Neapolitan Impressions

Napoli is gross. Maybe not everywhere, but...

Some of the simple things to notice are that southern Italy (Rome included) is not as developed as in the north, and that usually pushes itself into your face with easy symbols like tobacco smoking.

Everyone smoked cigarettes. Maybe that's hyperbole, but it sure didn't seem like it. From Rome to Calabria to Sicily to Naples, people smoked cigarettes all the time in as many places as allowable, and even some that were suspect.

One cute image I was too tasteful to not photograph was in our neighborhood in Naples: a large man, lit cigarette in his mouth, hoisted his toddler into the space between his legs on his motor scooter while his wife, I presumed, also smoking, hoisted an even younger toddler onto the back of the chair behind the dad, and then climbed on herself, and off they zoomed.

Also, some supercool things you see in Collesano and Naples (as in those were the places I remember putting eyes on them) were toddlers and babies in the arms of passengers riding shotgun in cars.

Where we stayed in Naples was the al Virgeni neighborhood, which sprouted right outside the old-city walls, much to the chagrin of the Spanish overlords. They were basically tenements, but that vocabulary didn't exist. They were full of immigrant and newly freed people, dense and disease ridden, and quickly full of crime.

Naples has the distinction of being one of the longest continuously inhabited cities on earth. It is the third largest city in Italy, after Rome and Milan, and I read that it has the 99% Italian-born population, which is another distinction for a city of 1.5 million.

Where we stayed must have been home to that 1%, and while it may have been quite safe, it was one of the few spots where we actively kept an eye out for pickpockets. The fact there were signs posted all over telling us as much may have added to the ominous feeling in the air, but maybe not.

The streets in our zone were small and paved with large and very slick pavers; the sidewalks were only 20 inches long most of the time, and, despite the skinny streets, traffic was a crazy mix of Mr. Toad in cars and Evel Kneivel on motor-scooters roaring by and making Cass jump every half second.

I think that Naples would be an interesting place to spend more time visiting. I think that it's gross, and I think those ideas can coexist. I just won't do it again with two minors I'm in charge of.

One annoying thing is that the subway isn't a unified metro system, as in there are separate tickets and entrances to train tunnels and rails sometimes in the same exact location. It made me think of what New York must have been like a hundred years ago, with separately operated train lines.

I just figured that a city with, like, five-thousand years on New York would have figured something like that out by now, but that's a me problem.

The picture we got, though, were pretty cool:

Pigeon chasing

A traffic picture, but they never seem to capture the madness:

Largest and most protected sidewalk in a two mile radius

On the walk from our place to basically anywhere else took us by the next building, which turned out to be a practice attempt by a famous Italian architect for a bigger idea, and for a long time this was the most famous and biggest home in the neighborhood:

Know for the distinctive double stairway, it fell into disrepair a century ago, maybe, and now looks like an apartment building. That might be a pretty cool stay.

In any case, the statues above the door are either voluptuous or pregnant, and either's cool by me:

This image, the gentleman in the bowler smoking, seemed to be in multiple places, but the significance remains unknown to me. At least here, the trash is visible, because it was pretty much everywhere:

As we were getting ready to leave, Corrie said, "I don't want to jinx it, but I can't wait to get the hell outta here." It was about then that I started to put words on the eerie vibes I'd been getting from this city. She also said that nowhere during this trip, not in Rome (which she too also realized an enthusiasm for) and not anywhere in Sicily, did she get bad vibes from a place like she had in Naples.

"It's like...Detroit...or Gary, Ind...but only if those cities were in Alabama or Mississippi."

It was an astute observation.

I had just assumed it was the lateness of our visit relative to the trip up until then, but she was on to something.

Anyway, the next day we spent at the beach, taking two separate train lines to a beach in the north of the city. The sand was abusively hot, but the water was super nice.

Afterwards we packed and tried to mentally prepare for the next day: express train 140 miles to Rome, a different train o the airport, and the flight home. The time was nearing to catch up with our past.