We went to Napoli mostly thinking of food and not too much of touristical trip and that’s what we got. Cheap drinks and cheap food (and lots of people on top of it).

The city

While we have not visited big cathedrals and other landmarks, we instead walked a lot in the streets. We spent a lot of time avoiding motorbikes and cars coming very fast in small streets! One district near the see-side got our attention in particular. Called Montedidio, or the mount of god, this highly elevated street is also the location of a story from the italian writer Erri de Luca. In this semi-autobiographical story, a young boy living in this street in the 50s undergoes its moult from childhood to adolescence. We both read it and we totally recommend it! It is a short and easy but also poetic book!

The undergrounds

The only touristical tour we had was the underground tour of Napoli (Sotterranea). The underground tunnels of Napoli reach over 80 km and started to be first dug 5000 years ago at the end of the prehistoric area. Later, the extracted rocks were used by the Greeks for the Neapolis fortification. However, the underground reached to its size during Romans time and were used as cisterns. Afterwards, it has been basically the garbage collection unit of the town for long years until the second world war. When people of Napoli needed shelter during the war, they just covered all the garbage with cement and used these cavities as shelters against air-raid.

The food: pizza!

However, one must-do in Napoli was of course to eat pizza. As we learned from the locals, a margherita should be maximum 5 € even though in the most famous touristical places they sell it for at least 10 €. In fact, we found a great place for really delicious (most delicious we ever had so far?) pizza in the spanish quartier, next to the student bars with 1€ aperol spritz!

Herculaneum (Ercolano)

We visited Ercolano as a day trip from Napoli. It is sister town of more famous Pompeii and samewise famous for being buried under volcanic ash in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 and to be preserved nearly intact (more than Pompeii actually) until today.

In fact, we were amazed how intact it was, it was likely the first time we saw the second floors of houses in an ancient town. It is due to the mainly pyroclastic material that covered Herculaneum (unlike Pompeii) carbonized and preserved more wood in objects such as roofs, beds, and doors, as well as other organic-based materials such as food and papyrus. Thanks to that it is also possible to see amazing frescos from that time.