Let me start out by saying that I visited Naples on my own a few years’ back. It was just a quick
stroll from the station and around the city for about two hours before heading back to Rome. It was interesting but I really didn’t get a sense of the city. Now we have a client that I know that would like to go to Naples but the rap on the city is that it has a lot of petty crime. So off I went with my man bag in hand for a virgin overnight in Naples.
First of all, it’s only a 63-minute journey on the high-speed Frecciarossa from Rome to Naples. The train is super fast. The Italians love their high-speed train links. They’re really good at this stuff! After a particularly dreadful on-train coffee served by a particularly disinterested on-train steward (the Italians are really good at this stuff too), we had arrived in Naples. My mate had organized a taxi (booked) from the station and so far, so good. We safely got to our hotel on a nice stretch of the promenade that sits opposite the island of Capri. In between, there were the usual underground excavations for a project that would never be finished, but no matter, we were here. The trip had been entirely uneventful, no muggings, no hassles and now with the light of the early evening, we decided to go for a walking tour.
Here’s the thing about Naples – it’s handy to know your way around, there are lots of hills, it’s a chaotic, and there are lots of different areas with very different characteristics. The first stop was the Palazzo Mannajuolo which holds an incredible staircase; probably the most breathtaking internal staircase in all the world, la scala ellittica. We strolled around the hilly Chiaia and stopped at an old-world candy store in San Ferdinando. We came across a beautiful piazza with the pantheon-like structure of the church of San Ferdinando. The piazza here is open and full of light with Vesuvius in the background. The opera house, Teatro di San Carlo, was showing La Traviata. There is a spectacular galleria, the Galleria Umberto I, close by as well. It houses thousands of panes of glass sitting in a cross formation with a whole series of panels of Jewish stars that form part of the glass decoration. The history of Naples is more or less the entire history of the our ancient civilization. One thing’s for sure, it makes Rome look like a young lad.
The light was dropping so we wandered back to the harbor to prepare for dinner near the Castle Nuovo (not very nuovo actually). That is where I had the most incredible spaghetti alle vongole I had ever eaten. So, this was Naples and we had only been there a few hours. More to come. Wow.
the Swiss started it all and it still thrives there to this day. All you need to trigger one of these things is 100,000 votes. Well, as we know, it’s not all wine and roses. Hitler used the device to promote his populist rantings and managed to screw the entire western world over and kill a lot of innocent people in the process. Referendums gave him the dictatorial powers that enabled him to dominate the evil arena for over 12 years. In the USA, there’s no national mechanism for a referendum. Pity, as we could probably do something about Donald of Orange right now given his current standing! Still, 24 states hold referendums and Massachusetts became the most recent state to pass legalization of marijuana laws through this device. So, referendums are really not all that bad. It’s just that when you need them to fail, the failsafe doesn’t work. Brexit voters just caused the biggest upset in British politics…and what will happen to Scotland? After all, Romans thought it was wise to keep out the Scots by building a wall! Heard that somewhere before. Didn’t work then. Won’t work now!
would be good for something even though none of us could understand a word that she said! So, off I have been on the path of discovery to County Clare, the tiny town of Scarriff, and the even tinier hamlet of Aughram. I am looking at church records, the births and deaths register in Dublin, you name it, I am on it. And I am nearly there.
