a postcard from the Mezzogiorno 2

We flew out of Naples instead of Palermo. And lucky we did because the city was fantastic. It was like a hideous, gaping wound making you squirm, and you just couldn’t help looking at it anyway.

Most cars looked like these. The streets are so narrow that nobody pays any attention to what and who they are hitting. I saw a small pick up truck drive into an alley way brushing against the knee of a dude sitting on a stool reading the paper. The paper was whipped out of his hands by the truck. The dude just looked at the driver and raised his eyebrows, slowly picking up the Le Republica and re-commenced his reading.

Loved the general respect for public monuments in Naples. This statute was my favourite. I was so mesmerised by the graffiti that I took no notice of who the actual historical figure was standing guarding over the piazza at the dirty end of Toledo. Some pope or bishop no doubt.

I saw these anti anorexia billboards strewn around the city. Looks like the image obsessed Italy is having some problems with its younger female population (and possibly male). Italians are the second slimmest European country (France is at No. 1 and Poland at No. 3). I thought these harrowing images were really strong and made me wonder whether they achieved the same effect as the Australian anti-smoking campaign did, with the dead lung in surgery ad and the hook in the cigarette.

We stumbled into this pizzeria by chance. Getting lost we wandered the tiny street getting hungry. Scoring a table at 7pm with ease, we were lucky. The locals start eating pizza at around 8pm. The two storey pizzeria with a special inbuilt lift to take the pizzas up to the second floor, soon became packed. When we left there was a huge line outside the place stretching for miles with people yelling wanting to know if any tables had freed up. This was the best pizza I have ever had in my life.