A few months ago, two girlfriends and I took the train from Rome for a long weekend in Naples.

Naples. Napoli. Neapolis! New-City! A really important and major city in Italy, usually ignored by the American visitor. But it must be seen.

NAPLES MUST BE SEEN.

And smelled and listened to and tasted.

The three of us girls come from about as far apart as native English-speakers can come from: Botswana (Cara), Vancouver (Stefania) and Tennessee (guess who). We all met in the fall when we were in a production of The Great Gatsby together in Rome. We were fast friends, had a lot in common, not the least of which was the fact that we were young, more or less single, foreign women living in Rome and dealing with its extreme highs and lows.

Stefania was actually about to bid Arrivederci forever and go back to Vancouver. She needed to see as much of Italy as she could before she left, understandably, so Cara and I enthusiastically volunteered to accompany her to Naples. Cara had been there. I had, too, but only for about 18 hours, ten years ago. I hadn’t seen anything and remembered almost nothing except the crummy place I stayed.

Cara, Stefania, and I met at the Tiburtina train station to take the new-ish Italo Treno to Naples. Italo Treno deserves its own blog post. Finally, the state-run Trenitalia has a competitor. It’s usually cheaper, and the trains are just lovely with working Wi-Fi, which is the most important thing on earth. It doesn’t go all over Italy, but it goes to almost everywhere I want to go, including Verona, Florence, and Naples.

An hour and a half later, we arrived. I bought a map of the city, and we set out to locate the appropriate public transportation to then take us close to our hotel.

Back up – our hotel. We found our hotel, Il Convento, online. It was in an area called the Quartieri Spagnoli (Spanish Quarters) that seemed cute. Like the Trastevere of Naples. Winding, narrow streets, laundry hanging from the windows, old ladies and swarthy men baking bread in shops. When I told some of my Roman friends that we were staying in the Quartieri Spagnoli, they invariably looked like I had told them we were going to Iraq. The word is that this is the most dangerous quarter in Naples for pickpockets and muggings. Someone said, “Don’t even bother taking a wallet out of the hotel with you. And don’t wear a necklace you don’t want ripped off your neck.” After duly noting this advice, I recalled that ten years ago I had heard the same thing about Naples in general.

We got off the local train at our stop and pulled out the map to walk into the Quartieri Spagnoli and to Il Convento. If there was a moment to be robbed, it was now. I was rocking a backpack with multiple zippers that could have been unzipped by a skilled Neapolitan without my feeling it. Cara and Stefania were dragging suitcases through cobblestones and puddles. We were also stopping to take some pictures, some of which are below. As we took pictures, all of us were remarking, “This looks like a movie set!” And it did.

The Spanish Quarter

He just wanted to say Ciao.

Let me try to explain it. The air was humid and heavy, thanks to recent hard rains mixed with motorcycle and car exhaust, strong food smells coming from everywhere, and cigarette smoke pouring out of everyone’s noses. The indiscernible roar of the street in my ears was deafening enough – people yelling, other people yelling their responses, buses rolling by, dogs barking, cars honking – was punctuated by the acute buzz of a scooter dodging pedestrians at a daredevil speed. Somehow, those little scooters sound like racecars, and when they pass, you can almost feel the wind they create. On this little walk we saw fish and mollusks being sold from iced table tops, either whole or in parts that were chopped off with cleavers right before the buyer’s eyes. Giant, whole swordfish, tiny shrimp, stingrays, eels. And then, pastries. And then, produce. Can this really be how people buy their everyday food?

Fresh. Fish.

Eels for sale – live.

Pretty sure I won’t find a recipe for these in my Betty Crocker cookbook.

Pastries.

This is either a Neapolitan specialty or American breakfast cereal, and either way I think I’ll pass.

I’d like to inhale these by the line.

We got to the hotel with our belongings still belonging to us, and checked in. There was a bit of a kerfuffle when the hotel, at first, wouldn’t let Cara check in because she hadn’t brought her passport. Here’s a lesson, friends: you need your passport to check into hotels in Italy. Maybe other countries in Europe, I don’t know. When I slapped my American passport down, I’ll never forget, Stefania said, “I’ve never seen an American passport before.” And I thought, Gee, have I ever seen a Canadian passport before? And we’re such close neighbors!

Anyway, the hotel was very sweet. A former convent, and you could tell. You could see the old communal rooms where nuns would have gathered and eaten, with sturdy wooden tables, iron chandeliers, and fireplaces. The room was perfect. We had told them there were three of us so we were imagining a double room and a rollaway. But there were three proper twin beds, coffee services, a very large bathroom and a little balcony overlooking the alley.

Our hotel.

We had lunch nearby. I had penne with swordfish and it was honestly not that special. Then we spent the afternoon walking around, along the waterfront of the Bay of Naples, gazing out at Mount Vesuvius. We stopped for at least one coffee.

The shore, and beyond that, Mount Vesuvius

We also went into the Galleria – the large glass-roofed shopping center with all the designers… and THIS WOMAN, looking for some change from the likes of us:

No words for the weirdness. This old lady is crouched under this fake crib, pretending to be a baby, for money. She yelled at me not to take a picture without paying her, and I was like “yeah riiiiiight.”

The Galleria – lots of people ducking in from the rain.

Stefania had been given a recommendation for great pizza in the Vomero area of Naples. This area is on a steep hill overlooking the lower, seaside part of Naples. Getting there is its own experience. You take the funicular – the gravity-defying train that takes you almost straight up the hill for just a couple of euros. I’m not sure of any other local public transportation in the world that has its own aria:

Once we were up there, the restaurant Stefania had heard about seemed to no longer exist, so we stumbled upon Pizzeria Gorizia. It had been pouring rain, we had been soaked looking for the other place, and I was in high heels. Pizzeria Gorizia was like an oasis. My stomach was uneasy, so no wine for me, but I ordered sparkling water and a cold Coke and when my pizza came – thick chewy dough with cold buffalo mozzarella chunks and basil and cherry tomatoes – I felt like I could taste it in every cell of my body. If you go to Naples. make this place your combo dinner/activity for the night. Take the funicular up, eat at Gorizia, and take the funicular back down. Then go to bed. Make sure you leave your jewelry in the hotel safe.

As good as it looked. At La Gorizia

The next day, we went to the Archeological Museum of Naples, which I was determined to see whether the girls wanted to come or not. They did! I’ve wanted to go to this museum ever since I studied Roman history back in college. Full of sculptures coming out of Rome, I had always heard it housed most of the stuff from Pompeii that wasn’t left at Pompeii. It was true. Give me a museum of Roman artifacts over a museum of Renaissance paintings any day. But that’s just me. There is some ancient Egyptian stuff, too. Go there.

After the museum we walked around downtown. While it was still light, we went to the Duomo di Napoli – the Naples Cathedral, which was more impressive outside than inside (maybe I’m spoiled living by St. Peter’s). Still worth a visit.

Il Duomo di Napoli

Then we found the Christmas street, selling everything under the sun that you would want to give someone for Christmas, plus Christmas accoutrements themselves. Ornaments in every shape and size and then… the presepio. The presepio, or the presepe vivente, is the Christmas nativity scene, the manger, which in my house is about twelve inches wide and sits on the mantle. In Naples, it is, instead, a giant city in miniature (like the city model in the attic in Beetlejuice … is that not what came to your mind, too?) that you keep growing and growing each season. Imagine a manger scene with intersecting Bethlehem streets, mini-storefronts, characters  (both people and animal), horse carts, and structures of every type. Surrounding the manger behind the inn-with-no-room, there are lawyers’ offices and tailors shops and… pizzerias. And a lot of them are mechanical. Here is a video of something you can buy on this street, to add to your nativity scene. I’ve never seen anything else like this in all my travels and all my Christmases.

The Street of the Living Nativity Scene

Pepperoncini Christmas ornaments.

And then, we stumbled upon a store selling limoncello, one of my favorite Italian things. If you haven’t tried it, or have heard of it only as the reason Danny De Vito was drunk on The View, imagine a sweet lemon syrup mixed with a strong punch of alcohol and served ice cold. My understanding is that it contains three ingredients: lemons, pure grain alcohol, and sugar.  You can taste each of these things distinctly and intensely, both all at once and separately. After you’ve sipped, you let out a breath that is so full of alcohol fumes that you could probably see it with some kind of infrared camera. I love the stuff, after dinner, instead of or with dessert.

The Limoncello Man, teaching me a new skill.

How Limoncello is Made

This store was terrific, because the proprietor dragged us inside to show us how they made the limoncello in house. The lemons are peeled. The peels are fermented in steel vats, then the liquid is removed and the peels are seeped in alcohol and sugar. Voila’. The man also showed us that further back in the store, there is a door. You open the door and behind it was stone wall. He explained that the store was built right into the foundations of ancient Roman buildings. There was a vertical tunnel, or chimney, shooting straight up from the back of this store. You could look straight up into this thing for about 50 feet and you can’t help but wonder what on earth it was created for. To think, this store shares foundations and walls with another store, around at the time of Christ. We bought a lot of bottles from that man – they also make liquor out of cantaloupe, chocolate, orange, strawberry, and others – and then as a bonus he gave us bags of peeled lemons to take home and use for juice.

The Limoncello Guy, in front of the door accessing the Roman foundation.

Not the Blair Witch Project. This is the ancient Roman ruin into which the limoncello store is built.

That night, pizza again. This time at Sorbillo in the middle of old town Naples.  Why can’t I marry a Neapolitan pizzaiolo? Probably lots of good reasons, but as I write this, I am just wishing I could get this stuff on demand. This pizza was different, still with the famous Neapolitan thick crust, but with a thin layer of hot mozzarella and a solid blanket of mushrooms.

At Sorbillo.

The next morning we got up and left. It was raining, so we didn’t attempt to do much. Just a late breakfast and a little walk around downtown. Then back to the train station, on the Italo, and to Rome, where we double-cheek-kissed each other and took the subway in different directions home, wallets in our bags and necklaces on our necks.

Three girls in Naples. Thanks to Cara for conceptualizing and taking this picture.