catching up - the Naples apartment.

I thought I'd offer:

- a photo to show how comfortable our apartment in Naples was

- a photo of our skyline and the amazing ways electricity gets added to old buildings in Naples

- a photo of our own hang-out clothes line above the street; it was wet much of the week so we did not get to use it. Mixed with it appears to be someone's coaxial (satellite TV) cable.

The Amalfi coast

To scoot around Naples with free transport and visit excavations and museums we had used a three day ArteCard. An essential for the visitor to Naples.

Friday, that card having expired, we set out for the Amalfi coast using a Unico Campania all day 'Fascia 5' card, the Fascia Cinque, referring to the distance covered by the ticket. This allowed us to take the Circumvesuviana train from Naples to Sorrento, then SITA buses to Positano, Amalfi (lunch) and Salerno, before coming home on the Trenitalia train from Salerno. At the end of a wearying day we payed about E6.50 for two booking fees to travel swiftly non-stop and comfortably on that leg on the Palermo-Rome Intercity Train.

The use of public transport meant that we doubled or trebled the value of travel compared with using some tour bus. We were among ordinary travellers, albeit that the buses we took between Sorrento and Positano and Amalfi was mainly inhabited by tourists - a new world of budget travellers, though, in which a young Chinese couple could leap from the bus at an isolated part of the journey to climb stairs down the cliff to the Green Grotto. And where two young women from Taiwan would rely on us a couple of times for advice on which bus to take.

The last bus section, from Amalfi to Salerno, was different, astounding, the coast more precipitate, the traffic on the narrow road quite heavy, the spaces between heavy vehicles passing each other in some places in millimeters, or with gentle brushings of soft edge bits... and a full load of locals, standing room taken, crowded.

A white haired woman in her seventies at least, gets on in one village with a massive bunch of flowers, then gets off soon after at an isolated bend, vanishing up a steep stairway in vegetation.

Above and below, the way the land has been worked for thousands of years, with lemon orchards banked steeply on terraces; caves and workshops; houses and sheds and pathways. Look at the history of Amalfi and wonder at what generations ago what types of people would come to work the hardest land imaginable in the margins of this tiny port rival to Genoa and Venice, proud enough to have refused the keys of the city to Roger II, Norman king of Sicily, 900 years ago, sacked for its temerity.

This last section of the coast (Amalfi to Salerno, alas no photos here) is less travelled, has more integrity and is less a site for the beautiful people than Amalfi-Positano where prices have gone mad, building on the steep coast more improbable, and though with some of its old charm, the cultural value of Positano is descended into the depths of, of... Who magazine.

Photo above: early morning in one of the many busy towns along the Naples-Salerno rail. We had descended from one train, caught the next, to take coffee in a bar — and use the toilet in the bar. Everyone relies on bars for toilets — but of course if you have a coffee every time you go, the cycle can get vicious!

Below: glimpses of the sea as this suburban train approaches Sorrento.

and a glimpse of the narrow gauge track from our seat in the back of the train

and here photos of Positano, from up near the bus stop, down below and back up again

— a climb reminiscent of Modica in Sicily

Views from the bus window on the road from Positano to Amalfi

National Archaeological Museum, Naples

I found it necessary to organise photos and comments in a web page, found here.

I am conscious, in making my critique of acquisition and presentation in this museum on that web page, that I myself have acquired and critiqued. May the gods frown on me...

Below: "You've gone too far this time, my pecker!"

One can see (in Freudian anxiety terms, though even enlarged the actual absence of vital member from sculpture is not clear) why this is a less familiar image/relationship than Leda and the Swan.

Click to see the larger collection of photos in web page form.

Herculaneum

We travelled about a third of the distance from Naples to Herculaneum as we would have travelled to get to Pompeii, on the same local rail system (Circumvesuviana). Herculaneum (Ercolano today) is a smaller excavation of a more exclusive seaside retreat than Pompeii. Extraordinary to be able to look down into, then walk down into, streets of antiquity inside a modern town.

Alarming to be allowed to walk into rooms, over tiled floors 2000 years old, with rain puddles in them and shoes of every description scraping over them.

It was something of a puzzle, watching bricklayers at work restoring or recreating walls, to know which parts of fascinating wall building styles should be attributed to the original town builders.

We later visited the National Archaeological Museum where we saw spectacular mosaics from Herculaneum and Pompeii, very valuable to have been first to Herculaneum — having done which we felt no need to go to Pompeii. Here are photos from Herculaneum:

click to enlarge this photo below, the detail may otherwise escape you...

... use the BACK button to return

... and here, finally, down at the seaside as was  in AD79.

If he was a gentleman guardian of the town, he was, like the guns of Singapore in 1941,

looking the wrong way.

click here to see some items from here and Pompeii in the 

National Archaeological Museum in Naples

A visit to the Museo Madre

Its publicity material says of the Museo Madre that it is the only contemporary art museum in the centre of any city. We enjoyed our visit to the museum today. Lively, interesting, especially interesting to need to look at not quite impressive seeming works and put them in the context of being 30 years old and saying "oh yes, how original that was then..."

We were advised that we could take photos of the structure but not of the works. The structure is itself a great work of art. We fudged only slightly. Here is the result in a little film. You may need to turn down the sound on this, still learning how to get sound levels right.. this soundtrack recorded while we lunched in the  cafe of the museum. Contemporary cutlery grunge lyrical?

Reflecting later, we were conscious that there seemed many things missing from the museum, in what might be 'contemporary' beginning not least with the graffiti art with which Naples abounds. We commented on this to someone without connection with the museum; the reply was that this museum project had been pushed and funded by a group of politicians who particularly wanted to favour artists of their own circle. Those politicians were now out of power and this museum thus had had its funds cut. To deal with this cut in funding the museum now opens only in the mornings. Hence the problem also for staff whose hours and shifts have been halved.

Sunday in Naples.. Domenica a Napoli

We have a delightful loft apartment in Naples, contemporary style, like, Helen says, a factory conversion in Sydney. The new top title photo for the blog is a photo from our window.

I went out early, the morning after our Saturday night arrival, to fetch breakfast items. Approaching the major road from narrow via Duomo I heard a sudden gobbet of shouting and the sound of hands hitting car rather than car hitting car. Several others walking my way hastened to have a look. When I got to the corner, there, eight lanes away, were young men with a fancy black car in altercation with young women (Berlusconesche, we could say), dressed in tight pink pants. By the time I got to cross the road a few metres up, the Carabinieri had arrived and were interviewing the men, the women having vanished. Good marks for prompt police intervention. There is a considerable police presence wherever we have been, but it is much less aggressive and confrontational and hard rule driven than it seems in Australia. Results based, rather than pigeon chest puffing power position assertion.

Again yesterday, this sight we have seen before, in Soriano last year, of the parking policeperson standing by the triple parked car, blowing whistle and waiting for the owner to arrive and move car, rather than issue ticket, though ticket pad in hand. A nice scold, not a ticket and sustained road blockage. (We did not have the camera with us either in Siracusa week before last, when we saw a police team and tow truck pick up an illegally parked car, back it (quite some time) down the narrow street and drop it, with some difficult manoeuvring, into a road-centre parking space. Shades of my experience in Paris December 1969, when the charming young policeman at the police station, after I had reported my car stolen, came back to me with some gents in overalls to say "Monsieur, may I introduce you to the gentlemen who stole your car, and may we ask you in future not to park in front of the doctor's garage." "Oh, sorry, where do I go to collect it?" "It is about 100 metres down the street on the other side.") When will we Anglo-Sassoni learn that the more we huff the more people will try to blow our houses down.

I went out again later with Helen and with the iPhone - movie below. (I am using the iPhone rather than the Fuji S3 DSLR first because it is unobtrusive and producing such interesting results and second, alas, because the S3 is producing a spot on every photo (either lens) and I have not yet solved the problem.)

To get to the local market, we first have to descend from our fifth of five floors apartment to the street.

A few metres up the street we dropped into the Museo Madre Contemporary Art Museum and got some good advice on buying an 'ArteCard' with discounts for places and free transport in the region PLUS information and conversation on the industrial relations agitation by museum staff on very familiar grounds: casual employement, low pay, short shifts. And then to the cheerful crowds of the market, to stock up food (except we forgot butter, so that will be another 2 x 131 steps plus the horizontal travel) after having a coffee in a deservedly popular cafe, serving brilliant coffee.

It's still carnevale, as last Sunday in Palermo, so still small children are out in special outfits.

While putting together the movie, we suddenly heard a band somewhere downstairs. I put the iPhone in the window and recorded a soundtrack for this movie, so the commentary is in subtitles.

Best to watch as HD 1080, there's a little thingie down below the picture to click and adjust. You can also watch full screen, another button below: explore, enjoy (I hope!).