A walking tour highlight, Barbies! May I have a picture? Certo!
This morning I went for the postponed Street Art walking tour. I will say that I was surprised by the paucity of street art featured and also surprised by how interesting the tour was anyway, and how wonderfully comfortable with only me and a lovely couple from Liverpool. The guide, in the center of the picture below, was as cute as he looks.
Are you tired of the Naples football victory yet? I can assure you unequivocally that the Napolitanos are not.
This was one of the art pieces about guess who, you guessed right, Diego Maradona. The paintings have a political statement but the figure of Diego shows him ‘with legs apart’, the name of a beverage he created by adding baking soda to lemonade you can make it fizz so hard you have to step back with your legs apart so as not to get soaked. The cart just opposite the mural is selling that exact drink.
So we wonder, of course the picture favors the cart operator, and the cart operator adds a bit of local color for the tour groups that swarm over this street. One of us said sure let me give it a try, and indeed, she ended up ‘with legs apart’!
I needed to pee so I ducked into a bar that looked promising and asked for for the toilet. There were three guys in there and we started making jokes, I don’t remember the topic, but they let me use the toilet and then I ordered a grappa and took a picture. These interludes are just the best.
I forget this guy’s story but for sure he is 100% on the Napoli side.
A couple more pictures from the tour. I liked this street with the fruit stand at the turn. As I learned from the guide, the street I’m standing on is for sure not in the Spanish Quarter because the street is too wide and the buildings too new. On the right is another family shrine and memorial. They all have a story.
I met up with the tour in the Spanish Quarter by taking the Metro over from our part of town, the Porto neighborhood. All the Metro stations have been fine, ordinary subways, until I got off at Toledo station. It was cool.
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After the tour Windy and I identified a few places we’d like to check out as this is our last day, and we’re off. First, remarkably, we hadn’t seen the Cathedral yet and when we got there, oh my, there was quite the hoopla. Come to learn that there was a celebrity wedding (“Jan Fabre a Belgian multidisciplinary artist, playwright, stage director, choreographer and designer, age 64”) was marrying his Italian girlfriend, age 40. Jan Fabre was also recently convicted of sexual harassment and indecent assault – you can read about it here in Art News. He was given an 18 month suspended sentence and it seems it’s about now that the 18 months would be over.
I can’t remember the brides name, or find it on the internet…I got all this from one of the attendees who seemed in the mood to chat while everyone waited endlessly for the bride to appear. It was so much fun. And btw they did the service in English, that being their common language, so that was fun too. We stayed long enough to get a taste for it and then quietly slipped out the back.
The place was swarming with paparazzi but I have yet to find a single photo online so we’ll have to use mine. You can’t really see the bride and groom because of the photographer standing right behind them.
A couple pictures from the Cathedral. Notice all the densely layered decorations and designs and images. It’s a Lot.
The photos are of people who have recently died.
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Yes, Football. The new season has begun and TVs are setup in courtyards and on the walls of bars and even out on the street.
Another “what is this? we should look it up.”
Another church.
We’re off to Amalfi tomorrow. And to bid farewell and grazie to Naples, how cute is this.
