Monday August 6, 2012 It was the temptation of great pizza, pasta and dessert that lured us off the ship the morning we landed in Naples, despite how run-down we still were from Rome. Megan actually believed that in this historic city the streets would be lined with cafés where big men with thick Italian accents wearing cute chefs’ hats served gratuitous bowls of freshly made pasta and mouthwatering pizza. Reality has a tendency to burst the dream bubble, and our Naples experience turned out to be the complete opposite of our fantasy.
Before leaving the ship we composed a list of the things we had heard about Naples, our daily “to do” list, which included eating real Napoli pizza, sfogliatelle, looking through the collections of Nativity scenes on Christmas Alley, the Castel Nuovo, the Doll Hospital, Castel dell'Ovo, and the Museum of Contemporary Art – which happened to be free on Mondays! Walking away from the port we easily located Castel Nuovo a 13th Century castle complete with moat and drawbridge. Around the corner from the castle was San Francesco di Paola a large church with a plaza, similar to St. Peter’s Square but unfortunately covered in graffiti and garbage. From there we headed off to explore the rest of the city, and ended up lost, in an older less maintained part of town where we saw a young man on a motorcycle and an older gentleman yelling at one another as if they were about to exchange fists. Less than enchanted with our location we walked back to the plaza in an attempt to get things back on track. This is where we began our search for pizza and sfogliatelle, despite just having had breakfast and it still being ten in the morning.
The funny thing about our sfogliatelle hunt was that we had no idea what we were looking for; let alone how to pronounce the funny looking Italian word. Walking into the first bakery we encountered we held up a paper with the funny word to the counter girl, and with a big smile on her face she turned around, reached inside the oven and pulled out two of them…
The flaky pastries were piping hot, pulled apart in crispy layers, and had a warm doughy center that tasted of creamy cinnamon custard. They were exactly what we needed to kick start our appetites for what we planned to be a long day of gluttony and feasting! Savoring our treats we continued down an alley of contemporary shops in what we believed to be the direction of Christmas Alley; unfortunately the street dead-ended and we were forced to head back to the main plaza once again.
Back in the plaza we found a pizza shop that happened to have free Internet, so we grabbed a few slices and pulled up Google maps aid in crossing things off our to-do list. Trying to orientate ourselves in the city proved to be too confusing and what was a minimal one-kilometer walk turned into a two-mile expedition into another sketchy area of town. Kyle held his camera close as numerous beggars, illegal merchants with knock-off goods and rough looking Italian thugs approached us. The streets were so littered with trash that we had to kick through the piles just to walk down the sidewalk, most areas also contained widespread stretches of broken glass – very difficult to negotiate in flip flops. After over an hour of walking we gave in to reality, we were lost, again. And after being unable to find Christmas Alley for the third time we decided to head back to the ship. Another hour went by before we passed through the port gates, and we were stunned that a few wrong turns took us so far out of the way! Unfortunately we don’t have beautiful pictures of Naples, but we did walk away with profound sense of reality.
Xo, M&K
