Okay, before I spend time telling you how much I've enjoyed my allotted time in Naples purely because of the amount of time I've spent getting away from it at every possible opportunity, let me give you a brief insight into why I pray to all that is good and holy that you never find yourself stuck in the city itself.

I read a review of Napoli before I came here, on a website which shall remain nameless, by a reviewer who, to be fair, has managed to come through for me on every other location on this trip. This reviewer said, in no uncertain terms, that she had fallen in love with Naples and could spend many happy hours wandering the little cobbled backstreets looking for museums and soaking up the atmosphere while enjoying a coffee and banter with the patron of a little tattered shopfront. There really is only one word I can use to sum up my feeling of this review - and it rhymes with Rollocks. Ironically, Not only can I say that I have never read so much rubbish in my life, but now that I've been to Naples I can also say that I've never seen so much rubbish either. Every lamppost and every street corner is stacked high with smelly bags of waste, cardboard boxes full of random detritus, and the leavings of every stray animal in the city. Every street is filled with empty plastic bags which waft unexpectedly past your nose, making you retch at the smell of whatever was once contained within. If somebody ever forces you at gunpoint to visit Naples, make absolutely sure your tetanus shots are up to date, and if a dog so much as looks at you funny while you're in town, get a rabies shot on your return! Not an inch of pavement is free of discarded trash, piled high around statues which tourists would probably otherwise rush to look at, around doorways and street-side restaurants. You can buy a slice of pizza from an open air pizzeria where everything is laid out for you on a counter three metres away from piles of stinking garbage - and the flies are not fussy. If Naples was in the UK, the public health authorities would probably have it severed from the mainland with explosive charges and towed out to sea.

Naples does not have a single redeeming feature - not one. It is so far past the point of no return that nobody can even remember where the point of no return was. Bear with me here, I'm running out of similes. Apparently, Naples is pretty much controlled by the Mafia, but if that is the case you'd think they'd be able to channel some of their Ill-gotten gains into a couple of road sweepers and a dustcart, wouldn't you? I mean, they can murder a man in a crowded restaurant and disappear into the night, but they can't organise a rubbish collection once a week? Obviously, pride is not high on the Mafia list of traits...

Hang on, what am I saying?

Naples is a beautiful city of gardens and boulevards, it's majestic parks visible from miles around and attracting art lovers from all over the globe... Sorry, I can't keep it up. I just choked on my Limoncello. The Mafia will just have to deal with the fact that they aren't universally adored. Naples needs to take a good long look at itself - and if it can't, then somebody else needs to look at it for them. I've been to third world countries which shock me less than Naples, and a statement like that really should be some sort of call to arms, don't you think? Put it down Mr Corleone, I didn't mean that literally.

Apparently, not too long ago, one hundred thousand people marched along the sea front in Naples in protest against the Mafia. How many of them were still alive to talk about it the next day has not been reported. But seriously, do the government really have to wait for a march before they react to this sort of thing? Does it really come as such a shock that people, generally, don't want to be murdered in their sleep by somebody in dark sunglasses called Fat Tony who then gets stuck in the window-frame on the way out?

So what of these lovely little backstreets in which visitors can get lost, and these alleged charming coffee vendors who will make you feel welcome? Well, frankly, the backstreets of Naples actually scared me, and I mean seriously scared me to the point that I didn't want to go exploring, even in broad daylight, with anything remotely valuable on me. As soon as I left my hotel with my camera in my hand or took my iPhone out to check the time, somebody would appear from nowhere holding something expensive looking but probably actually knocked up in the back of a shed and painted to look real - and when I said I wasn't interested, they would often follow me down the street until I was thoroughly freaked out and looking for a policeman.

My hotel had kindly furnished me with a map which showed the old quarter highlighted in an attractive yellow colour, leading me to believe that it was a place of sun and frolics. As I started to walk along the streets at the edge of the quarter, peering down each road in turn, however, I started to feel uneasy. Every side road was darkened, the houses crumbling and the floor strewn with litter. On some streets, I saw groups of unfriendly sorts hanging around where I would need to pass by, smoking and kicking their motorbikes for no apparent reason. At one point, feeling brave, I turned into the quarter to see if it was better further in, and I instantly got hopelessly lost in a maze of dark, damp, smelly alleyways. By the time I found my way out again, I reckon my hair must've been standing up on end - I've never wanted to get out of somewhere so much in my life...

Do you remember the omnipresent salesmen I spoke of back in Rome, who wanted nothing more than to sell me sunglasses and children's toys? Well, Naples is clearly Nirvana for these people - every space which isn't already heaped high with trash is filled with trestle tables brimming over with, um, sunglasses and children's toys. It's like the bazaars of Morocco without any of the charm or atmosphere. Occasionally, a salesman will appear holding an iPhone in a very curious way as though he doesn't really want you to get too good a look at it, but generally it's just sunglasses, toys and large piles of second hand clothes which may well have just been liberated from a nearby rubbish heap.

Crossing the road in Naples involves a certain amount of daring, and the understanding that nobody takes the blindest bit of notice of the rules of the road - my taxi to the airport at the end of my stay, for example, didn't stop at a single red light, preferring to speed up instead. When you want to cross the road, visitors need to understand that waiting for a gap in the traffic or for somebody to let you cross is a little like waiting for Julian Clary to be ordained pope. The best move, I found, was simply to walk out into oncoming traffic and wait with bated breath to see if anyone slows down. The chances are, the traffic will just weave around you and you'll find yourself standing in the middle of a busy intersection with traffic zooming past on all sides, wondering what your next move should be. If anybody hits you, they probably just put your body in a bin liner and throw you on the nearest pile of trash!

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.