NAPOLI: SMACK!

Our second day in Naples we took a side trip to Pompeii for a totally different experience from the calm of Hadrian's Villa. In Pompeii we had to contend with endless tour groups for peeks at the most famous parts of the city. I had to marvel at all of the different nationalities represented, each with their very own expert guide. We would wander through small clusters of people excitedly speaking in their own language, pointing out areas of interest, and think how much cultural capital a place like Pompeii has.

Despite its business, we were dutifully impressed with the experience of walking through a city so well preserved. I was especially impressed with how well one can appreciate the grid of the city, wandering from a main thoroughfare onto a quieter more residential street, past a temple, or into one of the many necropoli or amphitheaters. Even without any re-enactment gimmicks in place it was quite easy to imagine life as it was lived.

We left Pompeii just as the sun had reached its zenith thus avoiding any issues of sunburn/stroke for me. Trying to find our bus stop we were "helped out" by a passionate Italian grandmother type. We explained that we were heading to Napoli and she nodded and pointed around the corner from where we were. As we walked I actually spotted our bus stop and halted. We pointed at the stop, but she shook her head no and yelled, "NAPOLI, NAPOLI!" gesturing around the corner again. We turned the corner and were confronted with a highway tollbooth and not a bus stop to be seen. By now we were very confused, and more than that, concerned about crossing this Nona. We peeked back around the corner to where she had been standing and found the sidewalk empty. We heaved sighs of relief, walked back to the bus stop, and sat down on some steps just to the left. Not a minute had gone by before the Nona reappeared! She seemed very put out that we were back and again took up the cry of "NAPOLI NAPOLI!" and gestured frantically at a large sign reading Napoli with an arrow in the direction of the highway. She actually started to herd us, and I'm sure sensing the Italian in Nina, gave her a little smack in the right direction. Thankfully at that moment our bus appeared. The Nona flagged it down for us and asked the driver to make sure we got to Napoli. We thanked her and quickly hopped on before she could forcefully straighten our clothes, or clean our faces with a dab of spit, as that was the direction our relationship with her seemed headed.

We spent the rest of day lounging in our fabulous hostel in Naples (I could not give enough praise to this place - Bella Capri) and generally being lazy. That night we ventured out to find some authentic Neapolitan pizza at 6 pm (a very gauche time to eat here). We were both starving and not eager to find ourselves far from home once it got too dark. We wandered through some medieval looking narrow alleyways colourfully decorated with hanging laundry, and eccentric looking shops. We found the majority of them to be a kind of artist's studio specialising in the production of miniatures. This extended to small village scenes, dolls, figurines, and a variety of other objects re-affirming my earlier claim that Italians have a strange fascination with miniature-based home decor.

At the end of this surreal little section of streets we came upon a veritable hole in the wall pizza joint where we had some of the best pizza I have ever tasted, and a bottle of wine for under 10 euros each. The combination of this great "deal" (a oft used word in Nina's vocabulary), and the wine made Nina gleefully happy. She smiled on Naples and ventured to say that maybe her first impression (that Naples was a blight on Italy's otherwise lovely face) had been wrong.