I am a single man. I traveled alone. I stayed in Hostels. The first one was in Florence. Staff there provide a breakfast, and a dinner around 7-11pm. But they didn’t care that I ate my own food. I may have mentioned that I worry that typical food recipes have too much sodium or are otherwise unhealthy. The hostel environmnts were nicer that I expected based on descriptions of hostels on blogs and on other websites. The first Hostel was on the 3rd floor of a building. I Don’t remember seeing an elevator or I didn’t look for one. I was there for 6 nights.
The second Hostel was in Naples, on the 5th floor of a building. The elevator was out of order. I was there 3 nights. One night in the hostel, around 4 am, I heard noises coming from outside; my first guess was, the noises were gunfire; but maybe it was garbage trucks emptying dumpsters; somebody said the noises were fireworks, but I don’t believe that. What I read, was that Naples is chaotic, dirty and over-crowded. But the streets I walked on were not any dirties or crowded that the streets I walked on in Rome. The hostel entrance was on a street which seemed like a wide alley; few people walked on this street; the citynis quite windy because it is right next to the bay of Naples; there was a sort of desolation in the alley as I entered and left the hostel; I experienced the same desolation as I looked at the wind blowing through the palm trees by the Capodimonte art museum in Naples; I would have been just as happy if I had skipped this museum. I forgot to look up the bus schedule for my trip back from the Capodimonte and waited more than a half hour for a bus to arrive; for a few minutes I thought I would walk back but Three stray dogs snarreled at me and I very slowly walked backwards from them and back to a bus stop.
I took the train to the pompeii scavi. On the way two middle aged guys jumped on at a stop and immediately, one was playing accordian and one saxophone; that lasted for maybe 10 minutes and they they tried collecting tips. People do not do this in the USA.
The 3rd hostel was in Rome; a staff member gave walking a tour that I joined with 5 others.
Some place I saw were not listed in Rick Steves Italy 2017:
-Fort Belvedere - costs 3 Euros. Rick lists another place to get a scenic view but Fort Belvedere was almost deserted and closer to the skyline and totally worth the 3 Euros.
-The Florence Synagogue, built is 1872-1882, and the Rome Synagogue, built in 1904.
-The National Etruscan museum in Rome. It has good English descriptions, was almost deserted, occupied me for almost 4 hours.
Everything else I saw has been described well by Rick and other people.
I wish I had taken public transportation more than I did.
My tickets for Bruneschelli's dome did not work; the ticket scanning machine falsely indicated that the ticket was already used earlier that day. I don't care so much about missing the dome climb; the part I was sad about was the money I wasted.