Naples

I’ve only stayed in Naples once before although I’ve been through here several times to go to Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri, and the villages where my grandparents came from. It’s another place that evokes a lot of emotion. As I said to Martina, “if you’re bothered by Rome, you’re gonna hate Naples.” It’s loud, fast-paced, gritty, and completely unapologetic. On the walk to the apartment, a kid — maybe 10 years old — came riding down the street and across a busy lane of traffic to cut across the sidewalk where we were walking and disappear down an alley. The man he nearly hit on the sidewalk just laughed it off and turned to us and proudly yelled, “Napoli!” He said it in the way someone might say “only in New York.” We made our way to Claudia’s apartment. She wanted to meet us there to make sure we knew how everything worked. We followed her directions down a graffiti-filled alley into a quiet street scene that could have been straight out of a WWII film of the liberation of Naples. She buzzed us up and gave us the warmest welcome to her gorgeous penthouse apartment with a rooftop terrace. All of Naples is within clear view — Vesuvius, Capri, Capodimonte, and the ships in the port. Before giving us a very detailed list of instructions and a tutorial on how to lock and unlock the door and what to put down on the tile table so as not to make a mark, she gave us each a little gift. “You may have heard that we are a very superstitious people here in Napoli.” And she handed us each a wooden horn to ward off evil spirits. It was the same horn my grandfather had hanging from the rearview mirror of his car. I told her my people were from Naples and she said, “Oh, you are Neapolitan, so you understand.” That is how I feel when I’m in Naples. Growing up in the culture, so much is familiar. I see a young man kissing his elderly father goodbye, a group of waiters teasing the tourists, a mother yelling for her kids from an open window, someone is hosing down the front stoop, an older woman is arguing with the grocer about tomatoes, and I feel like I get it.Read more