Perche

Forget about Uber in Italy. It is practically non-existent, and is more expensive than a taxi, private car, or train.

Yes, you will be missing out on quite a bit because you are not going anywhere, just flitting about from one town to the next. There are many thousands of great things to see in Italy, but you just can't see them all at once. It's like, "If it's Tuesday, this must be Ravenna." Why Ravenna, San Marino, Cinque Terre? Choose a place or two, and go there. Every time you add a place, you have lost the possibility to know the place where you are at. At such a pace, you might as well just stay on a plane and fly over it, because you aren't going to experience anything about the nature of the place you are going to visit in a day or two, much less a couple of hours.

You have to go to one or two places and stay there. I've been to Naples maybe 7-8 times. Usually for periods of at least a few weeks. I think it was in either 2013 or 2014 I went to Summer School there. Although my apartment was air conditioned and in the most interesting neighborhood, the landlord was a nut, so after class I would just walk, and walk, up and down every hill, or along the Lungamare, or seashore. I never saw so many restaurants, bars, churches, museums, stores that weren't fascinating, so that having stayed there collectively I'd say for almost a year, I can't say I, "got in Naples."

Of course, Naples stands for pizza. You have never eaten pizza until you have it in Naples. The pizza scene starts around 7 at night, when the good places in the old part of the city, Via dei Tribunale, start to open, during which time there are already crowds waiting to get in. You give your name, and if they like you, they'll get you in; in about two hours. They don't take reservations. Some do, but the major places don't. You stand outside for a few hours, but you don't actually have to do that. You don't want to ruin your appetite by eating, but you can go to a bar and have a drink, go for a walk and see a site, if there is a soccer game there will be an outside screen and you can join the crowd and have a drink and enjoy the zest. Just keep checking back, and see when the estimate is that you will get in.

Since the artwork and museums of Naples, if they were in Rome or Florence, would be among the most famous in the world, you can go to them and instead of spending hours standing in a crowd to look at the tiny Mona Lisa in the Louvre, you can sit with similar masterpieces in a room by yourself, and contemplate them.

But it is OLD. I think it is the second or third oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world. Old means dark, unfamiliar, and gives a dangerous feel. It's not like walking down Fifth Avenue in NYC. However, the crime rate in Naples is lower than the crime rate in Milan in the North. Milan, by a long, long way, is the city with the highest crime rate in Italy, followed by Bologna, then Florence.

But it does look scary. The Global Safety Index ranks Iceland as the safest country, followed by New Zealand, Austria, and Canada. The USA is 59th, and it is important to consider that many of the places ranked lower than the USA are plagued by civil war or famine.

Why are people afraid of Naples, when there are only two countries in the industrialized world that have a worse safety record than the USA; Russia and the Ukraine. The USA ranks below Panama, Uruguay, Ghana, etc, for safety, so why worry about Naples, that has less crime than London or Paris? If you look at the World Criminality Index, Naples is safer than Philadelphia, Houston, Atlanta, and 11 other US cities, and it has so much to offer, and is only a one hour train ride from Rome. As one of the oldest cities in the world its crumbling streets have their own beauty that may not match the elegance of Rome or Milan, but Naples has by far, less crime than places like Florence.'

Don't believe me? You are way more likely to be physically assaulted in Milan or Torino, more likely to get raped or sexually assaulted in Bologna or Florence, than in Naples:

https://www.corriere.it/datablog/l'i...?refresh_ce-cp

Just don't look at Italy as a place to flit around from city to city to take pictures in front of monuments. Go there to experience what it is like to live there, so when you come back you can appreciate what you have at home, and adopt some of the better things in life that you do not have at home.

Naples over Cinque Terre is a no-brainer.