Mount Vesuvius looming over the ruined city of Pompeii.

After Rome, we were off to Naples, a city immortalized in the Dean Martin song “That’s Amore,” birthplace of pizza, and a seedy locale stereotyped as a mafia hotspot. While the Lonely Planet guidebooks generally cast a positive light on destinations they cover, they don’t mince words introducing Naples, describing it as “a raucous hell-broth of a city.”

We took a dusty regional train south from Rome through the dry, Mediterranean hillsides of Southern Italy. As embarrassing as admitting this apparently should be — based on the expressions of the Europeans I later told this to — this was my first time on a train. Read More…