Saturday in Naples

Back in March 2020, we were scheduled to go on a river cruise in Portugal, and we had booked a food tour with Culinary Backstreets. When everything shut down, they gave us a credit for a future tour, and it so happened that they offered one in Naples, Italy. We scheduled a five-hour backstreet tour for yesterday which started at 10 am and ended at 3 pm. Anne went - I did not.

A couple of times on this trip I have woken up feeling like an old man (not hungover which would be better). My stamina abandons me. Anne has been very understanding and has remarkable stamina reserves, so she goes on without me. This turned out to be a most unusual day!

Anne was the only one on the tour, and she and the tour guide were simpatico. At some point in late morning, Anne texted me the location of their lunch stop and suggested that I join them. I kicked myself in the ass and got a cab. A cab ride in Naples is not a good way to emerge from a funk. I arrived at the specified pizzeria, one of the most popular in Naples, to find the area around the entrance mobbed - I mean really crowded - with people everywhere waiting or eating lesser fare from nearby sources.

The whole scene made me very uncomfortable. When Anne appeared, I begged off  dealing with the crowd and lunched on a sandwich from a nearby bakery, while Anne went in and joined the tour guide for pizza. I decide to walk back to the apartment, and then my adventure began. I thought I had my bearings, but when the gps directed me up this astounding set of stairs, I stupidly thought it was showing me a shortcut. After climbing more steps than I have ever climbed before, I did have a great view of the Naples harbor and the next part of the path was downhill.

Sometimes the gps wigs out, so after an hour of multiple “reroutings” and passing the same stores twice I tried to hail a cab. The two empty ones that I saw wizzed by without a glance. I was starting to get both exhausted and alarmed, as I was truly and completely lost - and my phone was almost out of power. I asked a number of people for help, but none spoke English. I sat down on a step (I had just descended another long set of stairs) and was feeling desperate, I looked up and saw a well-dressed young man coming my way. 

I must have looked and sounded like the exhausted and desperate old man that I was. I asked if he spoke English - and he answered in perfect English with a lovely British accent - an angel from a sister land. I told him the address I was heading for, and he pulled it up on his cell phone and showed me that I was 2 minutes away. It was just the next street over. If I had not been so relieved and surprised I would have hugged him. Lucky for him, I just looked up from my seat on the stone step and said “thank you.”

I had walked four miles and climbed 27 floors. I collapsed and slept. Anne returned in great spirits with food samples collected for me, great photos, and a fascinating story. We dined in on left overs and her offerings. We had to get up early the next morning, pack, and make our way to the train station for our short ride (1 hour) to Rome.

Comments

  1. ruthsieversSeptember 10, 2021 at 8:17 AM

    Ray, I am sorry to read this. Steve also is losing stamina, although that has been true since the stroke over 10 years ago (can you believe it -- more than 10 years!) I totally understand the scary feeling of being lost in a place you don't know. It happened to me last week in Chicago in a part of town that felt a little sketchy and after dark. I, too, was actually close to my destination but just couldn't figure it out. I finally found someone who could help me.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday in Rome

This day did not go so well. It did start out ok - at 9 AM we got our rapid COVID tests required for reentry to the US ($50), and the results were negative. We got  GREEN PASSes! I'll keep it short. Isaia picked Anne up at 11 AM while I hung back in the hotel room. We planned to meet at 1:30 and go to lunch. I took a cab to the designated meeting place and waited... Eventually Isaia arrived and told me that he was having trouble communicating with Anne who was waiting for him outside a museum where he had left her to tour on her own. He asked me to see if I could connect with her. I tried, but the texts and phone calls were not going through. We waited. Eventually, after 45 minutes, I got a message from Anne - she had walked back to the hotel. So Isaia drove to the hotel and picked Anne up - she had waited outside the museum for him for an hour and was understandably annoyed. He had run into traffic problems. At our request he drove us to a restaurant that he recommended so we coul
Read more

After thoughts

Final photos posted - still readjusting to being home. I am happy that we went ahead with the trip in spite of the known (and always lurking unknown) obstacles that we encountered.  As long as COVID is still a public health concern, travel outside of the US will be more complex and risky. Of course the kind of places that we want to travel to are desperate for the tourists to come back, so we were welcomed everywhere we went. But being on a large, luxurious cruise ship built to host 980 passengers with only 480 on board posed a real challenge for the staff. The captain said that the ratio of crew to passenger was 1:1. Other than constantly cleaning this and that, it seemed that many were really looking for something to do. We received so many ‘good days and thank yous,’ I really wanted to sit them down and hear their stories of life while the cruise ships were idle. During the cruise portion of the trip, I learned a great deal about the tumultuous history of Malta and of the Balkans. A
Read more