Have Arrived Safely Home
October 09, 2006
I am back ... very tired, feel terrible after the flight. I might take Monday off.
In Milan
October 08, 2006
On the plane, the Italian guy sitting next to me opened up his bag mid-flight and withdrew ...
A standard-issue laptop from The Corporation exactly like mine. I thought about striking up a conversation with him about work, but I thought, nah ... I'm still on vacation, at least for a few more hours.
In a couple of minutes, I'm getting on my connecting flight and I will be in Newark later this afternoon.
In Rome
October 08, 2006
It's Sunday morning here in Rome ... getting ready to have breakfast. Going to the airport mid-morning. Things are winding down.
Packing Up
October 06, 2006
Folks, it's time to get packed up here in Naples.
I posted a bunch of photos yesterday, but it seems like I haven't posted half of the stuff that I wanted to. I know, reading other peoples' tales of travel can be tedious, but there is a lot of stuff to read elsewhere if you are not interested in this.
So many things that I did not write about ... The Maschio Angioino, the Castel Sant'Elmo, the cathedral, the people, the pizza, things that happened on my street ...
Anyway, I'm spending today making a circuit of a few of my favorite things here in town:
A coffee at Gambrinus, which is probably the best place in town to sit and watch the world go by. A beer at the Caffè Aragonese, where the people have been so nice to me. A vera pizza Neapolitana at Il Soldino, the pizza place on the next street over.
I'm going to Rome on the first train tomorrow ... I'll check in from there.
And then back to New Jersey on Monday.
More Around Naples
October 05, 2006
A doorway in the city center:
Piazza San Domenico:
The Boss in Caserta:
Window shopping on Spaccanapoli:
O, great work of piety:
Pasta, vongole e carciofi:
A wild dog:
Pigs in a blanket:
The last photo is from a shop that sells sfogliatelle, pieces of puff pastries filled with a variety of sweet or savory things. Every morning, I pick up a ferro di cavallo at the bakery on my street.
San Paolo
October 05, 2006
One of the most beautiful exteriors of any building in central Naples is the facade of the church of San Paolo Maggiore.
Photos here.
As you can see in these pictures, the facade has been very nicely restored and repainted in the style of Neapolitan exteriors where the architectural details are in dark gray and the main surfaces are in a brighter color, precisely the opposite of what you might see in Northern Italy.
Like the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore, the church of San Paolo stands in the Piazza San Gaetano, the location of the old Greek agora and, later, the Roman forum. In Roman times, the church was a temple of the Dioscuri -- Castor and Pollux -- that was refitted for Christian worship after the era of the emperor Constantine. The current building is mostly the product of the 16th and 17th centuries. The only remains of the original Roman temple are the two columns in the front of the building.
The interior of the church is pretty, but needs a lot of work.
Outside the church is the third of the city's monumental guglia, with a statue atop as seen here.
Neat.
Centro Direzionale
October 05, 2006
On the far eastern edge of Naples, past the train station, is a new business district of skyscrapers and other modern buildings, called Il Centro Direzionale, conceived along the lines of La Défense in Paris.
Photo below.
There are two of these razor-thin high-rises with glass elevator pods that zoom up and down at the main entrance to the neighborhood. Apparently, they were designed by some hip Japanese architect or other. I rather like them. The rest of the area ... I'm not so sure about.
The buildings in the Centro Direzionale seem to have all been built between fifteen and twenty years ago and are aging poorly. Is there anything more sad than "futuristic" architecture when the future that it predicts doesn't pan out the way the designers thought it would?
Around Naples
October 05, 2006
Some photos from around the neighborhood here in Naples.
The Piazza San Ferdinando:
Inside the courtyard of the Palazzo Reale:
Sign asserting an extremely dubious truth on the Via Toledo:
People shopping among the old Spanish palaces on the same street:
The Quartieri Spagnoli:
A political manifesto:
A sign about anti-Cammora legislation:
The Camorra, like the Mafia in Sicily, is said to permeate every part of life in Naples, public and private, from business to government to the church. I don't know if Neapolitans live in a "constant state of terror" as the sign says, but certainly they live in a constant state of taxation, under which the Camorra gets a cut every time money changes hands ...
Update
October 04, 2006
Spent all day Monday in Pompeii ...
It was a wonderful day.
Tuesday, I went to Capri in the morning and then Sorrento in the afternoon to sit around on the beach. Capri is just how I remembered it -- very pretty, but tacky, tacky, tacky. And expensive.
I had a nine dollar beer at the marina and then walked up to the town and had a sandwich and a mineral water, eighteen dollars. The place was basically filled with cruise ship tourists following their guides around everywhere. Every possible type of luxury good can be purchased on the island, but all of the stores appear empty of customers. Around every corner comes another tour group ...
And it's impossible to remember exactly why you have come here.
One of my guides says that if you get out of the main town and go wandering around the island, it really is a very pleasant place.
I was in a rush to get to the beach, so I didn't wander.
Napoli a Notte
October 02, 2006
In Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, he remarks that, every evening at sunset, the people of Naples flood out onto the Via Chiaia for the evening promenade. Twain wrote that book 140 years ago, but things remain the same around here. Of course, Naples is a much bigger city now, and the crowds are undoubtedly much bigger ...
I was pretty amazed to walk up the Via Chiaia one of my first evenings here and see thousands of people coming down the street in my direction.
Then I turned around the corner to walk up the Via Toledo, and I saw tens of thousands.
I'm pretty sure that every man, woman and child in the city comes out of their houses for a stroll in the evenings for a few hours of window-shopping and talking to their neighbors. It doesn't seem like anyone is going anywhere or buying anything. This is entertainment for people who have not yet turned their lives over to the hypnotic power of television, for people who know their neighbors and enjoy being around them.
Around here, the hours from seven to nine in the evenings are definitely the noisiest part of the day. As it gets a bit darker, the crowds start to thin out as people go home.
At precisely nine o'clock, the streets in my neighborhood are empty. It's mostly quiet around here, except for the hum of people sitting around the dinner table and the clinking of a thousand forks and knives on a thousand plates in the hundreds of apartments in the hundreds of buildings that line this street.
Then, after dinner, every teenager in the neighborhood gets out his or her motorbike -- everyone has removed the muffler for maximum noise generation -- and rides around the streets in circles until the early hours of the morning. Every night. Until two or three am.
This apartment has sound-proof windows.
Thank God.
Recently Posted
San Lorenzo
The church of San Lorenzo Maggiore is one of the most important and interesting churches here in Naples. Here are some photos of the exterior as seen from the Piazza San Gaetano. ... More
Crumbling
A decade or so ago, the city government here set out sight-seeing paths through the city under the name Le Vie dell'Arte, or "Streets of the Arts." Each path has an itinerary ... More
Gesù
The home church of the Jesuits in Naples is the church of the Gesù Nuovo, which sits on a large piazza of the same name at one end of a street that ... More
Beach
Spent all day yesterday at the beach. ... More
Castle of the Egg
Before I head out for today, just a couple more photos. Last night at sunset, I walked out along the waterfront and took some photos of the Castel dell'Ovo, or "Castle of ... More
Museo Nazionale
I hit the National Museum of Archeology yesterday ... This was really a cool visit. The previous time that I was in Naples, in 2000, I sort of swept through the museum ... More
Umberto
Another of the landmarks in the neighborhood near the apartment here is the Galleria Umberto I. The Galleria is a gigantic indoor shopping complex that was built in the 1800s as part ... More
Capodimonte
The big museum of fine arts here is the Museo di Capodimonte, which is located in a big palace on a hilltop that overlooks the city from the east. I took a ... More
Chi Rompe, Paga
Mom, are you reading this? Yesterday, walking about on my way to the National Museum of Archeology, I passed by the church of San Gregorio Armeno in the center of Naples. On ... More
Nilo
Around the corner from the Piazza San Domenico is a neighborhood in Naples known as the Nilo, after the statue in the photo below. During Roman times, this neighborhood was home to ... More
More Rome
A couple more photos from yesterday in Rome. The first one is of the Trevi Fountain (again), but this time in the daylight. The second is the of the facade of Sant'Ignacio, ... More
Palazzo Reale
A landmark here in the neighborhood is the Palazzo Reale, the city residence of the kings of Naples. This building was originally constructed by the Spanish in the 16th century and was ... More
Back From Rome
Back to Naples yesterday on the Eurostar Alta Velocità train. The Alta Velocità reaches speeds up to 300 kilometers per hour on the Rome/Naples route and cuts what would ordinarily be a ... More
Dante's Inferno
Short trip to Rome today and tomorrow to meet up with another American who is traveling in Italy. I'm at the main train station here in Naples, sitting on the ground near ... More
Cloister
I spent much of today wandering around Naples ... Behind the church of Santa Chiara in the old city center are a large convent and cloister that were built in the first ... More
Sorrento
Sorrento is a little town on the sea to the south and west of Naples. For some reason, I had remembered Sorrento as being a very nice, very friendly and very walkable ... More
Quick Post
I spent yesterday on the island of Ischia. Photos below. The fortress that you can see in the photos was built by the Aragonese in the 15th century. ... More
Travel Woes
Tuesday ... what a day. I lost my camera. Well, I don't know if "lost" is the word. I left my camera in the back of a taxi coming down the hill ... More
Piazza San Domenico
The Piazza San Domenico is one of the most interesting spots in Naples. Here, like elsewhere in the old city, layers of history are stacked one on top of each other, each ... More
Napoli Greca
Naples proper was founded by Greek colonists, probably from the island of Euboea, sometime around 500 B.C. The Greeks had actually been in the Gulf of Naples for centuries before that, having ... More
Missing Photos
Rome photos from the other day of the Campidoglio, which is what the Italians call the Capitoline Hill, and a statue in the fountain of the Piazza Navona. And I'm off for ... More
Long Day
Yesterday was a really long day Not only did I walk all over Rome taking pictures, but I also got on the train later and came to Naples -- a bit more ... More
Roman Holiday
Yesterday, before I left Rome on the train for Naples, I took a tour around the center of the historic city, snapping photos. Since I did not have much time, most of ... More
Technical Difficulties
Hmmm ... I'm having some technical difficulties that are preventing me from uploading photos here in Naples. Also, a bunch of weird template problems, most of which I think I have fixed ... More
Naples Arrival
I've made it safely to Naples and am getting settled in ... I had kind of a nice day in Rome and then came into town later in the afternoon. I took ... More
Marcus Agrippa Made This
Wow ... It's really late now -- about two am. I've just been walking all around Rome on this beautiful night, snapping pictures. Photos below. After I left the hotel, I grabbed ... More
Rome Arrival
I had intended to get here in the late afternoon, but the flight from Milan was delayed for hours and hours ... I could have come on the train in shorter time. ... More
Survived
I survived the flight. It was awful. A sensationally obese young lad of eleven or twelve in the seat in front of me kept jerking his seat back to full decline at ... More
Bad Thoughts
Oh, Lord ... I'm at the airport now. I just checked in. And ... and ... and ... There were no more aisle seats left on the plane. Please. Let that sink ... More
Packing
I'm not a big fan of packing for trips. But if you don't pack it ... you don't get to take it with you. ... More