I was up early, in part because of the stifling atmosphere of the bedroom; I went down the stairs early in the morning, headed over through Piazza Matteotti, flanked by cold Fascist buildings, and had coffee at the bar attached to Torrefazione Santo Domingo, a roaster I had noticed in Via Cesare Battisti just before Piazza Carita. Nice local atmosphere, but the coffee wasn't anything special.
I crossed back over Via Monteoliveto and plunged into our network of local alleys looking for breakfast. I picked up bread at the same local alimentari I had bought it at before; the seller made conversation about my wallet pouch and how handy it was. Then I bought some fruit at a fruit seller located at a particularly narrow part of the alley, just down from the steps we took to get to Piazza Bovio. He insisted on speaking to me in English (his English was way better than my Italian), and told me about all the places I must see in Napoli. Together they provided me with a needed bit of local friendliness, and it didn't matter so much that both the bread and the fruit proved pretty mediocre.
After breakfast, we left the apartment at 9:20 (thankfully missing the cleaning woman), went down to Piazza Bovio, and were picked up by W&P. They had decided to take the day off, and suggested a trip to Benevento to us. This was a small town in the interior. I looked it up on the map and it was farther away than Sorrento; it looked to be about an hour and a half away by car. The kids tended to misbehave when squeezed together in the station wagon's back seat (they are normally on opposite sides of the car) and I thought this might be too much. I suggested a closer destination, like Caserta, which had the second largest amphitheatre and a medieval village close by. But W pointed out that it was all fast autostrada to Benevento and would only take about an hour to reach, whereas Caserta was reached by smaller roads and would take longer even though it was closer. I accepted his logic.
The drive to Benevento was, in fact, less than an hour long. It was hot, and very hazy, but fortunately their car had air conditioning. From time to time we would pass a nice vista, a town with a church at the centre, or a ruined medieval castle on a crag.
They had a handbook for the region from Touring Club Italiano, the equivalent of CAA or the British AA, but like the little Michelin maps, it only showed the very centre, and not the part we were driving around in an attempt to find the centre. Finally, we found the right place to park, which was exactly where we had asked for directions that sent us off in the wrong direction for ten minutes.
Benevento, being a small provincial town, had small provincial sights, for the most part. The Rector's Tower was a chunk of castle which originally commanded a nice view over the plain and river below, but the plain had been filled with dull housing and highways. The Chiesa di Santa Lucia was a little gem: dating from the 8th century, with a hexagonal centre surrounded by ten pillars. It was very plain, and only a few traces of original frescoes remained; we learned that it has undergone baroquification in the 18th century, and when all the excessive ornament was stripped away in the 20th century, it proved to have irretrievably damaged the earlier work.
The museum in the attached cloister had a small and occasionally interesting collection of Roman artifacts (including some neo-Egyptian works from cults popular in the first and second centuries AD), rusted bits of medieval arms; and a rather dreary series of works by local painters right up to the mid-1970's. So far, the trip had turned out to be the kind that one welcomes if one has been stuck in a rural cottage for a few days, but not something that the city dweller would envy.
The Arch of Trajan, though, was a nice surprise. It was better preserved than any of the arches in Rome, set in a nice little park with a pedestrian zone about it. It was too hot to spend any time in the sun, and we found whatever shade we could from which to contemplate it. It was getting to be lunchtime, and we wandered through the centre, largely deserted, looking for a place to eat. "Let's go to the Duomo, there must be places near it," said W, but it turned out there weren't. He went off to try to find some, and I poked through the TCI guide. It recommended one place that was just across the river. When W turned up again (having gotten some vague recommendations from a policeman) we convinced him to head out to this place.
The river had a large bridge crossing it, but it was almost entirely dry, just a trickle we could have waded across easily in our shorts and sandals. Short, scruffy vegetation filled most of the rest of the river bed, with traces of what appeared to be badly eroded Roman brickwork peeking through here and there. The restaurant was open, but deserted; it had a cavernous interior with a huge projection TV showing news, and a depressing terrace. "The sort of place one has a reception at," said W. We ordered mozzarella di bufala and prosciutto to start, followed by linguine di scoglio (essentially a frutti di mare) for the adults. The kids had mezzo manieri (I think I've gotten that right, sort of half-rigatoni) with mussels and tiny clams. They had Lacryma Christi wine, which was on my list, and it wasn't quite chilled enough, but better that than overchilled.
After lunch, we wandered back across the river. It was quite hot. We spent a few minutes looking at the facade of the Duomo. It was the only part that remained, and had lots of bits of Roman funerary monuments and other stonework stuck into it, oriented any which way. The rest of the church had been destroyed by World War II bombing and rebuilt, and it was closed anyway. We made our way across the town, deserted for siesta, towards the Roman amphitheatre. This was fairly small, though the seats had been reconstructed, and a modern stage had been built so that it could house concerts. It was in the middle of what was billed as a medieval quarter, but none of the buildings were more than one story high, and it was clear that it had suffered considerable damage during the war, if not before.
Back across the town, clinging to whatever shade we could find, stopping for a granita in an open bar. When we finally got back to the car, the bottle of water we had left in the back was hot, but the kids drank it anyway. We drove back home through the haze, passengers dozing from time to time; W&P dropped us in Piazza Bovio, and P said goodbye to us, as she was off to Potenza the next morning for a doctor's appointment.
We had dinner at Lombardia a Santa Chiara near us, just up on Spaccanapoli past the church of the same name. We ordered a pizza quattro stagione (funghi, prosciutto cotto, olives and capers, egg) and capricciosa (which was supposed to be chef's choice, and the chef decided to put exactly the same items on), which we shared amongst us, while Z insisted on having orichiette al sorrentina (ear-shaped pasta with fresh mozzarella and fresh tomato sauce, very rich tasting). I had a draft beer. It was a pleasant if unremarkable meal.
Afterwards, we walked up to Piazza Carita to have gelato at Scimmia, a place mentioned in a couple of our books. It was quite disappointing, and the streets were in an odd state -- not deserted, but not very occupied, with little knots of people doing odd things. We didn't feel very safe, and wondered where all the people had gone, given that people tended to eat late. I knew the waterfront was livelier, but surely the entire city didn't head down there.