Napoli\NYC

Naples' reputation precedes it among backpackers.

"You're going to Naples?" people in various hostels ask me. "It's dirty. It's scary. Unsafe. Women shouldn't walk alone. You couldn't make me go back there."

"It's covered in garbage," said Mindy, an Aussie I met in Ischia. "There's no more room in the landfills, so they're just leaving it out there to rot. Plus, on the street where our hostel was, we saw people doing coke in a car and saw another car get broken into."

Coke in cars? B an Es? Whatever, I saw that kind of stuff all the time in New York. And having spent 2 days here, I can say that Naples doesn't live up to the hype. It feels almost exactly like NYC, except instead of taking the ferry to Staten Island or Long Island, you can take it to Caprì or Ischia.

That said, I didn't come all this way to spend a few days in Murray Hill. I would like to go somewhere more scenic at this point.