It was a hot night, very hard to sleep, and we got lots of mosquito bites. Had this been a hotel, I would have checked out days ago. Two doubles in the inexpensive places listed in Frommer's, dives near the train station, would have cost us more than the apartment; for a place with air-conditioning and a quiet location, it would have been much more. I began to see why tourists stayed in Sorrento or on the islands, though why hotels should be so expensive in such a poor town remains a mystery.
We were up early in morning, and N did a last laundry, getting organized; W, who had not gone to Potenza, rang the bell at 9:30, and offered to come up as he had gifts for the kids from P. I had visions of some huge toy to carry back, but the gifts were modest and small: a pencil with a funny eraser, some crayons, and a tube of Baci, the little chocolate hazelnut candies P knew they liked. It already seemed hot; W said the forecast was for a high of 30. On the way down the stairs, we passed the cleaner and daughter coming up.
This was our day to wander around the immediate neighbourhood, the historic centre, and look at little churches. First up was the Gesu Nuovo, across from Santa Chiara; it was heavily Baroque, large, with lots of renovation scaffolding and coverings everywhere. We liked the Fresco of the Expulsion of Heliodorus above the door, a nice comparison to the treatment of the same subject by Raphael in the rooms he frescoed in the Vatican. We wandered up and looked at some of the side chapels and the altar, and then wandered back and were about to exit when W motioned us to a chapel on the other side. This led to a section of the building devoted to San Giuseppe Moscati, a local doctor who died in the '20's and was canonized some sixty-odd years later. It had a hallway covered with lots of little devotional offerings in frames, silver-plated reliefs of various limbs or organs healed by prayer to the saint. Off the hallway were recreations of his study and bedroom. It was quite unlike the grandeur and mystery outside, and made Catholicism (the local version, anyway) seems like just a simple country superstition. I suppose some would argue that it is.
Then into Santa Chiara across the piazza; in contrast, this church was plain and understated, since the baroque overlays and everything else had been destroyed by an Allied incendiary bomb in 1943 (one fell into Gesu Nuovo but didn't ignite; the shell was displayed inside the church with an inscription calling it a reminder of the futility of war). The church had been rebuilt after the war in plain early-Gothic style (with a Romanesque floor plan). The windows had some stained glass in them, about all we would see in Italy. We paid admission to enter the cloister, famous for being tiled in majolica and with frescoes along walls; this led to a small museum with Roman terme ruins as well as various bits salvaged from the destruction of the church. It was odd to see a reconstruction that had been treated like the ancient marbles we'd been seeing in museums, but a reconstruction of something that was only about two hundred years old.
Our next stop was Sant'Angelo a Nilo, but it was closed, with construction equipment piled behind a fence in front. We continued along Spaccanapoli. I hung back for a coffee at Bar Nilo, but I forgot to specify "amaro" -- they had asked at the other places -- and it arrived with a spoon of sugar tipped into the espresso and already melting into it. The result was good, but too sweet! I caught up with the others in Via S. Gregorio Armano, a street famed for little shops that make small figurines and other accessories for presepi, the kitschy Nativity scenes that everyone creates around Christmastime). I didn't think they were worth that much time, but the children were fascinated, and wandered into shop after shop. It was possible to spend a great deal of money on fancy backdrops which included the ability to animate small characters.
From there we walked up a bit and into S. Lorenzo Maggiore. Here, the baroque encrustation had also been removed, to reveal a Gothic plan (rare this far south) with an ambulatory around the apse. Frescoes by an unknown Neapolitan student of Giotto (showing a distinct Giottoesque influence) were visible in a couple of the chapels. The right wall of the nave tilted alarmingly outward, as if it was about to crumble at any moment and take the roof with it. We walked into the cloister which was partly excavated, revealing Roman ruins; we were permitted to walk down into an archaeological complex which included a Roman macellum, an arcaded cryptoporticus with cubicles that were clearly intended for some commercial purpose, but whose structure left questions as to what that purpose was. As under the Duomo, the foundations of Greek temples and a road were visible below, and there were pavements (some multilayered, and some visible under glass in the nave of the main church) from an early Christian basilica at a higher level.
We then walked up and through some very narrow streets trying to find traces of an ancient Roman theatre, but the only clue to it was in the shape of the streets, the only ones in the historic centre that were not rectilinear or angular. One of our books said that more traces were visible inside the buildings we were walking by, but they didn't reveal any secrets to us. Returning to Via dei Tribunali, we found ourselves in a narrow, messy street market. Along with the usual chaos of traffic, shoppers, and goods piled on the sidewalk, we were treated to the sight of a couple in full wedding dress having photos taken among it. Their friends and relatives hung about with them in the street, causing cars to honk even more than usual, and the bride's dress was dragging in the overflow from fish tanks and occasionally being run over by taxis. A man stood on the other side of the street catching a ray of sun in a mirror and redirecting it onto the already radiant couple. I thought of taking a picture, but remembering the absurdity of seeing a parish wedding in the cathedral at Chartres being photographed and videoed by hundreds of tourists, I didn't.
Across the street was the small church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatoria ad Arco, which I would have skipped, but W said it had been closed for quite a while and was difficult to get into. Inside were some subtle skull and bone motifs behind the altar, with more visible on the facade; this church was renowned for the practice of worshipping the dead, somewhat frowned upon by the church hierarchy.
It was time for lunch. I had one name from our books, a place along Via dei Tribunali; W also had an address in mind. They turned out to be the same place, called da Carmine. It was largely empty, though a few parties came in after us. We ordered alici marinati (anchovies cured in vinegar) to start; then A had penne al carmine (with a simple meat sauce), Z had penne alla sorentina, W had fusilli with pomodori freschi, and N and I had linguine al cartoccio (in a foil pouch this time, not a parchment one). The latter cost about as much as it had at Port'Alba, which put it at about twice the cost of everything else on the menu, and it wasn't quite as good. But it still was tasty, and we appreciated the unpretentious atmosphere. There was a buffet table of antipasti, and from time to time a server went and cut a slice of a "frittata" (mostly leftover pasta baked into a pie), though it seemed often to be for the staff to munch on. We had ordered contorni, but it didn't come with the primi; I had forgotten sometimes that people made a habit of eating contorni as a separate second course without any meat or fish, so we cancelled it. The bill came to about L.88000 including 10% service, even with wine and the expensive dishes N and I had ordered.
We went down to Piazza S. Domenico Maggiore and had gelati at Scaturchio for the last time (though it was W's first time, and hopefully not his last). He walked us to the apartment and said goodbye to us on the street. It was about 3 pm. We went upstairs to discover a bonus: the cleaner and daughter were not there. N was prepared to pack "through" them if necessary, but it seemed clear that we were not going to see them again. We stripped down, poured liberal glasses of cold water and the spremuta which we had to finish, and relaxed.
For dinner, we walked towards the water on wide streets, turned in just opposite the Castel Nuovo, and entered Ciro a Santa Brigida, a long-established and somewhat fancy restaurant. It was early enough that the place was deserted except for a couple of other tourist parties, and we didn't feel out of place in our shorts and T-shirts. The waiter spoke to us in English, but in a nice way, and he was impressed that I knew what their pizza d'oro was (fresh mozzarella and fresh tomatoes). We wanted to have some light appetizers to start, but couldn't find the right things on the menu, so he offered to make us up a plate of mixed contorni. It was tasty, but a bit overpriced at L.28000 (which we didn't realize until we got the bill).
The three pizzas we had after that were more reasonable. I ordered the basic pizza d'oro, which had good structure but didn't quite reach the flavour heights of the pizza A had ordered at Ciro a Mergellina (I don't know if the two places were related or not). I got to have a treat, a half-bottle of Fiano di Avellino, reportedly the best white wine of Southern Italy, and one I thought I had lost the chance to sample. The dessert options at the restaurant were pretty limited (ice-cream and fruit); we walked through the Galleria and up Via Toledo looking for alternatives, but none were really open, and we weren't about to walk all the way to Scimmia to have poor gelato, but it was late enough that we convinced the kids to go without.