Friday, September 4th 2009
Today it rained, not much and not for very long, but enough to relieve the intense humidity. This was the second rainfall we have seen since leaving Vancouver. The first was the day in late April when we chose to visit Nordstrand, the beach near den Haige, which was a cold, unwelcome rain accompanied by strong winds.
Naples seems like a small town. We jumped on the Alibus (3.20 Euros each) from the Airport and twenty minutes later we disembarked at the Piazza Municipio and made our way to the rendezvous spot where we met Diego who brought us to our apartment at San Sepolcro 33 in Quartieri Spagnoli. Diego spent some time giving us an orientation that consisted mostly of a list of the best places to eat around the spots we were likely to visit; including the local pizzeria and trattoria. He had a good laugh over the fact that we had chosen Naples as the only city we will visit on the Italian leg of our journey.
The “Spanish Quarter”, our neighbourhood is a noisy, warren of small streets filled with laundry, all kinds of people and way too many scooters. The buildings rise to seven stories, and from our balcony we can see right across into our neighbors living room about 15 feet away. On our first morning, I heard the sound of songbirds and realized it was from the caged birds on a nearby balcony. By late afternoon and right through the evening there is a cacophony of scooters, kids, radios, tvs, dishes rattling; the sounds of many lives colliding.
People are super friendly and helpful, we start with our limited Italian and the next thing we know they are chatting away to us. “Scusi” (excuse me) is the great opening line and everyone is more than willing to give information.
Laundry day was going to be exciting, I too could hang my clothes out in the everyday is laundry day tapestry, until Yvonne pointed out that water is poured from buckets above...water that has washed floors, that is why we see tarps covering laundry lines and just ruining a good picture.
Everything is walking distance from our apartment and people have been walking these streets for 28 centuries. These past few days we have been exploring the Centro Storico. It is filled with those picturesque courtyards and piazzas with monuments of mostly saints and a whole lot of churches. Many things are under construction. You look down into big excavations and see ruins of previous civilizations. The Naples, from the set of old postcards I bought, was so much more picturesque than the city today. But there seems to be a great deal of restoration going on.
In little alcoves and in glass cabinets mounted on the sides of buildings all around these old neighbourhoods are shrines with statues and flowers and family portraits. My guess is they mark all the many places where scooters have done away with someone. The scooters are really out of control. They are not like those silent bicycles of Amsterdam but like mosquitoes….so annoying , always honking and it seems the norm to drive them as recklessly as possible. People of all ages use them for transport and just when you think you are on a pedestrian only street they come zooming from every direction.
Weeks could be spent in Naples visiting one absolutely, beautiful church filled with art after another. We are basing our limited church visits to where there are bizarre, displays dedicated to one saint or another. Today for instance we went to the Gesu Nuovo, where there is a room filled with thousands of body parts represented in silver; legs and arms and hearts and lungs and stomachs and breasts, all framed often with thank you notes to Dr. Giuseppe Moscati, he died in 1927 and was only recently canonized (1987). He cured many Neapolitans of a variety of illnesses and must have been a real healer given the appreciation he received. Next we went to the Cappella de San Gennaro in the Duomo, the cathedral of Naples. San Gennaro lived in third century and is the patron saint of the city; credited for saving Naples from the plague, various wars, and from the eruption of Vesuvius. On his feast day, my birthday, September 19, his beheading is commemorated with the miracle of the liquefaction of his blood. The Italians really know how to spice up religion.
Both churches we visited were very busy, not exclusively with sightseers but with the faithful. Many were receiving confession. The priests were working hard, as they should be helping their flock. Yvonne’s take on this was that the priests are the therapists of Naples.
We spent the afternoon at the MADRE Contemporary Art Gallery; they had a cool exhibition of the art of album covers. Some of Andy Warhol’s work is in their permanent collection, “Vesuvius” is one of the notable pieces.
A retrospective of Antonio Clemente who was originally from Naples but lived in NYC amongst other places was on. Salmon Rushdie wrote a story in his honour for this exhibition and Clemente did beautiful illustrations for the story.
And yes we have been eating:
The local Pizzeria Prigi Obbo offers a delicious margherita pizza for 3Euros.
The best Pizza yet has been from Pizzeria Gino Sorbillo in the Centro Storico
slightly larger and 6 Euros.
Delicious pasta and gnocchi from Trattoria da Carrine along with my first taste of limoncello (lemon liquor).
It unfortunately seems too hot for red wine, but we will be trying the white soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment