The Inaccurate Tourist

47. Pizza Pie

They had France under their belts, and had a taste towards the north. It was time to descend to the land of sunshine, coffee, churches, pizza and "teenage Mafia hit men high on cocaine". Dawn, Mike and I flew south to Naples, one of the most colourful, exuberant cities in southern Italy.

Of course, every journey of a thousand miles must begin with a layover in Belgium. So for the third (and not last) time, we passed through Brussels on the Thales from Gare du Nord. I had left a four hour delay to cover any emergencies and a bit of tourism, but we were feeling a bit anxious about the plane and decided to head straight to the airport and explore the wonderful little shops and charming boutiques filled with the most darling little things.

Bruxelles-Midi and Brussel-Zuid are the same train station. Just for your information, everything in the city (and maybe even the country) is bilingually Walloon (French) and Flemish (Dutch). There's another train that goes from the Brussels train station to the airport. It was extremely simple to find and use.

Anyway, we went to the airport. We drank our Belgian beer and ate our sandwiches. We walked the halls and sat on the sculptures. We toured the sliding walkway, or motovator, or glidewalk or trot'n'go or whatever they're called. We saw immediately that our tickets were mislabeled, and went to check out both departure gates. Fortunately, we found the correct one in the nick of time... where a 'nick' is defined as three and a half hours. Ho-hum. There isn't very much more frustrating than being in a dull location waiting to fly to the exciting one.

But then we got in the plane and flew to Italy. Hooray!

Naples had been hot that day: 38 degrees. The sun sets much earlier in Naples than in Amsterdam (see last weekend), so it was already dark when we arrived. It smelled like the ocean, and it was humid and hot. We taxied directly to our hotel -- Il Convento -- and got ripped off by the taxi driver, who was going to charge us 19€ supplementary charges on our 14€ metered fare. I expressed my disbelief and he gave us a 5€ discount on his usual tourist racket. There are legitimate surcharges for extra baggage, airport fees and night service, but still not quite that much. My advice for the future: ask to see the fare sheet if you aren't sure. If you're really being ripped off, ask for a receipt and note the taxi number. Who knows, maybe they'll think you know someone who can do something about something.

Our hotel was a few metres into an 'unsavoury' district. We had been carefully warned by Antonio and Anna to approach the street directly from the well lit pedestrian walkway and not to go west of our hotel. Apparently, Naples has pretty bad statistics for crime, organized crime, poverty, corruption and unemployment.

I can be pretty naively cheerful against dangers (and I will continue to be). Over a decade of competent municipal administration, the image of the city has improved dramatically as a tourist destination. Incredible museums have reopened, churches have been restored, a metro has been constructed, the terrible traffic routed more efficiently and tourist-friendly streets cultivated. Admittedly, I would still avoid walking around with a bundle of cash and a camcorder at night, but that's pretty good advice in any city. I didn't feel unsafe or threatened by our area.

Except, of course, for the scooters. They swarm around like insects, fluidly avoiding obstacles and each other and not following any traffic laws that I could distinguish (not like the cars were having any of that either). I thought it was particularly amusing that instead of stopping at the blind corners every twenty metres, they would just honk a warning and rush through. The tiny roads were lined with colourful six-story buildings crowded together, laundry and flags draped over tiny balconies.

Our small room was converted from a nun's cell, and was excellently soundproofed and climatised with heavy shutters. Stepping out into the balcony was stepping into a wall of heat, humidity and lively noise -- but in a good way. During the day, people rushed and wandered up and down the streets, wildly gesticulating their conversations to each other. Old Italian women argued with the butcher, children frolicked, attractive young ladies with tinted club sunglasses hung off their boyfriend's scooters.

Naples is colourful. Canadians, we're nice and sincerely polite, and usually helpful, but we must seem quiet and flat to the Neapolitans -- talking with our hands dangling by our sides and driving safely within the lines. I'm going to wave my hands a bit more, and don't be surprised if I touch you to emphasize a point.

Back to the story of our trip -- Dawn and Mike left to explore, while I waited to meet up with Antonio and Anna. When they arrived, we strolled down to the Piazza del Plebiscito to have an espresso in one of the swankiest cafés I've had the pleasure to be in. We got permission to stroll around the dining area, which was empty and being prepared for an afternoon luncheon -- beautifully ornate room with most of the original paintings. We took our coffee standing in the coffee area and ate some local pastries -- a Sicilian cannoli (a tube shaped waffle-biscuit filled with cream), a sfogliatella (a fragrant ricotta and semolina mixture wrapped in a spiral of crispy ribbon pastry) and a baba (much the same thing but in a bun). The coffee was strong and tiny -- the pleasure doesn't come from the portion size. Anna wasn't keen on pastry that morning, so she had a coffee flavoured gelato -- thick and shiny ice cream.

We walked a bit by the Palazzo Reale to the water and took some photos. It wasn't even noon yet and as the immortal bard said, it was "getting hot in herre". We were also going to be late for our rendez-vous with Dawn and Mike, so we rushed down the busy pedestrian street towards Piazza Dante.

We caught them rushing down the same street just outside the Spaccanapoli -- the centre of the most historic part of Napoli and our destination for that afternoon. This is where all the oldest buildings and churches are, and our first stop was at the church of Jesù Nuova, which had a dull grey square studded exterior but was brightly, brightly baroque inside. Dawn immediately got kicked out for improper attire. I didn't even think about this when we were heading out, and I knew better -- I had seen backpackers last year with dowdy elastic-waist floor length skirts and shawls for this purpose. Antonio and I were also exposing our knees in our shorts, but apparently they could see that we had unimpeachable moral character.

Dawn bought a skirt that she hated for the next few stops, which were Santa Chiara, a very simple gothic cathedral with tall thin stained glass windows and its adjoining cloister decorated with colourful ceramic majolica and citrus trees. There was also a darkened room with one of the largest crèche (Nativity scene) that I've ever seen -- I'd seen a few others in Naples last year. Construction of the elaborate scenes is a traditional and popular craft in the city.

Naples is also about pizza. It's the birthplace of pizza, and we ate lunch in the Spaccanapoli at one of the most celebrated pizzerias, Di Matteo, noted for serving Bill Clinton. Opinion is fairly solid on the matter, especially among the Neapolitans -- Naples is the place to go for real, pure pizza. It must be cooked in a wood-fired oven, and when you use only the best of fresh ingredients, it isn't necessary to pile on a dozen different toppings. If you make your pizza right and in the traditional fashion, you can get your pizzeria officially accredited with the Vera Pizza mark. Our pizzeria was full and loud, with the waiters shouting at each other and carrying on like kings.

Antonio ordered us pizza and beer -- we ended up getting Heineken because it was more expensive and we were obviously tourists. Evidently Antonio has an accent from northern Italy, and Anna (with her southern Italian accent) got the most basil on her pizza. The pizza was excellent, as expected -- a fine, crisp crust with burned marks from the wood oven, an unspiced yet intensely tomato sauce, slices of good, fresh Mozzarella that still leaked Bufalo milk and some leaves of basil. A tasty example of a simple Margherita pizza in the colors of Italy.

After our enormous pizzas, we tried another traditional food -- an orancina each. This was a fried ball of rice with a core of savoury ground pork and peas in gravy. The name comes from the shape, size and heft, which is similar to an orange.

We waddled, full and satisfied (for a fraction of the price of Paris or Amsterdam) down to the Via S. Gregorio. This is the crèche street, where artisans manufacture all sorts of figurines, stands and props for the famous Nativity scenes of Naples. For the tourists, there were also many, many versions of Pulcinella, the stylized clown character in black and white symbolizing the city. You can buy the traditional ceramic (or increasingly, plastic) red chili peppers that, as gifts, bring good luck and happiness. There were also plenty of figurines of Totò, a hero of Naples. He was a actor (and a Baron!) with an extremely crooked smile and a gift for physical comedy.

We saw a couple of other little churches and enjoyed a lemon granita for a quarter euro. Your price may vary depending on your look, your language, your accent and whether you show your money before settling a price.

We'd had a full day, but it was only half over -- we piled into Antonio's borrowed car and headed off to Pompeii. It was hot, and humid. There was little breeze and particles were trapped in the hazy air. Naples had been having a garbage management crisis, and it hadn't been collected in a week. People were starting to burn the piles of trash, which didn't help the air quality either. We took the detour around Vesuvius, and passed by the church in Pompeii, which is a pilgrimage site roughly equivalent to the healing waters of Lourdes. Dawn and Mike were feeling pretty healthy and we were running out of time to visit Pompeii, so we pressed on to the ruins. We had a pleasant surprise: the ruins were freely open that day.

We wandered among the ruins for a couple of hours -- saw the baths, many frescoes, many ancient storefronts that had marble countertops with ceramic jars built in. The city was busy and prosperous before a cataclysmic eruption of Vesuvius over two thousand years ago. It was buried in ash and left undisturbed and incredibly well-preserved until its rediscovery and excavation -- which is still not complete. We saw tiled and mosaic floors, rich houses with shallow pools to collect rainwater, and we walked along the original roads that had well-worn ruts from chariot wheels. Many of the most incredible artifacts have been removed for preservation in the Museo Archelogico, which I visited last year with my parents. Walking around the site, however, is unique and well worth spending an entire day -- we were certainly far too rushed on our limited schedule.

We took the train back to Naples safely for a couple of euro as Antonio drove home in the other direction. We ate at a cafeteria style takeout place, pointing at a variety of dishes and choosing (and frequently getting ignored in the process). Dawn tried to use her considerable food vocabulary, but the server was insistent on using his reasonable English. I ate another orancina type thing with spaghetti in it, and some sort of ham-injected rolled bread.

At the hotel, Antonio and Anna called to set me up on a blind date with a cousin for the next night. According to their reasoning, Dawn and Mike needed some romantic alone time in Naples, and I needed an Italian girlfriend. I couldn't argue with that logic, so I agreed and went to bed.

In the morning, I went in search of a Nocciolata, a specialty coffee. It's a mysterious foamy chocolate and hazelnut coffee about the size of a double espresso, and very delicious. I love hazelnut. Mike tried to order an Americano (espresso watered down to a reasonable North American volume), but the barrista threw his hands in the air until Mike also had a Nocciolata. I should point out that, like most things in Naples, the price was half that of Paris.

We went to the tourist office to find out how to take a boat down the Amalfi coast, but we were just a little too late for the morning sailing. We could have taken the bus down the winding and scary but undoubtedly scenic cliff roads, but we decided to take the afternoon boat instead and spend the morning shopping. We bought our tickets (10 € each way) and passed the rest of the morning walking along the bright, shining and buzzing morning commerce. We wandered through a supermarket (always one of my favourite things to do in a foreign country) and each bought some pasta. I saw some amazingly long traditional spaghetti -- at least four times the normal length, and you aren't supposed to break it for cooking or (gasp) cut it before eating.

For lunch, I bought pizza at a hole in the wall (but a Vera Pizza hole). It was the more traditional 'workers' pizza, with little other than a crust folded around tomato sauce and a spot of cheese. However, it was freshly baked in another wood-fired oven, cost a single euro and was very tasty.

The boat down the Amalfi coast was relaxing. It wasn't as clear as it could have been, but the scenery along the route was still pretty amazing. We passed by the island of Capri, which is supposed to be very beautiful, tourist-oriented and expensive. Our boat stopped by the village of Positano on the coast, but we didn't have enough time to get off.

We got off at Amalfi, got our feet wet in the ocean and looked for pretty rocks (I won). Dawn and Mike wanted to walk along the water, so we separated again so I could see St. Andrew's Basilica. The Saint Andrew -- the fisherman, brother of Saint Peter and the first disciple called to Christ. He was crucified, tied to a diagonal cross, and his remains are in the beautifully frescoed and painted crypt below the church, under an enormous larger-than-life bronze of the saint. There was also a pleasant little cloister and a small museum with a thousand year old mitre and chalice.

Dawn, Mike and I rejoined to wander among the tourist shops full of bottles of limoncello (a strong lemon alcohol), peppers (ceramic, plastic and real) and all sorts of other stuff that tourists buy. We had our gelato just outside the Basilica.

The boat ride back was also two hours, but this time we spent the majority of it outside. The ride was uneventful. The scenery was still nice. I was starting to get nervous about this blind date coming up...

Back in Naples, Dawn and Mike went out for dinner and I took the train to meet the Italians. A gentleman never reveals details about his dates, of course, but it's safe to say that I met the cousin, and also a few chaperones: the aunt, the uncle, the other aunt, the other cousin and his wife and newborn, as well as Antonio and Anna. A thoroughly enjoyable experience, and I would have loved to have spent more time with their family.

We were up extremely early the next morning to taxi to the airport (again getting ripped off in the process) and unfortunately, we caught our flight back to Brussels. This time I had left a sufficiently large window that we could see the city. We left our stuff in the lockers at the Central Station and walked to the Grand Place. This was described by Victor Hugo as the most beautiful square in Europe, but of course he also proposed a union of European states with a common currency, so we know how deluded he was.

We did the peeing statue, had a beer, skipped the waffle and the cathedral, bought some chocolates and generally did the three hour tour, before heading back to the City of Lights.

Like all good things, their trip had to come to an end eventually. The next day, we said goodbye, and they went back to Canada. Bye Dawn and Mike!

What are those moving walkways called? Go-ways? Move-U's?

46. Tulips

My newest guests were oldest friends from sunny Edmonton, Alberta (Canada). I met Dawn back in Grade four at an inter-school violin recital when I took to whacking her on the head with my bow. Who would have thought that nearly twenty years later, she'd travel thousands of miles with her beau to vacation with Bow-Boy? The aforementioned beau is Mike. He's good to be around.

They arrived early in the morning on a Sunday. I went to the airport to meet them and greet their arrival into the city. I was slightly late leaving my house, but ended up being very late at the airport thanks to transit complications. Dawn and Mike had the good sense to stay by the arrival gate, so I found them easily. Hooray for arriving in Paris.

The day was pretty much written off. Dawn had spent a harrowing week writing final exams back in hard-working Canada and had little time to pack or prepare for their trip. As a result, they had little sleep the night before their departure, and didn't manage to sleep on the airplane.

You're supposed to try to adapt immediately to the day and night cycle of your destination, but all the loose clothing and glasses of water aren't going to prevent your body from liquifying under the intense pressure of Monsieur Jet Lag. They managed a short chat before dropping off for some much-needed mid-afternoon sleep.

I forced them awake for a bit of something to eat, and we headed out to see the Eiffel Tower for their first night in Paris. We started with the intention of wandering over to Place de Catalogne, which is just a skip away from my place and has a nice view down a boulevard of the Eiffel Tower. Soon however, the insane desire to visit this symbol of Paris had seized their pliant minds, and nothing would get in the way of their objective.

The officially noted métro stop for the Eiffel Tower is Bir Hakeim, which is still quite far from the tower itself. The walk is sufficiently pleasant if you cross the street and walk along the Seine, but there's a much better route. If you stay on the métro (line 6, light green) until the Trocadéro station, you can walk between through the Art Deco buildings for a spectacular view, and then descend along the fountain and cross the bridge to the underside of the tower.

The rest of the week is a blur to me. I work during the days, so I understand that Dawn and Mike checked out the Louvre, up the Arc de Triomphe, the Musée d'Orsay and probably went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I sure hope they had fun.

In the evenings, we went on walks and took it easy. One night we headed out to the Moulin Rouge. It's ridiculously expensive to see the show there, and evidently many tickets are sold as part of tour packages, to judge from the number of buses.

Pigalle is one of the naughtiest, brightest and well-visited parts of Paris. There's a curious juxtaposition of many, many sex shops with lurid neon lighting explicitly describing what sort of perversion you may find inside, and elderly couples in blazers walking calmly and curiously. I forced their weary feet to to top of Montmartre, at the Basilique du Sacre Coeur, so they could see the incredible panorama of Paris.

It must have been Wednesday, April 30th, in fact, because the Red Cross was out selling some brins du muguet. The next day (the first of May) is a holiday in France, the fête du travail, which commemorates the day of an enormous nineteenth century protest in the United States, where trade unions managed to obtain a standardised eight hour work day. The brin du muguet is a sprig of Lily of the Valley, a springtime flower. Giving a brin to a lady ensures good luck and happiness for the rest of the year.

We had booked our Fête du Travail in Amsterdam. It was already nearing the end of tulip season in France. Would it be too late to experience the real Dutch thing?

Well, no, not really. Thanks to tech-no-lo-gy, the tulip industry is pretty much year round in Holland, as are windmills. We did pass some tulip fields on the train, however, which basically meant that I would periodically wake up Dawn and/or Mike with a shout of "tulips!" or "a windmill!".

The train takes about four hours to get to Amsterdam from Paris, and it's a very easy city-to-city ride. If you book a round-trip early enough, it's relatively inexpensive -- only about 80€. It's a pleasant trip as well. You get to pass through Brussels and the Belgian countryside.

In order to get the best price on our tickets, I booked some peculiar hours. We arrived in Amsterdam at 8pm on a Thursday and left at about 1pm on the Saturday, leaving us only one full day and a half in the city. Not nearly enough time. In addition, we had some difficulties reserving a reasonable hotel, since the weekend was an international long weekend and we weren't staying Saturday night. We ended up renting an apartment suite with Alexander's Amsterdam Apartments.

Renting a suite would be a particularly good idea if you're staying a while in the city. The suite we had was nice, with a well-equipped kitchen and a little deck in the back. One thing to consider, however, is that an apartment doesn't have a convenient check-in desk in a convenient lobby. I had confirmed our arrival time by email before leaving, but unfortunately Alexander wasn't there to meet us. Dawn borrowed a phone from the bartender in the pub beside the building and made the necessary arrangements. This meant we were forced to sit and relax in the typical neighbourhood pub enjoying Heineken beer.

You should also always check which surcharges will apply to your bill. I had booked the suite online, so of course there was a X% addition that I hadn't initially noticed. Not really too surprising, but not really pleasant either.

In fact, the apartment wasn't really in a great location either. It was a much longer walk from the central square than I expected, which was already a fifteen minute walk from the train station. I had flippantly told Dawn earlier that it was ten minutes total from the station. Whoops.

The verdict? Alexander's Amsterdam Apartments is probably only a good idea if you have longer than a day and a half to see the city.

We went to the Leidseplein to an American/English breakfast place. This is an area south of the historical centre, filled with restaurants and night clubs. The breakfast was small, expensive and I'm pretty sure the waitress was still high on whatever she had been doing the night before. She was pleasant and her English was impeccable, but I have seldom seen somebody so confused and distracted.

After several attempts to get and then pay our cheque, we set out along the canals to the Anne Frank house. Along the way, we stopped in the Westerkerk, a Protestant church constructed in the early 17th century. Rembrandt is buried in one of the renter's graves underneath the church, but they don't know which one.

The line for the Anne Frank house was incredibly long. I chose to separate from Mike and Dawn and go check out the other churches of Amsterdam for a couple of hours. Many of the churches were closed, and the famous Oudekerk had a special exhibition going on inside that didn't particularly interest me. Sint Nicolaaskerk is a Catholic church and therefore relatively recent, since Catholicism was either forbidden or simply frowned upon for much of Amsterdam's history. It was built in the late 19th century, and has an interesting neo-Gothic exterior, but an incredibly detailed and darkly colourful neo-Baroque interior.

Before I rejoined Dawn and Mike, I got to wander through the daytime naughtiness of the red light district, I saw some neat hidden canals, went through the inner court yard of the city museum, walked by the opera, saw a cool building labeled Indochine, saw a futuristic jungle gym in a school yard and checked out a metro station and chatted with the security guard. She was cute.

Apparently, while they were waiting in line (40 minutes), they got propositioned by a young fellow who told them all about a great and wacky form of theatre called 'Improvisation' being performed that night, and he gave the poorly chosen example of SCTV. He didn't realize that Dawn and Mike are both highly active in the theatre community, that Edmonton has a world-renowned TheatreSports company and that SCTV is, in fact, sketch comedy, not improvisation. Plus he repeated the same spiel up and down the line, losing any spontaneity or credibility he might have had.

Mike and Dawn told me that the Anne Frank museum was emotionally moving, knowing that you were in the exact tiny spot where her family hid from the Nazis for three years. Thinking about this, we walked towards the centre of the city and passed the Homomonument. Homosexual men and women were targeted alongside the Jews, the disabled and other undesirables. An estimated fifty thousand men were imprisoned, and several thousands died in concentration camps -- a small number compared to the millions of Jews imprisoned and exterminated during the Holocaust, yet still more than the population of my hometown. It wasn't until the eighties that this monument was built in the heart of the city to mark the persecution of homosexual men and women by the Nazi regime.

The Homomonument is composed of three triangles of pink granite, each 10 metres on a side and aligned to form a larger triangle. Each triangle has a different height -- one is at street level and forms part of the busy square, another is just the right height to be a comfortable seat, and the third steps down to the canal waters.

For a bit of a rest and a lighter atmosphere, we went to take the canal tours. I highly recommend these tours -- the boats are comfortable and frequent, and the multilingual soundtrack is well done and interesting. The canals of Amsterdam and the houses alongside are highly charming.

We were just about ready for lunch at this point, and were down by the flower market. I was pretty obstinate about avoiding fast food chains, and Mike and Dawn were tired of walking and paying through the nose at restaurants, so we separated again to find something to eat. I think I got the better deal -- I found a little cafe down in the flower market where I was served a generous meatball sandwich and a coffee by a charming waitress, all for 3€. The self-righteous moral of this story is that one NEVER needs to settle for convenient, yet undelicious food.

Most of our day was reasonably sunny, and it was pleasant out when we entered the flower market to look for souvenirs. I discovered that export controls mean it is impossible to buy ANY tulip bulbs to take back to Canada.

A couple of stalls down the market, however, and it began to rain -- hard. Surprisingly hard. The market stalls were sturdy and the proprietors fetched in their goods with ease, as if this happened all the time. The rain let up slightly, and we decided to head back to the apartment to rest.

We popped into the supermarket beside the apartment to check out the interior and buy something to eat on the train home for the next day. When we got out, there had been a disturbance outside of our hotel -- cop cars and a crowd of gaping pedestrians. We didn't have any idea what happened, but it was exactly outside our door. At first the police didn't want us to approach our building, but when we explained that we were staying there, she grunted "nice hotel", grabbed me by the arm and walked us to our door.

We still have no idea what that was all about.

That night, we went back to the Leidseplein to eat at an Indian restaurant. It was delicious. Then we head to the red light district to gawk at the working girls. They were also delicious. We stopped at one of the Irish pubs that Geoffrey and I had temporarily drowned our Amsterdam sorrows in, and eventually made our way back to our hotel. I have to compliment myself on my excellent sense of navigation.

We took the next day pretty easy, and did a bit of shopping along one of the more commercial streets. We were at the station in plenty of time, and ate some curious deep fried foods that were kept heated in a giant vending machine. At first, it was a dare and a joke, but they weren't that bad, so we kept going back.

The rest of the train ride home was uneventful, except for meeting Mary, who ate our coffee biscuits.

So, how many more times should I get down to Amsterdam? That depends on how many more Canadians come to visit, of course!