I-cancelled my walk this morning because experts are dealing with an unexploded English bomb from WWII recently discovered near our neighborhood here in Naples. Many streets are blocked off, and Angelo warned that I’d be arrested if I wandered into a restricted area, so it seems best to stay inside.

We’re lucky, though; if we lived even one street over, Read more »

I-went to the island of Capri yesterday with Angelo’s dad. He’s a florist and has clients who are getting married there in May. He invited me along to take photos that he can refer to while planning their wedding.

On our walk to the ferry, we passed an archeological dig. Naples is such a collage of history that you can barely lift a stone without finding something important beneath it. This is a recurring challenge all over town, since no sooner do workmen break ground than they discover artifacts. As a result, many subway stations in Naples showcase important archeological finds.

As we passed this construction site/archeological dig, I glimpsed brickwork, cement foundations and archways poking up through the dirt and wondered what they would find. Little did I know what a surprise those workers were in for.

On our way home, we had to change our route because the walkway we’d taken was cordoned off. I was disappointed, because I wanted to snap a photo or two of the dig in the late afternoon light. Turns out that the workers had made a historical discovery that day: an unexploded bomb from World War II! As a result, they evacuated the area and have made plans to carefully remove the ordnance before exploding it underwater.

Electricity has been a recurring theme for me these first few weeks of 2008. For one thing, the power on our little street has been going out nearly every day - not the whole Spanish Quarter, not the surrounding area, just our alley. Sometimes it’s just our apartment that blows a fuse, but when it’s our block, we can hear angry shopkeepers at street level cursing in dialect from all the way up here on the fourth floor.

These power outages make it challenging to get my files completed for work, but I’ve yet to miss a deadline thanks to the back-up plan I made last fall when our internet connection was on the fritz.

I’ve even done dishes by candlelight lately, which is relaxing. You probably think that’s because of the ambiance, but it’s mainly due to the fact that I can’t get electrical shocks when the power is out.

You see, I’ve been zapped so many times lately while cleaning the kitchen that I was beginning to feel like a mouse in a Skinner Box gone awry. We finally figured out that touching the stove while touching any other metal item, such as the sink, is the source of these random jolts, so I’m much less jumpy now.

It can’t be easy being an Italian electrician. Considering the tangle of “spaghetti” that I noticed when we first arrived, these types of things are bound to happen from time to time.

In any case, I’m knocking on wood in hopes that our power will be more stable. I would touch iron, as is the custom here in Italy, but I don’t want to risk getting yet another shock! ;P

The washing machine broke this morning. So at lunch I said, ‘Too bad it didn’t break a couple of days ago; we could have thrown it out the window,’ which got a big laugh from Angelo and his family. Why? Because, as his mom replied, ‘I see that Tui’s learned yet another fine Neapolitan tradition.’

It’s true. At year’s end here in Naples, there are those who take the ‘out with the old, in with the new philosophy’ to the extreme. If it’s not bolted down, and they’re able to give it a good heave ho, out the window and into the road it goes. ‘Yet another good reason to stay off the streets in Naples on New Year’s Eve,’ Angelo told me.

The first good reason is Read more »