3/4 - 3/7
Naples was surprisingly filthy. Rubbish everywhere and tons of people just hanging out on a Sunday afternoon, discarding their wrappers, cups and plastic wherever they were standing. Nice atmosphere though. Lively. Naples is famous for its food so we made sure to hunt out one place that appears in all the travel guides. 'Da Michele' is renowned for taking the 'no nonsense' approach to pizzas to its extreme. Margherita and Marinara pizza are the only two items on the menu, and the ingredients listed for both are the bare minimum required. You take a scrap of paper from the guy on the door and wait outside on the pavement with everyone else until enough seats are free.
We ate our pizzas sitting under a big signed photo of Julia Roberts doing the same. Perfect pizza. The soft dough surprised me, the delicate flavours really impressed me, but Hozumi not so much, having different expectations when it comes to pizza.
We also went ring hunting again, but despite there being 'gold bought and sold' signs everywhere nearly all the jewellery shops we saw were closed down or nearly empty. We did seek out one very helpful designer of 'experimental' contemporary jewellery who mostly worked in titanium and aluminium and she gave me the idea that later led to Hozumi's ring design.
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| I don't think we saw a single train that wasn't covered in graffiti. |
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| Naples' night view is said to be one of the 'top 3 in the world' (along with Hakodate's) according to many Japanese rankings. Maybe we stood in the wrong place. |
We saw more beautiful Roman ruins in Turkey and Greece but Pompeii was just as big as I remembered, and the sheer scale of the place still impresses. This time the weather was much better for wandering around ruins, so no fear of dehydration, and no worries about packs of wild dogs either. On the flip side there were about a thousand times as many people and lots of new barriers and gates preventing access to interesting areas.
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| Hozumi was a little too shy to get into a gladiatorial pose. |
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| Er. What happened to your leg miss? |
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2 comments:
My main memory of Naples, aside from excellent pizza, is being terrified of crime because everybody had told us it was awful (although nothing happened when we were there in 2003). Has its reputation improved at all?
Er, maybe? We had similar warnings, of course, but didn't take any special precautions. Guy trying to sell me a stolen iPad was the only dodgy thing we encountered. We saw more evidence of crime in Barcelona, Columbia...
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