This video is an excerpt from a much longer Italy Travel talk. To view other
topics or to watch my Italy talk in its entirety, visit ricksteves.com, or
check out my Rick Steves YouTube channel. Enjoy.
My mark of a good traveler is how they enjoy Italy. And I want to remind you,
Italy is a challenge. Italy is a little bit of chaos, Italy is unpredictable.
Italy, you gotta take it in stride. If you can embrace Italy on its terms, you can enjoy
it, but still you gotta be well-prepared. I always like to say, "if you like Italy
as far south as Rome, go further south because it'll get better. If Italy is
getting on your nerves by the time you get down to Rome, don't go further south
because it gets worse," okay.
Italy intensifies as you plunge deeper. Let's take a few minutes and
look at Italy, south of Rome. You know when you go down to Naples you find an
urban jungle of Italy. It is Italy in the extreme, and for a lot of people it's
just too much, but I absolutely love Naples. It's a wonderful place to enjoy, it's
the birthplace of pizza, it's the birthplace, I believe, of Sophia Loren,
it's a place where you've got incredible street markets, and it's a place where, if
you have good information, you can enjoy it and you can enjoy it safely, in spite
of its rough-and-tumble reputation. Here's a couple I met with ripped out pages from
my cruise guide, I want to remind you that the cruise ships park right there,
a 10 minute walk from all the rough-and-tumble you'd imagine in Naples,
and you can get out, if you're well-organized, and enjoy Naples, either as a
side trip, you can settle in, and you can do it as a day from your cruise ship.
There's something called "life in the street" that people even with a lot of
money choose to have. They want to live right downtown. In Naples, people like the
noise at night, they want to be close to it, they live in the streets. There's a
lot of problems. I'm routinely in Naples when there's a strike and they're not
emptying the garbage. And the garbage is stacking up in the streets, and it starts
to smell a little bit ripe. I'm not gonna sweet, you know, sugar coat it, Italy is rough-
and-tumble, but in that package is some of the most rewarding travel you can
enjoy in Italy and in all of Europe. This is Spaccanapoli, it's a street that
goes back to back when the
Greeks named that city Neapolis, the new city, 2,500 years ago.
Step into the markets. Wonderful markets in Italy, wonderful characters wonderful
colors, a great chance for a photographer. Remember Mount Vesuvius erupted
79 years after Christ, and it-- from the top of that hill a whole lot of
a mud flow came down and buried Pompeii. This is an ancient painting of Mount
Vesuvius before it erupted. It lost the top third of that peak, and you can go to
the top of Mt. Vesuvius today, it's hot, and look into the steaming cauldron of
that crater. And then you can go down to Pompeii, the city that it buried in 79 AD.
Pompeii is a city that gives us an amazing, intimate look at what Ancient Rome was
all about when it was stopped in its tracks with that eruption, 79 AD. You
wander through the streets of Pompeii, you go to the theaters, you drop by what
were fast food stands, you step into the sauna and you understand where people would
soak, and you go into the rich people's homes, and you marvel at the frescoes
on the walls. All from the 1st century, two thousand years ago. If you're going
to Pompeii, I want to remind you that the most important art treasures of Pompeii
are in Naples, in the National Museum. So you really need to think of Pompeii
as a two-part visit. Yeah, you gotta see the site, but all the art treasures, like
this mosaic, are going to be in the city of Naples. While I think Naples is a great
city, it's a little bit too greedy for a lot of people's comfort zone, and what's
very interesting is just an hour to the south, just a short train ride on what
called the "Circumvesuviana," the commuter train that circles Mount
Vesuvius, you get down to Sorrento. Sorrento is a limoncello kind of
resort. It's just a delight, lemon trees everywhere, there's none of the intensity
of Naples, a wonderful scene as people do the passeggiata in the evening. And
from there, it's the jumping-off point for enjoying the Amalfi Coast. The Amalfi
Coast is the treacherous, exotic, expensive,
jet-setty, celebrity resort coast of Italy. It's so congested, the roads are so
narrow, that have a system where can just go one direction one day and another
direction the other day. I do not like driving on the Amalfi Coast, even if you
can manage the driving, you can't really enjoy the scenery 'cause you're trying to
stay on that cliff side road, and there's no place to park when you get to the
towns that you want to explore. it makes more sense for you to take a bus or to
hire a local taxi or driver to take you out. Plenty of beautiful restaurants,
gorgeous towns. Positano would be my favorite town on the Amalfi Coast
Positano is a jet-setty resort town with a beautiful beach, lots of hills, and
expensive hotels and restaurants. I like to hire a taxi. This is my friend
Rafael, and he and his buddies take you around on the coast. You hire him, it's
kind of expensive, but he'll wait for you in three different places, and you have
time to roam around, then you hop in the car to go to the next place, it makes a
lot of sense. One thing we try to do with our guidebooks is let our travelers
pool their resources. I have no financial interest in this, I just like to let my
travelers share the luxury of the minibus with the guide. We've partnered
with a company called Mondo Tours that, for a very small price, will let you be
one of eight people on a minibus leaving Sorrento every morning, and sharing the
cost of the guide and the minibus tour all along the Amalfi Coast. It's a very
good thing to look into if you'd like to do the Amalfi, and it's reliable. We've
tested them, we were skeptical at first, they were really good, and it's a huge
economy to be able to share that minibus and that guide with eight people. I hope you
can sign up for that, you'll get the details in my Rick Steves Italy book. From
Sorrento, you can take a quick boat out to Capri, and ever since ancient Roman
times this has been a hangout for emperors, and socialites, and big shots. Roman
emperors like to go out here for their vacation. You can take the short boat
from Sorrento out to Capri, and the popular thing to do in Capri, there's
lots to see on the island but the real attraction for a lot of tourists, is the
famous Blue Grotto. And you'll go there with a tourist boat, and then you get off
the big boat, you get into a little dingy,
and you nervously scooch down into the bottom of your dinghy as you got your
ruffian boatman that tells you, "get deep down or you're going to lose your fingers,"
and then when the swell gets to a low ebb, he pulls the chain and he pulls you
through this tiny little hole in the wall, and bam, you're in the Blue Grotto. And
it's just glorious. And he'll sing "o solo mio," and then he'll say "I'm not going to
take you out here unless you give me more money," and it's that kind of a gimmick,
its a tourist trap, but it's a beautiful tourist trap. And if you're going to Capri,
it's a delightful thing. Nearby, you've got Paestum, an amazing Rome--Ancient
Greek ruin. A reminder that 500 years before Christ, southern Italy was
called Magna Graecia. it was a Greek colony. And if you really want to see
Greek ruins but you don't have time to go over to Greece, you can see them just an
hour south of Naples at Paestum. Plenty of opportunities to enjoy South Italy. If
you like, we have a tour of South Italy that really is popular, and it goes to a
lot of delightful stops south of Naples. And while I don't have time to talk
about it today,
Sicily is a popular destination in Italy. This is a beautiful tour, winter or
summer, there's plenty to see and do in Sicily, and if you want to know more
about Sicily go to our website ricksteves.com, go into the TV corner,
and we've got a thirty minute program just on Sicily. You could download the
script, and that would be what I have to offer about Sicily, along with our
itinerary. When you are thinking about
traveling in southern Italy, I want to remind you,
Italy is your intense urban jungle-- or, Naples
is your intense urban jungle of Italy,
and then an hour south you've got one of the most delightful
resort towns anywhere, Sorrento,
which makes a beautiful home base
for exploring the wonders of South Italy.
Thank you very much, and happy travels.
Grazie, thank you, buon viaggio, buon viaggio.
If you've enjoyed this video you'll find lots more
at ricksteves.com, and on my Rick Steves
YouTube channel. Happy travels, and thanks
for joining us.