Skip to main content

Tuesday Travels: Frenetic Naples

Photo: Cars travel between parked cars on a crowded Naples street. Four-story residential buildings line the street.
Last week, I shared my peaceful vacation day in Como with you. Today, we'll head south to Naples. Both cities are in Italy, but they are as different as night and day. 

Photo: A bus and a van navigate the streets, while motorcycles are parked nearby.
Naples has a palpable energy. Even in the off-season of January, pedestrians, scooters, and cars fill the streets. If there is space to go, you go, regardless of your transportation method. 
Photo: Pedestrians walk on the street, dodging a steady stream of traffic

 As I reviewed my photos from Naples, I realized that I didn't have any really good photos of the traffic on the narrowest streets, and any photos I had of traffic at all were taken while I was a passenger on a bus. That might be an indication of how vigilant I was as a pedestrian! 

 Naples is much more than just traffic, though. The pulse of the city is not so much of tourists (at least not in January), but of locals. Friends meet together to visit, shop, and dine. Small shops fill the narrow alleyways. 

 An entire street is dedicated to stores that sell nativities, or presepe. The thing that makes the Italian presepe stand out from other nativities I have seen is that not only do they show the traditional manger scene, but also common people going about their lives. The scenes sometimes require ignoring time, as some nativities include figures from current events--politicians, sports heroes, or other celebrities. I'm not so keen on displaying figures of people from current events on my mantle at Christmastime, but I do like the more traditional examples of the presepe that are found in the churches in Naples. 
Photo: The traditional manger scene is surrounded by figurines of "regular" townsfolk: women carrying water buckets, men conversing together, and a man playing a musical instrument
San Gennero is the patron saint of Naples, and the Cathedral of San Gennero, also known as the Naples Cathedral, or the Duomo di Napoli, is a ornate structure with an interesting tradition. 
Photo: The interior of the cathedral, with arched columns and an ornate ceiling
Three times a year, two vials of San Gennero's dried blood are brought out by a Cardinal. If the blood liquefies, it means good luck for Naples; if it doesn't, it is bad fortune. 
Photo: The chapel where the miracle of the blood occurs
Photo: A street mural provides a modern-day interpretation of San Gennaro 
After a busy day in Naples, there's no better way to celebrate than by eating real Italian pizza while being serenaded by musicians! Buon appetito!
Photo: A personal pizza larger than a plate

Comments

  1. messymimiMarch 19, 2019 at 7:16 PM

    Naples is as busy as the countryside is calm. It's been so long, i most remember climbing Vesuvius and touring Pompeii.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. KristiMarch 19, 2019 at 7:54 PM

      We didn't climb Vesuvius, but we did tour Pompeii and also Herculaneum. I'll post a report on those sites later.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Conversations are so much nicer when more than one person does the talking. :-) Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts; I'd love to hear from you!

Popular posts from this blog

Ten Things of Thankful: Live from Oregon, part 2

stock photo of old computer monitor When I was 10 or 11, I remember sitting next to my dad in our living room and reading computer code to him as he entered it into an Apple computer. We would finish the exercise and he would hit enter (or was it "run"?) and wait expectantly for the green type to appear on the screen. If we were lucky, the whole conversation would occur. Most often, there would be an error either in my dictation of the code, or in the typing of the code. We would then go painstakingly back through the lines, character by character, to find and correct the error. After what seemed like hours (and might have been), we would succeed and the computer would finally run the entire program. It was magical! My dad designed and built an earth-sheltered, passive solar home decades before solar panels were commonplace. He also was on a 9-month waiting list for a Prius, when hybrids were not seen on every street.  While my dad is definitely on the cutting edge of technol...
5 comments
Read more

Monday Mentions: Equate Crutches

Have you ever needed crutches? I hadn't, until a week ago.  I'm pretty sure I strained a muscle while running a half-marathon.  (That sounds kind of cool, doesn't it? I'm not actually that cool; the last time I strained a muscle it was from carrying too many shopping bags at once.) In any case, I found myself in need of some crutches. I sent my husband to the store to get some. Photo: A pair of crutches leans against a wall  Not that crutches are all that complex, but because I hadn't used any before, I wondered if I could figure out how to adjust them to fit me properly. I shouldn't have worried. John came home from Walmart with their generic store brand of crutches, complete with instructions. First, I needed to take out a long bolt that went through the hand grip. Then I needed to find my height range, push down two metal pieces, and slide the crutches until the little metal pieces came up in the hole near my height range. (Having two people for this...
4 comments
Read more

What a Wonderful World! (An #AtoZChallenge Post): Z is for Zion National Park

  Visitor Center sign in Zion National Park My husband recently re-retired, and we are front-loading travel. My #AtoZChallenge posts this year will explore our adventures--some pre-retirement, some post. Today's location: Zion National Park in Utah.  Zion is a bit of a shibboleth. People from outside of Utah (or those who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) tend to pronounce Zion as "ZIE-on." Locals (or tourists who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) use more of a schwa sound, pronouncing Zion to rhyme with lion. However you choose to pronounce it, it is an amazing, beautiful national park and has some amazing hikes. The last time my husband and I visited Zion National Park, we entered from the east, and traveled through the mile-long Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel. It is an engineering marvel, completed in the 1920s. Before we passed through the tunnel, though, we spotted a group of bighorn sheep, including some babies...
8 comments
Read more