Sunday in Naples.. Domenica a Napoli

We have a delightful loft apartment in Naples, contemporary style, like, Helen says, a factory conversion in Sydney. The new top title photo for the blog is a photo from our window.

I went out early, the morning after our Saturday night arrival, to fetch breakfast items. Approaching the major road from narrow via Duomo I heard a sudden gobbet of shouting and the sound of hands hitting car rather than car hitting car. Several others walking my way hastened to have a look. When I got to the corner, there, eight lanes away, were young men with a fancy black car in altercation with young women (Berlusconesche, we could say), dressed in tight pink pants. By the time I got to cross the road a few metres up, the Carabinieri had arrived and were interviewing the men, the women having vanished. Good marks for prompt police intervention. There is a considerable police presence wherever we have been, but it is much less aggressive and confrontational and hard rule driven than it seems in Australia. Results based, rather than pigeon chest puffing power position assertion.

Again yesterday, this sight we have seen before, in Soriano last year, of the parking policeperson standing by the triple parked car, blowing whistle and waiting for the owner to arrive and move car, rather than issue ticket, though ticket pad in hand. A nice scold, not a ticket and sustained road blockage. (We did not have the camera with us either in Siracusa week before last, when we saw a police team and tow truck pick up an illegally parked car, back it (quite some time) down the narrow street and drop it, with some difficult manoeuvring, into a road-centre parking space. Shades of my experience in Paris December 1969, when the charming young policeman at the police station, after I had reported my car stolen, came back to me with some gents in overalls to say "Monsieur, may I introduce you to the gentlemen who stole your car, and may we ask you in future not to park in front of the doctor's garage." "Oh, sorry, where do I go to collect it?" "It is about 100 metres down the street on the other side.") When will we Anglo-Sassoni learn that the more we huff the more people will try to blow our houses down.

I went out again later with Helen and with the iPhone - movie below. (I am using the iPhone rather than the Fuji S3 DSLR first because it is unobtrusive and producing such interesting results and second, alas, because the S3 is producing a spot on every photo (either lens) and I have not yet solved the problem.)

To get to the local market, we first have to descend from our fifth of five floors apartment to the street.

A few metres up the street we dropped into the Museo Madre Contemporary Art Museum and got some good advice on buying an 'ArteCard' with discounts for places and free transport in the region PLUS information and conversation on the industrial relations agitation by museum staff on very familiar grounds: casual employement, low pay, short shifts. And then to the cheerful crowds of the market, to stock up food (except we forgot butter, so that will be another 2 x 131 steps plus the horizontal travel) after having a coffee in a deservedly popular cafe, serving brilliant coffee.

It's still carnevale, as last Sunday in Palermo, so still small children are out in special outfits.

While putting together the movie, we suddenly heard a band somewhere downstairs. I put the iPhone in the window and recorded a soundtrack for this movie, so the commentary is in subtitles.

Best to watch as HD 1080, there's a little thingie down below the picture to click and adjust. You can also watch full screen, another button below: explore, enjoy (I hope!).