Napoli

Dean Martin- That's Amore

The first time I heard this song, all I knew was the "big pizza pie" part. When I was younger, my dad would sing it endlessly as my sister and I swam around in our grandparent's pool in Florida after hours, when the "moon hit our eye". Who would have thought that little girl, so impressed she could walk on her hands underwater, would someday make it to Napoli.
Now my experience in Napoli was quite different that the Dean Martin song- except the "big pizza pie" part. Seriously, check this out.

That's amore, alright.

I spent two days in Napoli because my class, Economics of Organized Crime, better known as the mafia class, had our field study here. My professor is from the city so he was beyond ecstatic to be showing around his hometown. Friday was long and exhausting, having to be ready at the train station by 8:30am, carrying around our backpacks all day until we could get to the hostel at night, and the fact that it rained the whole day didn't help either. Nonetheless, the city was fantastic.
We started the day out by climbing to the top of a castle on a hill that looked out over the city. It may have been pouring and my socks already squishing in my shoes, but the view was incredible.

Even the weather couldn't ruin the view..

The main highlight of day one was the glove factory we went to. This place was run out of an apartment with little old ladies stitching hand made leather gloves. These are the gloves that eventually make their way to big fashion labels such as Christian Dior. The man who ran the company gets personalized birthday cards from the people at Dior... nbd.

Mauro making some gloves.

Working away.

Cute stitching machine and a finished glove.

We learned a bit about the mafia here at the leather glove factory. I'm not sure the protocol for talking about it on the internet... so if you're interested, ask me in person- I'd love to talk all about it!

We got lunch at a local pizza place after the glove factory- see above pizza picture. I'm proud and somewhat ashamed to admit I ate the whole thing.

It had been 7 hours since I had eaten + lots of walking. No judgement.

A lot after lunch was just walking around random places in the city. Remember, my professor is high off hometown pride. Imagine you had a group of foreigners in your hometown, you're going to show them all your favorite things. We saw two different churches with completely different styles of designs, a cool street which sells little nativity figures for Christmas all year long, a shopping mall that looked like a fancy hotel, and the Piazza del Plebiscito, one of the biggest squares in Naples.

Say cheese!

After a traditional Napoleon dinner (gnocchi), our professor took us to a concert with 1 euro wine. Now, all of us were expecting a bar or something where a band would play and people could talk while casually sipping their wine. Wow, were we mistaken. After trudging through the rain, we eventually make it to an apartment building. After waiting in the staircase for a couple minutes, we walk up and into someone's apartment. The main room has a small stage and a handful of small tables and stools all around. The kitchen serves as the bar. Our professor explained the owners of the apartment use it as a bed and breakfast as well as a concert area, I guess... I mean the music was good, it was just a definite curveball.

Play that jazzy music white boys.

For the next day, we again did a multitude of different things. I think my favorite part was lunch. I'll get to that in a second. We started out in a beautiful park, and one of the only ones (if not THE only one) in the city. Again, incredible view of the city.

Yay! Better weather!

Other highlights include delicious pastry Napoleon breakfast, underground tunnels that were used in World War II and had contraband cars rusting underground, and walking along the coast to see the water and finally... Mt. Vesuvius!

The streets on Napoli

Pardon the Snapchat writing ;)

Ok, but now a little about lunch on Saturday. We went to a house of street performers. They started with singing and dancing out in the street. One of the men put on a costume that resembled Napoleon and showed off different instruments. He sang a song and for the weirdest reason, I feel like he was making fun of us. It was all in good fun though.
When they welcomed us inside, we helped make the pasta by cracking it over big metal bowls. Each little piece of pasta was important and they yelled at you if you forgot to throw the little scraps into the pot. As the pasta cooked, we sang more songs, this time giving just about everyone a different little instrument. I had little finger clappers.
The food was delicious. Amazing pasta, actual ragù (!! so good!), incredible bread, and really good coffee at the end. Before they could let us go though, we were given one more performance. We cleared the tables to make space in the little area. The first man we met and the woman who cooked the food got in the center and did a couples dance. It was fun to clap along and watch, but of course they decided to make this interactive. Somehow I was pulled into dancing with the first man we met. It was easy to pick up on the moves but he demanded I had to look into his eyes the whole time. It was a little intimidating haha, but fun. When we left he told me I was a great dancer- so HA! to all those who've said otherwise.

Quite the experience.

Napoli was an incredible city and I'm so lucky I was able to go there. As my professor said, "You have to see Napoli before you die." Check!


P.S. RANDOM UPDATES
- Pope Watch 2013 has been pretty uneventful so far. I was unable to see Benedict live in action before he bowed out; I had just missed his last blessing.
- I'm sorry I've been so slow with these updates! It actually takes a lot of time to write everything out and organize the pictures, and I want to make sure everything's perfect.
-I'll try to get my post about my weekend in Dublin out soon! Here's a short preview though: I need to go back to Ireland asap. It was absolutely amazing and I loved every last second of it. :)
-Please leave a comment!