Napoli

Visit Napoli for long enough to stretch your legs enroute to Pompeii, or if you have a helicopter pick you up from your private yacht and transport you to your villa overlooking the distant city. Otherwise, if you’re like me, you end up staggering into the stazione exhausted and beaten down from an overnight trip spent in uncomfortable seats that were first stiflingly hot and then air conditioned enough to stifle circulation in the limbs. You’ll hobble toward the sign indicating bus, and emerge in a piazza that looks like the worst you’ve ever heard about traffic in India: there are no apparent lane markings or right of way guidelines; scooters are exempt from traffic laws; autos are exempt until they end up head-to-head with a bus; busses suffer no traffic constrictions, and bus drivers are untouchable (scooters don’t count because they’re the equivalent of flies buzzing at a rampaging wildebeest).
Don’t worry about finding a map: most maps don’t have names, but it’s okay because neither do most streets. You can buy an absurdly expensive edition with street names, but why bother since the streets themselves are generally unmarred by such conformity?
Asking a local for directions isn’t much better: if you can communicate your destination—say, “university square”—they’ll say something like, “take the castle bus and get off at the university stop.” And you’ll get no more. But since you’ve consulted your absurdly expensively useless map, you know that the castle bus is the 86 line.
Don’t be afraid to walk into the traffic. It’s a completely fluid system: if you walk into the middle of the road, all oncoming drivers will note your trajectory and adjust accordingly. As long as you keep moving resolutely forward, you’ll be okay (except in the case of scooters, but we’ll get there). Once you’re through the perimeter of the piazza, you’ll be in a jumble of city busses somehow queued for their routes. Hop on your bus and sit. It won’t move until it’s full.
As the driver flirts with the glittery girls with tight pants and shiny shoes clustered around the front, the back (un-air conditioned) part of the bus will fill up. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up next to some twentysomething girls wiping their waddly arms and pits down with antiperspirant wet wipes that they then throw on the floor of the bus or kick out onto the pavement. If you’re unlucky, you’ll be in a crowd of men who desperately need antiperspirant while a crazy woman curses you and rants about your evil doings.
But it gets better.
Once “full,” the bus will start moving, and after five minutes it will have negotiated through the roundabout to the other side of the piazza, where it will park and double its occupancy. You won’t be able to reach a hand hold, but you won’t be able to fall down, either: too many people packed too tightly together. As an added bonus, if you’re female, some guy who looks like a sweaty version of a Godfather mafioso will try to scratch your belly by reaching through your crotch. But if the doors open, keep an eye on all handholds you might snag: the ebb and flow of the human tide lasts a second in each direction, and woe unto you if you’re not ready to anchor yourself in the frantic shoving of desperate Neapolitanos.
Need I mention that it’s important to keep your pockets zipped?

So, after three circuits, you’re off the bus at your stop. What next?
No street signs, for one, and the hostel owner said, “just get off at the university stop and take the second left all the way up to Piazza san Absurdo.”
HA!
No mention that the University stop is actually Piazza Santo Nodisembarko. No mention that the first left could be any of a dozen, and the second a dozen dozen.
If you’re lucky, it’ll only take an hour of asking where the Piazza san Absurdo is whenever you pass a store owner sitting in the shop doorway and staring at your passage. They aren’t interested, really don’t give a hoot who or what you are, but they’ll sit in the doorways and stare at you as long as they can in hopes of enticing you into the store or instigating spontaneous human combustion. Take your pick.
Let’s not think about what happens to unlucky tourists, okay?

Nearly four hours have elapsed by the time you find the effing hostel. And the proprietor, who gladly accepted your three days of credit card reservations, notes that if you will be two, he’ll have to upgrade you to the finest room for a mere doubling of the price. No, no, no matter that he mistook the reservation, it will be double the price.

Such is Napoli: if you know where you’re going and are willing to run down anything in your way of getting there, it’s golden. But if you’re not, every scooter beep is a declaration of, “jump aside asshole, or we’re both going to be hurting.” Really: one way, wrong way, no admittance, pedestrian only, toddlers playing in a square, provided you ride your scooter with your feet out to halt a sudden fall, you’re golden. As long as you toot your horn, you declare that you’ve taken the right of way; anyone who attempts to take it can expect a crotch shot from a scooter running full bore.

If you’re in Naples, take a stretch and get back on the train to Pompeii (but get a good guidebook because none of the sites are marked; few bodies and no erotic frescoes are on display).
If you have the misfortune to stay in Naples, treat yourself: take the bullet train out. Ride to Rome in an hour. An absolutely sterile, organized, quiet, smooth, fast, train will induce a relaxation unparalleled anywhere else in your trip.