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Naples was by far the dodgiest place we went to! The nicest thing about it is that it's on the Gulf of Naples. To quote Lonely Planet again, "...The drivers can be reckless, and petty thieves are rampant, so look both ways and watch your back." To say the drivers "can" be reckless is an understatement; right from the second we walked out of the train station it was all car horns and traffic chaos! From what I can gather there are no road lanes, no road rules, no indicating, and absolutely no courtesy; people just seem to drive where they want, when they want, regardless of whether anybody is in their way hahaha! Needless to say, there isn't a single car on the road that doesn't have dents and scrapes all over it. We only came to Naples to see Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii, but from talking to people it sounds like we could have just as easily done that from Sorrento - a much smaller and much nicer resort town on the other side of the Gulf of Naples. Nevertheless, it was an experience! :)

The train to Naples was another fast one much like the TGV from Paris to Bern. This shot was taken while we were screaming along at exactly 300km/h.		And here's some of that traffic I talked about. No lanes, no rules, probably no licenses either - just one great free-for-all!
This would be the only city we visited where I wouldn't get on a bicycle if you paid me to! And come to think of it I didn't see any cyclists anyway.		In Naples, you don't buy a car with the intention of one day reselling it again; you buy a car with the expectation it will be wrecked within a couple of years.
Like I said, there's barely a car on the road that doesn't look like this. Even the newest late-model cars on the road look like this hahaha, it's unreal!
Not only do they drive wherever they want, they park wherever they want too! Most of the side streets have cars double-parked (or triple) like this.		This is one of the main roads in and out of town, and for several kilometres both sides of it are lined with blacks selling crap.
The Gulf of Naples - probably the nicest feature of the city.		Looking up the hill from the bay; very cramped residential buildings.
The closest thing Naples has to a beach hehe.		She's keen!

Mt. Vesuvius, shot from the tour bus on the way to the summit. The roads up there are very narrow and the corners so tight that the bus driver had to let the horn rip on the approach to every blind corner to warn traffic coming the other way. It was great when other buses had to pass us on stretches of road where even two cars could barely fit past each other!		Mt. Vesuvius' crater. As you can see, I was impressed, really ;) Vesuvius is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted in the last 100 years.		View of Naples and the gulf from Mt. Vesuvius.

View from the other side.		Hiker Mo!		You can buy this guy at a little shop up the mountain, if that's your thing ;)

The ruins of Pompeii. In 79 AD, Mt. Vesuvius had a major eruption that buried Pompeii in mud and ash and killed around 2,000 Pompeii residents. Before the eruption, Pompeii was a thriving town. 17 years before the eruption, Pompeii was hit by a severe earthquake in 62 AD that caused considerable damage, some of which was not repaired before the eruption.
Pompeii wasn't rediscovered again until 1748, and has since been excavated to reveal many intact buildings and wall paintings providing insight into the daily life of ancient Romans. Pretty amazing!
Once a resort town for the wealthy, the ruins include temples, an amphitheatre (above left), a stadium (above right), and streets lined with shops and luxurious homes (below left). The town itself is fairly large and takes a good couple of hours to completely wander around (and is yet to be completely excavated).

Once-luxurious homes (by the standards of the day at least).		Mt. Vesuvius overlooking its dirty work.		On an unrelated note, they're pretty big on Nutella in Europe. This jar was bigger than my head hahaha!

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