Hmm. Maybe I should explain my thinking on the previous post about Naples. After, I came back from Italy, I was looking through a calendar my sister had given me for Christmas. It was a calendar called Rumi:Heart of the Beloved 2007 with quotations translated by Coleman Barks. Rumi was a poet who was born in Afganistan in 1207 but moved to what is modern day Turkey. Rumi was not his given name but what he was called and it translates into "Roman".
As I flipped through the months where I had not read the captions, I came across this one,
"There is a community of the Spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street and being the noise."
At an emotional level, the first thing that crossed my mind is that this is how I came to feel in Naples. My visit did not start off auspiciously, but I came to enjoy what is known as the passeggiata. In fact, when I was off to Capri or Sorrento or some other place for the day, I found myself looking at the time to make sure we didn't get home too late to enjoy the passeggiata, I enjoyed it so much. At the end of our time in Naples, I wish that I had spent more time there. Florence is a beautiful city filled with art, and Rome is the Eternal City, but in Naples you have to look past the traffic and noise and things that just seem to happen there. Because, in Naples, the charm and treasure are its people.
2 comments:
I would love somewhere where you keep the passiagiata :) Tell us more about it please. Photos?
Maryann,
I can't believe I don't have any photos of Naples! I don't know why except that maybe I just wanted to blend in and not look like a tourist during the passeggiata. We walked down to the Spanish Quarter and most of the participants in the passeggiata appear to be the locals. Many tour books are always warning tourists about Naples not being everyone's cup of tea, the crime, the trash situation and to be careful which is what you have to do almost everywhere in any large metropolitan city. But we loved it and I can't wait to go back to southern Italy. I wanted to go to Palermo, too, on the ferry but didn't realize that it was an overnight passage. So, we ran out of time.
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