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Monday, July 23, 2001

I went down the stairs early, looking for a bakery and a supermarket, or at least a large alimentari; I found neither. In a series of small ones, I got fruit juice, jam, and bread; I must have had a coffee somewhere along the way, but have no recollection of it. With the fruit, and bottled water, this made a respectable breakfast. N did a hand laundry in the laundry sink tucked away with the forbidden washing machine in a closet in the kitchen, and hung the clothes on a folding rack on the balcony.

The cleaning woman showed up at nine, with a daughter (about ten) in tow; she parked the kid in the sitting room, turned the TV on, and proceeded to make herself some coffee. We packed up and left.

Our destination was the Archaeological Museum, and we reached it by basically walking up Via Toledo. Along the way, I saw a plain green baseball cap hanging from a display outside a narrow shop, and bought it for the princely sum of L.5000.

At the museum, we bought a small guide to the collection, plus a pair of small paperbacks offering a "reasoned archaeological itinerary" of Pompeii and Herculaneum (the latter written by the director of excavations!), then our tickets, and made reservations to see the Secret Cabinet, a section of supposedly pornographic art. Because we had the kids with us, we had to sign a waiver (it was concern for the kids of the Duke of Milan, some time in the nineteenth century, who were the cause of the collection being shut away for decades). But they didn't have a waiver form, so the woman at the coat check wrote one out by hand. It was all pretty ludicrous.

The museum was spectacular. Its treasures are from Pompeii and Herculaneum, but there are pieces from all over Campania, and even some from Rome. We first went up and saw the mosaics. Some were stunningly detailed. "I don't feel bad about missing the ones in Rome any more," N said. The larger ones, especially one of Alexander the Great in battle, grabbed attention; but the humbler ones, including one of street performers with a variety of evocative expressions, were perhaps more rewarding.

The time came for us to see the Secret Cabinet, and we trooped in behind the gate, locked again behind us, with about thirty other people. I quickly realized that the guide wasn't telling us anything I couldn't read in the extensive wall texts, and moved away from the crush of people to study things on my own. What I learned was that the Romans were pretty juvenile. Most of the material would have fit well into the ribald cartoons of British "nudge-nudge" magazines: dwarves with big penises, satyrs chasing nymphs. The kids, who understand the mechanics of sex if not the emotional depths, thought it pretty idiotic. Z got off the best line by referring to one terracotta penis as a "coathook". I asked her outside what she thought, and she said, "I don't think the Duke's kids would have been THAT impressed by it."

Upstairs was a grand Salon, whose size, ceiling decoration, and grand paintings paled into insignificance beside the Roman wall paintings set up at ground level. It was an embarrassment of riches; we were overwhelmed by detail, and walked slowly from one to another absorbing what we could. Side rooms contained furnishings from the two excavated cities; silverware, bronze helmets, a beautiful blue glass vase with raised white figures, charred scrolls of papyrus, room after room of bronze sculpture. There was a scale model of Pompeii, but at this point it meant little to us.

Much of the museum was in fact closed; of the monumental marble sculpture, we could see only the Farnese pieces unearthed at the Baths of Caracalla (these are really quite ugly), and a few of the best pieces gathered in one room while the rest of the ground floor underwent some needed renovation. The coin collection was open (and it was most interesting to see the random amounts carried in people's pockets when they fell victim to Vesuvius), but the gem collection was not.

We ended our tour in time for a late lunch, and had this a short walk south, through the sleepy Piazza Bellini and the Port'Alba to the pizzeria of the same name. There weren't seats available under the Porta itself, but we were given a table upstairs. We had one pizza and two orders of linguine al cartoccio, a seafood pasta finished off in a parchment bundle in the oven; the waiter brought the charred bundle up, cut it open, and served it out. It was quite good, as was the pizza. They wouldn't sell me less than a full bottle of wine, and Falanghina at that, so I contented myself with a nondescript beer.

We made our way home, slowly, after that, and found the cleaning woman watching TV in the kitchen, with her daughter still glued to the TV in the sitting room. There were dishes in the drying rack that we hadn't used; they had clearly been there all day. The fruit we had left ripening on the table had been stuck in the fridge. The washing machine was going, doing the owner's most recent load of clothes; I got our clothes out of the way just in time. The kids read in the living room, N and I relaxed on the bed, and they continued to occupy the kitchen and sitting room. I thought they were waiting for the laundry to dry, or something, but they were just waiting for their shows to end; at five, having done no further cleaning, they shut the TVs off and left. "Bizarre," observed N.

Wolfgang called, and suggested a ride up to Posillipo in their car. We arranged to meet at a preset time at Piazza Bovio, just to the south, at the bottom end of Corso Umberto I, the wide boulevard leading to the train station. We left the apartment five minutes before then, walked a little east through the alleys, and down a narrow stairway to the streets north of the Piazza. P was waving at us: traffic had been lighter than expected. We got into their Citroen station wagon (P's father was an auto dealer) and headed west.

Our Cadogan guidebook, the one that gave the impression of total chaos, was quite eloquent about the horrible nature of Napoli traffic. There was some truth to this. It wasn't as bad as Paris traffic, because that moved much faster and gave the general sense that one had to be competent in order to deal with it. In Napoli there were no lane markings, and there was no sense of lane discipline. If someone beeped at you, it carried no stigma; it wasn't as if you had done something horribly declasse. You simply positioned your auto for best advantage. The signage did not help: "Look at this," W said, pointing out an arrow pointing right, just to the left of a do-not-enter circle. "We have to go this way," he said, steering to the left of the combination.

Once we were past the Villa Communale, things moved somewhat faster, and we headed along the seacoast, sometimes moving further up the hill, offering good views of the bay. Eventually, we came to a wide boulevard, near the crest of Posillipo hill. W parked the car, and we walked over to the right side for a view of the sunset... and of the abandoned ILVA steelworks, filling the foreground, a symbol of corruption and Camorra influence. But beyond that was the harbour of Pozzuoli, the peninsula with Baia and Cumae, and the islands of Nisida and Ischia.

The park at the top of Posillipo hill was closed for renovation, but we walked to the left and down the curving road with great views over the roofs of fancy villas to the bay below. This road is famous for "quivering cars", the parked autos with windows blocked by newspaper to offer the couples inside privacy. But we saw only a few of these; mostly the parking spots were empty, or filled with couples relaxing side by side with the seats reclined, but not doing anything we couldn't glance at.

At some point, we came upon the restaurant of choice, ADD and went inside. It had a large patio with a bay view, and a few parties of diners near the edge. We were given a table closer in towards the centre, which was fine with me. We ordered a large portion of treccia di mozzarella (a braided version of mozzarella di bufala, with fresh tomatoes and olive oil) to start, and then N, Z, W, and I had seafood risotto; P had linguine alla marinara, and A had a calzone. I looked at the wine list, and found an obscure local wine, Asprinio d'Aversa, to try; it was pleasant.

We had come in a large loop, and it was an easy climb back to the car and a more relaxing drive back into town. W and P dropped us in Piazza Bovio, and we climbed back up to the apartment.

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