Is it Naples or Napoli?
I just had to do a Google search to double-check. One of my best friends who used to live here in Ghana is from Napoli and he always says Napoli. Another friend from the north of Italy always calls it Naples, which sounds like nipples when he says it.
Napoli and Naples are the same city in the Central Western side of the boot of Italy. Napoli is the local Italian name though so we will go with that.
We started the morning at our Airbnb on the mountaintop at Sant Agata. I looked into the ferry service that goes from Sorrento to Napoli and found a good time that worked for us to be able to get down to Sorrento with all the little ones, meet up with my mother who was staying in Sorrento, and then walk to the ferry dock.
We made our way to Sorrento using the buses that were sometimes a little confusing to figure out these always ended at the train station. We met my mother there who was in between airbnbs that day I think and so she checked her bags into the train station to have them hold them for the day while we went to Napoli. We then made our way through the busy streets looking for a fabled elevator that would take us down to the water's edge. I will do a post on Sorrento coming up as it is a unique town. It is up on a cliff top hundreds of feet above the water's edge which means a whole lot of stairs or a one euro elevator ride to the bottom. Luckily there were intuitive signs and we found the park and the elevator and then made our way to the harbor. It then took a little bit of trial and error and asking around to find the right ticket place for the ferry ride. When I went to buy the tickets the timetable did not match at all with what I had researched and the boat was going about 2 hours later.
This created a few issues, the first being that we were meeting my friend Luciano who is from Napoli but lived in Ghana and is the good friend mentioned above. He just happened to be in Napoli at around the same time we were around. I needed to get ahold of him and let him know we would be coming later. Then my mother was concerned we would not be back in time to collect her bags from the baggage collection. By this point, everyone was kind of hungry though so they decided to find a restaurant as we figured out how to handle this. I decided I would run back to the train station get my mom's bag and check it into the new Airbnb for her as I could move the fastest without everyone else. Dzigbordi decided that she would go with me with Bjorn also. So we made our mad dash through the streets of Sorrento, got my mother checked in and made our way back to the docks in time to catch the ferry with the rest of the family.
The ferry ride only took about 30 minutes to cross the bay of Naples. When we arrived we quickly connected with my friend Luciano.
He actually had a bit of a surprise for us which we were not expecting. His girlfriend Faruza was with him. She is also Ghanaian and from the same hometown as my wife from the north of Ghana. She has been doing her master's in the US for the last couple of years so this was a bit of a surprise.
As we started to take in our surroundings of this new city the big question now was what to do. Luciano and Faruza took lunch when we indicated we would be late. Our family also took lunch while Dzigbordi and I ran for the bags and check-in. But that meant Dzigbordi and I hadn't eaten yet. And one of the things we had always heard about from Faruza was the good food in Napoli and how some of the little hole-in-the-wall places can be very cheap and very good. So we decided that we would get something to eat to start off with.
We started walking to the place we would eat. We were told it was not far but it was still a good walk. One thing that most Italians will tell you about Napoli who are not from Napoli is that it is a very rough town, and you have to be careful and not get pickpocketed or duped. This was the first place we started hearing cars honking at each other it was faster passed and noisier. It was much more like Africa and this appealed to my wife who was excited to see Faruza and explore.
Napoli was the first place in Europe where people kind of just crossed the street anyhow and did not really pay attention to crosswalks. Luciano was leading the way and we followed the best we could through the streets.
Napoli has a very prestigious football club and they just finished their last championship game off the season so the streets of the area were all decorated in the team's banners and colors. This was even true on the other side of the bay where we were staying above Sorrento.
We eventually made it to the market where we would eat some very fresh seafood at this market stall. We pushed a few tables together for all of us and sat there in the street and ordered what we would like.
The rest of the family ended up ordering some food also. We all got the frito misto which is a fried seafood platter with a mix of fish, calamari, and other things I don't remember.
As we ate Luciano and Faruza kept Bjorn occupied for a little bit.
After the food, the rest of the family was already feeling a bit tired and were worried about the kids getting fussy and my mother's legs were pretty tired. Dzigbordi wanted to see more of the city and do some shopping with Faruza so we split up the rest of the family heading back towards the ferry dock with directions to a nice coffee shop in the Napoli Palace as another site to see. We headed off in the direction of the shopping district.
This pedestrian street was lined with souvenir shops and pubs and was decorated all along the way.
Faruza had Luciano carry Bjorn saying it would be good practice for him. Bjorn seemed to enjoy this and Dzigbordi and I really enjoyed the break for our backs which were very tired by this point in the trip. Bjorn looked very Italian with Luciano with his olive skin.
Dzigbordi and Faruza danced their way through this piaza they seemed to be quite excited.
There were old and historic churches and structures everywhere.
If you look carefully here Dzigbori is buying a fridge magnet from a vendor. She said while she was doing this a small lady tried to get into her bag but she was not successful.
There were little piazzas everywhere throughout the city that had these monoliths. This one had a busker playing under it.
I like this whole building mural.
We walked and walked Dzigbordi and Faruza went into a number of shops and bought a few things. We needed to get back and catch the late afternoon ferry which involved a bit more walking to make sure we got there on time. We ended up taking the same ferry back as the rest of the family we thought they were going to get an earlier ferry but we all ended up together.
Leaving the Port of Napoli.
Mount Vesuvius in the distance which laid waste to Pompeii.
Approaching the other side of the bay. The line of cliffs that line the whole shoreline all the way up to Sorrento which is just to the right out of view of in the photo.
As you get closer to Sorrento the scale of the cliffs is more noticeable. We were getting close to docking in Sorrento Here.
Pulling into the breakwater of Sorrento.
One of the large hotels overlooking the harbor.
A boat coming into the harbor.
The walking was not over, when we got into Sorrento we had to take the Elevator back up, and then walk to the train station and catch the right bus back to Sant Agata. When we got there we quickly found a restaurant to feed us and rest our feet.
I enjoyed a Spriz which is a sparkling wine on ice with some Campari. It hit a spot. We then walked back to our airbnb to rest for another day.
The next morning we made sure that Bjorn wore his new Napoli jersey which Luciano got him while we were together the prior day. It looked great on him but he quickly outgrew it sadly. He loved this shelf over our bed and spent a lot of time trying to scatter it.
Thank you for going on another adventure with us.