Sun Sept 29, 2024
Hi Gang! We docked in Naples, Italy today! The birthplace of pizza as well as my father’s side of my family. No, I didn’t see any of my relatives but our tour guide Viviana, who is from Naples, said she knew people with my last name. Cool!
Naples is the regional capital of the Campania region of Italy and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of over 900,000. Founded by Greeks in the first millennium BC, Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban areas in the world. Naples’ historic city center is the largest in Europe and has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
We had a great tour today walking both thru the city as well as underground and we topped it off by stopping at a pizza place for a margarita pizza and other appetizers. All while Mount Vesuvius lurked in the background and thankfully didn’t blow. And the weather was perfect. Not too shabby!
The underground tunnel, called the Bourbon Tunnel, had some interesting history to it. It was an ancient underground passage, constructed for military purposes to connect the Royal Palace to military barracks in Naples. The monarchy in the era of King Ferdinand II of Bourbon was fearful of the revolution-prone populace of Naples. Because of that, he tried to keep the construction a secret but when the people found out it was being built, the king lied and said it would be an underground shopping mall. But that never came to be. Two years after it was begun, the fall of the Bourbon dynasty meant the construction came to a halt.
However during the Second World War, the tunnel was used as a shelter during bombardments. That too had some interesting stories to it. There were over 3,000 people that lived down there for over 9 months. We walked down 90 steep, narrow and winding steps to get to this bunker. At the time it was very unsanitary and many people got diseases.
One story talked about a women who was pregnant while walking down those steps and started giving birth to a baby and couldn’t walk anymore. So 4 men carried her down and other people made a human chain to carry buckets of hot water from a house above to help the woman give birth to a little girl. Since there was no baby food and the mother couldn’t nurse since she was frail, the community made liquid paste out of sugar water and the baby lived on that for 3 weeks. That baby girl lived to be over 70 years old due to the generosity of all those people. It takes a village!We finished the tour with a stop at a pizza restaurant. We had a ton of food that was all delicious. A bunch of appetizers, a salad and a huge margarita pizza. Legend says that
Margherita pizza was invented in June 1889, when the Royal Palace of Capodimonte commissioned the Neapolitan pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito to create a pizza in honor of the visiting Queen Margherita. Of the three different pizzas he created, the Queen strongly preferred a pizza swathed in the colors of the Italian flag—red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella). Supposedly, this type of pizza was then named after the Queen!
After that we walked around Naples and enjoyed all the impressive architecture. We then got back on the ship and relaxed for awhile before heading to trivia. We did good at trivia and came in 2nd. Must have been that pizza!
We then got ready for dinner and strapped our food bags on since we were going to the specialty restaurant Prime 7. Look out tummy! That’s all for now. I’ll send an update after dinner. Happy Sunday to all!
The Wandering Italian 