I Like This Town

It's Sunday afternoon, about four. Everyone's just finished a leisurely three course lunch, and except for a few bars, the sidewalks have rolled up until dinner time, a few hours from now. The pizzerias will open, the crowds will pack Via Dei Tribunali to play Italian Roulette with the traffic on streets too narrow to accommodate both, and the smell of wood fired ovens will mingle with petrol fumes and off-brand cigarette smoke. In short, it is perfect.

The weather doesn't hurt, either. It poured last night and today was forecast to be thunderstorms throughout. Instead, it's sunny and breezy with big puffy clouds building then ebbing around Vesuvius.

We were warned about Naples, but I question that wisdom. Rick Steves advises not to stay here, but we've got one of the best rooms I've ever seen in Europe. Someone else described it as the Detroit of Italy; it's anything but. Strolling down Via Toledo this morning (walking would be too violent a word), past all the shops and patisseries, banks and basilicas, syncopated with the strollers and the seniors, one has to ask could anything be better?

Yes. My Italian could be better. Put that on the resolution list.