Let’s see:

• Laundry swinging in the breeze
• Ancient statues
• Bright black shadows
• Palm trees
• Antennas and wires
• Heat (100+ degrees)
• Humidity (70 percent)
• Men in hot pink shirts
• Men in orange pants
• Crowded pedestrian streets
• Streets buzzing with mopeds and kamikaze drivers
• The smell of wood-fired pizza in the evening
• The smell of cornettos in the morning
• No trash in the main city despite what they say in the news

Looks like I’m back in Naples, Italy! (And I’ve got a lot to catch up on… I’ve missed my blogging buddies.)

As you can see, I am still in the USA …

… but Italy is not far from my mind!

A lot’s going on in my family, so it’s been wonderful to be here, but I am homesick for Italy, the blogosphere, and most of all, Angelo. I look forward to catching up with everyone in June. I’ve missed you all! :)

snow!

I’d hoped to post more before I took off for the states, but it’s been a hectic week. I am, however, participating in a study to test the efficacy of a specific type of acupressure in alleviating jet lag. I’ll let you know if it works for me or not! In the meantime, have a fun weekend, y’all, and I’ll catch up with the blogosphere as soon as I can. :)

In keeping with the unintentional Piazza Plebiscito theme of the last couple posts, I thought I’d share a few more photos of it. Up until 1992, this grand cobblestone expanse was nothing more than a parking lot. Now it’s Naples’ largest public square. A couple of days ago, Walter Veltroni, of Italy’s democratic party gave a speech there.

I wonder if that phone call was as important as the above photo makes it look? I feel like I need to write a ‘Bourne Supremacy’ sequel to do it justice. Oh wait, someone has already written, like, five ‘Bourne Supremacy’ sequels. You’ll just have to make due with this picture, then. Check out the hands making a groovy W.V. sign on the side of the bus.

As you can see, it was well-attended. Notice the blue police wagon to the right? Wait … I think I cropped it out of these photos. Oh well, that van is always there, trust me. In an effort to combat Naples’ reputation for crime, the Spanish Quarter is swarming with cops. Not just one type of cop, either. At any given moment, you’ll see Municipale, Carabinieri, Vigili Urbana, Guardia di Finanza and more. (And I do mean more! If you want to know what those different kinds of cops are, I blogged about them in a post entitled Italian Cops: Who Loves a Man in a Uniform?.)

Snufflepuss, as I call my favorite Neapolitan street dog, was nonplussed as usual, as you can see in the photo below. Snuffelpuss is the poster pooch for meditation. Despite her smashed in snout and squinty eyes, she is well-versed in esoteric matters, and in a classic ‘beast meets west’ move, now spends her days quietly mastering her own yoga form. The name is nearly impossible for people to pronounce (and embarrassing to attempt since it sounds like a dog yawn.) This could explain why it’s yet to catch on with the human populace. It basically involves napping in the busiest place you can find. As you can see, Snuffelpuss has no problem finding her center at any given moment, and the normally pushy Neapolitans simply walk around her, no hassle.