It's a Family Affair

My cousin and his girlfriend were touring through Italy this past week and decided to pop by Bella Napoli for a visit!  How truly European we are now!  While they were here, we took the opportunity to stop by Paestum, a once Greek, once Roman town that was later infested with misquitoes which killed off all of the inhabitants.  Lucky for us, the place was virutally unknown until the mid-1800's and is apparently one of Western Europe's best maintained Greek ruins.  Who knew?  Well, apparently Rick Steves and a whole bunch of other people.  Va bene!

Instead of paying for an audioguide, we strolled around this 2,500 year old town with me reading Rick Steves' step by step guide.  It ended up being such a popular destination that we actually ran into 3 other families that we know!  Now that is ESP! 

Afterwards, we meandered over to a ristorante that our buddy Rick had recommended.  He described it as "affordable," though we begged to differ.  However, we arrived at 3:15 and the wait staff was less than pleased with our notably poor timing but agreed to let us stay if they could pick what we ate.  Mi dispiace but va bene!!  A few cheese-filled crepes and some gelato later, we were happily on our way back to Napoli for even more food -- pizza and beer at our favorite watering hole, Solopizza.  Jesse and Liza got to try Neapolitan pizza, which is an absolute must in the city where pizza was invented!  Success!!

Sunday, we took the funiculare downtown and wandered about before making our way to the Naples Underground.  Tom and I had been before with a relatively irritating group from the USO but decided to go again with Jesse and Liza (but sans giant tour group) to explore something a bit different from piazzas and cathedrals, of which they had seen quite a bit during their trip.  Upon completing our tour, we grabbed some delicious street food (panino napolitano is my favorite breakfast food by far.  I'll take this moment to explain what is Italy's greatest street food:  start with some pizza dough, rolled in a rectangle.  Top is with a bit of cheese, some hard boiled (or scrambled) eggs, a bit of speck/thick cut proscuitto and whatever else is handy.  Roll it up, toss it in the oven.  Serve and do the little finger poke in your cheek to express your delight).  All of us ate up our delightful street food and, with sticky fingers, made our way to the train station. 

This part of town, near the train station, is REALLY dicey.  It's pretty rough, pretty stinky and pretty unsafe.  I got us lost.  So there we were, in an alley, surrounded by foul smelling garbage with street cats and the Sharks AND Jets having a turf war/dance-off around us.  There was a lot of snapping involved... it got weird.  Fear not!  They made it to the train station and onto their train!  Va bene! 

Yesterday my sister called me on Skype from her classroom in North Carolina.  Her room full of first graders popped up on my screen.  "Hello, Mrs. Keenan!" they shouted in unison!  Oh man, I should have found somewhere to sit other than "criss cross" on my living room floor.  They will surely think that Italians don't have chairs.  An entire class in NC now thinks that Italy doesn't have chairs.  I'm sorry to all of you.  For the record: Italy has chairs.

I taught a class of North Carolinian first graders how to say hello and the hand gesture for half, what gelato is and that Italy is shaped like a boot.  Their questions cracked me up.  "Is Italy in Ireland?"  "Is it close to North Carolina?"  "Are you moving to North Carolina soon?"  "Is that a cat in the background?"  Haha!  No, no, maybe, yes.  My sister kept prompting me to speak Italian, thinking my skill level is more advanced than it actually is.  I mean, the kids don't speak Italian, I guess I could have just said "gelato pizza Capri" and told them I was saying "My favorite place is Capri."  New tactic....

This weekend: it's hiking Mt. Vesuvius and going to the Italian Opera.  I'll keep y'all posted!

Ciao, tutti!

Lynne