Well you haven’t.  Unless you have been to Naples.

This place is crazy.  Crazy AWESOME.  It is full of color and energy.  It SCREAMS.  Both Colleen and I are pretty blown away.

Our first day here, when we got into a cab and scooters were basically heading in our direction in OUR LANE, and we saw little kids on scooters with no helmets and people stepping into the street in front of cars without looking and into traffic, while, say, reading the newspaper… Cristo.   We are talking a major rush and then we got ripped off by the cab driver but I knew we would, so whateves… and then some good looking guy approached me on the street and it turned out to be Marco, our landlord who led us into our building where on our floor there is some kind of club for immigrants.  OK so that was maybe 5 minutes total that we had been here, because the cab only took about 45 seconds.

Went out for pizza and the Naples football team was playing and there were two large parties in a small room, suffice to say we could not really talk but the atmosphere and the pizza were awesome.  Friday, our first whole day, we had this grand plan to go to the Duomo and the Archaelogical museum but the streets here are a museum.  A living museum.  Courtyards have treasures, scooters carry entire families, there are bronze skulls and giant shrines, there is shit and there is garbage and there is humanity.  And there is pizza, so we stopped to have one for lunch, with a bottle of Falanghina.  Duomo and museum?  Niente.  Did go to a couple of other churches though including one that has a Donatello sculpted tomb.  When we went in to this small church there was a sort of scary, sullen looking caretaker, but then I walked by him and he asked where I was from and broke into the hugest smile, then gave me a flyer. 

Later that evening we were lucky to meet up with Bonnie who writes the Napoli Unplugged blog and her husband Steve, and then Robbin who leads wine tours around here. We all had dinner then walked down to the Borgo Marinaro which is an area full of bars and restaurants behind the Castel dell Ovo, a huge fortress like castle right on the sea.  Our waiter kept saying he loved us all (Steve said, you don’t love ME, laughing) and the whole scene was fun and vibrant and, well, what you think Naples would be like on a Friday night.  Or maybe any night. 

On the no degrees of separation front, Steve and Bonnie know Kevin and Kim Clarke who I know from the Slowtalk boards and have met a couple of times (Kevin and Steve worked together) and then, this woman shows up as she is a friend of Robbin’s-  she looks familiar, and then when she says her name is Vienna I ask her if she used to work at Gainey Vineyard in Santa Ynez Valley.  Yep.  I have just run into someone at a cafe in Naples that I once met in Santa Barbara county.  Now that is crazy.

Yesterday we walked way too much, but still managed to make it out at night for a free MTV concert in Piazza Plebicito.  It was kind of lame (too much talking, not too much music) but it was fun to watch the youth of Naples eat a thousand take away pizzas and on occasion suck each others faces off.  There was a lot of screaming a la Beatlemania, too.  We went to a wine bar before we went home where I watched Maroon Five play two songs (lame) on MTV while sitting in an apartment five minutes away.  Everything they say about the garbage here is true.  Walking through a green area on the way home, for no apparent reason, a broken office chair is sitting there.  Furniture is randomly dumped, and an insane amount of broken baby carriages.  But then you pass a recycling area and there are cardboard boxes broken down neatly and set on the side.  There is no way to make any sense of this city, but I do not want to.  I love it here.

There is an Indian family at the computer next to me, talking to more family, on a webcam.  Wonder where they are.  I will emerge into a sunny Sunday, and I wonder if I should have a pastry or a glass of wine.  Maybe both.  I have so much more to say.  But I can’t say it now because there are, seriously, 20 Indian people looking at me on a webcam.  Should I wave?

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