First impressions are lasting impressions and I’m afraid my first one of Naples was not great. Walking out of the train station you are confronted with an area which his … to put it delicately … a little undesirable. Though the buildings themselves were quite magnificent. It just felt seedy and there were some not very nice looking people hanging around the place. Plus the fact the area seemed to be a giant car park with cars absolutely everywhere was hardly encouraging.

Oh and by the way – crossing the streets of Naples is done at the pedestrian’s risk. We’ve found that generally cars will not stop for you and with no pedestrian traffic lights to help you out you really have to move quickly to get across the road.

We had come to Naples from Rome (a nearly 90 minute trip on an express train) because of a Pompeii/Mt Vesuvius tour that we were supposed to be taking with Viator. It wasn’t until we were picked up by the driver that we were told that we wouldn’t be visiting Mt Vesuvius. This made us a little angry because if we’d know about this earlier (when we arrived in Rome a couple of days ago we’d had to call to confirm the tour – they could have told us then) we would have tried to re-arrange or at least pick a different tour. Apparently the reason we couldn’t do the Mt Vesuvius part was because of the Giro d’Italia (the Italian answer to the Tour de France.) How annoying.

So, we did the Pompeii tour (this it the next write-up) and within a couple of hours were back in Naples in time for lunch. Honestly we were both a bit grumpy at lunch time as we were frustrated with cancellation of part the tour. Nevertheless by the time we’d both had a Naples pizza (mine a rather salty broccoli and local sausage pizza) we were both ready to make the most of our free afternoon. We played a game over lunch of seeing if we could spot the mafia …

With only a few hours left of the afternoon our best bet for seeing the most of Naples was the Hop On Hop Off bus (but we weren’t planning on hopping off) but unfortunately we only had time to do one route – the one that took us up and down the coastline. The afternoon was quite a nice one so the bus ride was rather pleasant. Naples struck me as the kind of place which didn’t have too many things to do except to relax and soak up the relaxed atmosphere. The buildings are quite beautiful and being at the top of the bus helped bring us closer to the facades.

Naples doesn’t have much of a beach along the Gulf and instead there are large white rocks which people used to full advantage to soak up the sun. Graffiti artists also apparently find them quite a good canvas to demonstrate their art.

Thankfully, the centre of Naples and the coast by the Gulf of Naples was much nicer than what we’d glimpsed of the city in the morning by the train station so our visit to Naples wasn’t an entire waste of time and I walked away with an improved first impression. In fact Teesh had so revised her feeling on Naples that she even said that her next European trip would include an extended stay in Naples for rest …