A day in Napoli, in the shadow of Vesuvius

Vesuvio

Arriving in Naples from an overcast London was an intravenous shot of Italian espresso for the spirits. The sun was high, the sky cobalt and to the left, as we sped by car to the centre of the old city, loomed Vesuvius.

Vast docks with container skyscrapers led to narrow streets before we were dropped outside the boutique hotel that would be our home for a single night.

Bags were gratefully deposited – we’d overpacked, since every weather forecast available had suggested we’d need clothes for at least two climates.

Then it was out and a search for lunch. Just around the corner we found Tandem, recommended by the receptionist at the hotel.

Slow-cooked octopus

Setting aside the young woman trying to give passers-by leaflets to lure them to a table – this is 21^st-century Italy’s version of sirens – the menu appeared authentic and there were clearly locals enjoying a leisurely Saturday repast.

Service was equally leisurely, but when you’re sitting in the sunshine with no concrete timetable, it’s difficult to be churlish. When a waiter came over, it was with a container of different pastas to help us understand the menu.

I opted for a tubular pasta with a Genovese ragu of octopus, onion and carrot. Slow-cooked for eight hours, it was excellent.

The people watching wasn’t bad either. Not for the last time, we saw men in hi-vis jackets, clearly in charge of off-street car parks that were somehow buried in buildings that didn’t look at all like that would be possible.

How high is this arch?

It didn’t seem to be a particularly onerous task, leaving them with time to stand around and chat, accompanied by plenty of gesticulations.

It’s worth realising as quickly as possible that Neapolitans in general speak loudly, quickly and with a lot of hand movements. Once you have that sussed, you don’t start every time you hear a conversation, thinking it’s a domestic.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the old city; down the narrow street that slices through the old quarter and is full of shops selling tat, such as limoncello in penis-shaped bottles. And no – it was not tempting even given the knowledge that the ancient Romans saw large, erect phalluses as a good luck charm.

Then we found ourselves deciding that the queue to see the sculpture of the Veiled Christ really was just too long, so we carried on admiring the age of the buildings and the architecture and also (in different ways) the sheer amount of street art and graffiti that, in places, seems to cover every millimetre of available wall.

Fidel – mirrored, on a university building

There are churches everywhere. There are more than a few shrines – and neo-religious references to Saint Hand of God Maradona also abound. And red chilis as decorations. Colours abound and washing hangs outside the windows of pastel-painted apartment blocks while the paint silently peels.

We’ve visited Venice twice – that was our Italy. But this is a very different of Italy. To be fair, Venice is a place apart. One assumes that Venetians are as happy to be regarded as a people apart as the rest of Italy is to be regarded as something different from La Serenissima.

But back to Napoli itself. Crossing roads felt like taking your life into your hands: horns tooted and with scooters not required to stop for a red light at a crossing, you have to learn quickly to follow the Neapolitans’ own example – just stride into the road when the light’s in your favour and trust that any vehicular traffic will stop.

We survived. Just.

Back at the hotel, we rested and freshened up before heading out for dinner. That was a slow descent toward the marina and the sea front, where we’d been advised that there was good seafood to be had. What there was, was our first real view of the bay as the day slipped gently toward its end.

Do you think we should have gone down here?

Shades of indigo all around. Vesuvius presiding over the bay. In the distance, across the water, the island of Ischia: a strip of pale mist appeared to sever it from the sea, as though it levitated, as mysterious as Bali Hai. It’s a view you cannot stop looking at: full of promise and, in that brooding volcano, power.

We eventually opted for one of the tourist traps along the promenade. There seemed to be no alternative and we were tired after a long day that had started at around 4am.

Service was dire. Orders were part forgotten and my squid, when it eventually turned up, was overcooked and tough. We ate one course and finished our bottle of wine, congratulated ourselves that we’d not ordered more, paid up and left.

Sunday morning: 8.29am on the dot and a lone church bell rings out for a few minutes before fading away.

The car park is closed

Below the window in our hotel room was a garden with apricot and lemons trees. Beyond were low buildings and, further off, Vesuvius. Swifts darted around.

We had breakfast and left, a taxi taking us down to the marina. There, it was swiftly on to a ferry for the journey across the Bay of Naples to Sorrento.

To the north, Vesuvius dominates as it would do for the rest of the trip. The bay was calm, the ferry remarkably comfortable. A vast, flat cloud fanned out over the top of Vesuvio.

When it exploded in 79AD, Pliny the Elder described the column of gasses and debris that were hurled into the stratosphere as looking like a stone pine.

As we near our destination, the coastline changes: it rears, craggy and precipitous – quite different from what we have seen so far; sculptural stone pines are visible in silhouette against the changing skyline.

And we realise that, as we should have earlier, that where mountains meet the sea, weather forecasters flounder.

What will the days ahead hold – and not least in the weather?