In the Dutch language we have a saying: To first see Naples and then Die. This refers to the outstanding scenic beauty of the Bay of Naples. The early morning approach to the port is indeed very beautiful. You have to the south the island of Capri and ahead of you the sun climbing above the horizon behind Mount Vesuvius. After a few days of rain and drizzle in the various ports, the sun was a welcome sight, with the promise of a beautiful day in port.

Naples is an important ferry port with connections to Palermo in Sicily and a lot of smaller fast boats going to Capri and Sorriento and thus we had to do our daily bit of ship dodging again. These ferries call in to the pilot station in Italian, local Italian, which does not help us one bit in finding out what their plans are. As a matter of prudence we normally line up behind them and make our approach when they are safely out of the way.

Some of the pilots come from these ferries and they can get very impatient with the careful way we tend to maneuver. Their idea of arriving is to charge full ahead into the port, swing around, give full astern and charge astern to towards the dock, hoping that their engines won’t fail at the crucial moment. They do fail sometimes and occasionally you see the most spectacular dents in near the waterline of those ferries. So I took my time as saving five minutes on a 12 hour day does not make sense to me.

We docked at the Naples passenger terminal which is a left over from the trans atlantic heyday of ocean travel. It was built during the years of Mussolini in Italy and is of a stark neo Bauhaus style. Similar to what the Nazi’s built in their years in Germany. It has two rearing bronze horses on the top and white sweeping steps leading up to the terminal from the town. The inside is a wonder of high soaring walls, marble floors and large spacious area’s. It is now only used as a cruise terminal, but for me it was wonderful to see that the old First class, 2nd class and 3rd class waiting rooms were still there.

I asked permission to walk around behind the scenes and see the operational side but as it was a Sunday no high enough authority was available to grant permission for that. We are going to Naples one more time, so I will try again then. Naples is one of the few ports where we are still allowed to do full maintenance, so the chief officer had a good day catching up with outstanding window washing and painting. We are still having problems with the sand in the air and the ship got a good hosing down today to get the sand out of the nooks and crannies where the rain from the past few days could not get to.

Sail away was after dark and our guests had a nice view of the lights of Sorriento and Capri twinkling on the horizon. In past we sailed between Capri and the mainland. There is a two mile wide passage but recently that whole area has been turned into a nature reserve and thus we had to sail around the island. Tomorrow is a sea day when we sail through Strait Messina, in the early morning, and then around the South side of Italy on our way to Dubrovnik.