhere else in Europe, Naples remains uniquely thrilling. One of my favorite sightseeing experiences anywhere in Italy is simply wandering the streets of Naples. I spent an hour and probably a hundred photos just observing the teens on motorcycles in the vertical neighborhoods of the Spaccanapoli district.

Every few steps, a couple of James Dean-cool guys lean against lampposts while three or four girls straddling the same motorbike would cruise by as if playing Neapolitan Idol.

Everyone who knew I was going to Naples seemed to be obsessed with the garbage strike. Minibus-sized mountains of garbage were parked on the curb every couple blocks. It’s easy to make a big newspaper stink about it, but locals seemed to just hold their noses and know that someday this little piece of Naples chaos, too, would be dealt with. I smelled nothing.

In the spirit of finding cheap eats near major sights for my guidebook readers, I walked behind the Archaeological Museum in Naples and met exuberant Pasquale — owner of the tiny Salumeria Pasquale Carrino. Rather than do the cheapskate “how much?” question, I just let fun-loving and flamboyant Pasquale make me his best sandwich. He turned making a sandwich into a show, and I watched, enthralled.

Demonstrating the freshness of his rolls as if squeezing the Charmin, laying a careful pavement of salami, bringing over the fluffy mozzarella ball as if it were a kidney transplant, slicing a tomato with rapid-fire machine precision, and then lovingly pitting the olives by hand and then hanging them like little green paintings on a tasty wall, he finished it all off with a celebratory drizzle of the best oil. Five euros (less than $8) and a smile later, I had my cheap lunch. Saying goodbye to Pasquale, I tried to explain to him that he’d be giving this sandwich show to lots of American visitors next year, and stepped outside to look for a suitable bench upon which to enjoy my lunch.

(Salumeria Pasquale Carrino is 100 yards from the Archeological Museum–as you leave take two rights and a left to Via Salvator Rosa 10, tel. 081-564-0889, closed Sun.)