Italy: Part 5

In my opinion, the best pizza in Naples is at De Matteo's.**

Hotel back stairway, or Not A Youth Hostel.***



Night view from our hotel rooftop.

*Yep, we went up to the top of Mt. Vesuvius. The original plan was to hike up the whole thing, but due to the tourist information office being closed and a lack of helpful signage, we decided to pay to get a bus to take us close to the top, and then walk up the last 25-ish minutes to the actual top. This was perfect for me because I was having knee pain, so hiking the whole thing would have likely been impossible for me anyways.

**We tried pizza at many restaurants in Naples, and I came to appreciate the wonderful taste of the crust and the flavor of the "char" of  Neapolitan pizza. The simplicity of the Margherita pizza is really quite wonderful. But it is not my favorite pizza in the world...I remain a big fan of Lou Malnati's.


***I am still in awe that we had such a nice paid-for hotel room. Staying in a four star hotel is definitely different (and better) than my former youth hostel travels. Though there are certainly fun things to youth hostels, like meeting people from all over the world and getting to tell stories later about the places you stayed in with roaches (Paris) and bed bugs (Rome), and the one that was said to be haunted (Bergen). I guess the good stories make up for the lack of luxuries.