I really enjoyed our time in Naples, short though it was. The weather was ideal, and as we were slightly “off season”, at least for British holiday makers, there were fewer tourists around than probably 3 weeks prior.
The streets of Naples are, in all honesty, rather dirty. It doesn’t take long for the bins on the main shopping streets to reach capacity—by lunch time they’re overflowing. The residential areas around the city centre are littered with battered cars and just general chaos. But it has a real charm. It’s really lived in. There’s no pretence, here.
I really garnered a sense of carefree chaos in Naples. Almost nothing seems to be efficient or have any semblance of logic, but it seems to also just work. No-one is phased, everyone goes about their business. There’s a lot, and I meant a lot, of talking in the streets, seemingly ad nauseam until someone decides to leave.
I didn’t take pictures of the locals really, as I was just taking things in. But an awful lot of people “make an effort” by modern English/American/German… “Western” standards. There were so many chic men walking around wearing very nicely tailored suits, effortlessly. You could tell they were extremely comfortable, and wanted to put that tie on this morning. None of this “oh it’s too tight around my neck” bullshit that I hear from people whenever they’re unwantedly telling me why they aren’t wearing a tie just because I choose to be wearing a tie. Same goes for shoes. I saw some gorgeous shoes and am amazed I didn’t buy any. No-one complaining about how “leather shoes are too uncomfortable and stiff”… just buy better shoes. Hardly anyone in trainers.
It’s the same for women, too. Lots of nice dresses, good makeup, general effort. We also saw the coolest looking traffic warden I’ve ever seen. She looked like a video game representation of a traffic warden. Deep tan, smoking a cigarette, blacked-out aviator sunglasses, nicely tailored uniform… not some fat and frumpy looking jobsworth looking to ruin your day for no real reason.
Then. there’s coffee. I’m pleased to say that I had my fair share of espresso in Naples, having become something of a “coffee person” over the years. I now mainly make espresso at home over any other variety of coffee, including grinding my own beans. If you can get the freshest possible coffee (ideally locally roasted), grind it seconds before percolating… you’re in for a treat. It took me a while to “dial in” my grinder to the correct setting, which changes depending on the bean, and my machine is a second hand Gaggia Classic, which performs really well indeed.
Naples probably represents the city with the richest daily idiosyncratic coffee culture in the world, having elaborated both a philosophy and a theory on its use and consumption. It is no accident if all expressive activities that distinguish this city, from the theatre of de Filippo to the songs of Pino Daniele, have dealt with coffee by creating and offering particularly original visions and interpretations of the experience. At home, coffee is prepared with the Neapolitan coffeemaker and served in the ‘tazzulella’. At the coffee bar – an authentic omnipresent coffee temple (approximately one for every 450 people) – a very concentrated espresso of no more than 20 ml (called ristretto) is served, prepared by the expert hand of a Neapolitan barman, operating on an old-fashioned lever-espresso machine, with sugar mixed with coffee during percolation.
— quote from “Illy, A., & Viani, R. (2005). Espresso coffee: the science of quality. In Elsevier Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004“
