Just back from a brief stay in Napoli - just six nights. We stayed at the Hotel Domitiana, the cheapest of hotels offered by Italiatours in Naples. A friendly 3 star recently renovated hotel in a safe area with several public transit options (Metro, Cumana suburban train, bus) but the downside is that it is too far to return to your room during the day and you can't really walk to the centre because the area is cut off from the main area by a huge tunnel. It is across the street from a large funfair and near the soccer (football) stadium. You can walk to the Campi Flegrei area.

Highlights were Pompeii and Herculaneum (not necessarily in that order!) and the city itself. It is a noisy bustling friendly city albeit exhausting. Here are a few images -

Laundry strung right across narrow streets, rainbow peace flags everywhere, stray dogs everywhere. Children in fancy dress for pre-Lenten carnival, some dressed as nuns and others wore crinolined skirts that swayed as they walked. Street sellers and markets and the fruit salesman's chicken under his stall, right outside the Cumana station. Insane traffic which doesn't obey red traffic lights so that we had to dodge between cars and scooters to get across the road. It was like playing Frogger and by the end of the week, others followed us instead of us taking shelter in someone else's foray into the traffic. Fabulous food, especially of course pizza and seafood, relatively inexpensive and service was invariably excellent. Cute uniforms of some waiters in cafes and bars, like old-fashioned bellhops. Great coffee. Noisy crowded streets with neighbours greeting neighbours, all filled with decaying palazzos and the quiet of cloisters.

Staying in Naples itself is well worthwhile but not for novices to Italy! Get your sea legs in Tuscany or Rome first.

Frances Toronto, Canada