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Friday, 22 June 62. After breakfast at our pensione, we spent the morning at the National Archeological Museum. The building was originally constructed as a cavalry barracks in 1585, but now housed an extensive collections of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities. We spent most of our time looking at the many mosaics taken from the ruins of Pompeii.The largest one we saw, the Alexander Mosaic (c.100 B.C), had been a floor in the House of the Faun in Pompeii.. Well before our trip, many military wives had been telling us about "Brass Alley" in Naples, the place to buy brass goods. We found it stretching for blocks on a narrow old street, really more like a wide sidewalk, in the old city. We bargained for a few items (a scale $6; a brazier with a hood $10). Since we were in shopping mode, our next stop was the PX where we bought a few more things (2 Toledo swords $11). We had contacted Colonel Easton, Staff Judge Advocate for Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH), who invited us to his home at 5:00 that evening for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. It was a very large and luxurious condominium on a sloping hill on the west side of the Bay of Naples. (The coast here runs east-west, not north-south as one might expect.) The view to the east included the Bay, the entire city, and Mount Vesuvius in the distance. Colonel and Mrs. Easton were gracious hosts even though we did not know them before our visit. Upon leaving the Eastons, we had dinner at D'Umberto, not far from our pensione. Saturday, 23 June. We planned to go for a swim at the Navy beach today. We drove west out of Naples and along the coast road. The day was already blistering hot. The road took us through Campi Flegrei, a volcanic caldera with sulfur seeping from the ground in many places. In fact the name of the area’s largest town, Pozzuoli, derives from the Latin word puzzo meaning stink. Pozzuoli was once a major Roman city and Italy’s largest port. The apostle Paul landed there in 60 A.D. on his way to Rome. As we approached the town, the road took us right by the remains of the Flavian Colosseum. We gave it a very quick look. It is the third-largest Roman amphitheater in Italy, but was not in very good condition compared to the Arena in Verona. There were many other Roman ruins in Puzzuoli. We passed only two blocks from the Temple of Serapis, but we were not in sightseeing mode. As we drove through the town, the road signs were not clear, and Darrell stopped to ask directions at a piazza where some teenage boys were playing soccer. We spoke Italian fairly well at the time, and he was taken aback when the boys could not understand him. Nor could he understand them. Apparently they spoke only the Neapolitan dialect (napulitano). When Darrell unthinkingly asked them if they spoke Italian, they apparently took offense and the discussion began growing heated, so Darrell drove off. We managed to find the beach anyway and spent the rest of the day there. We had lunch at the snack bar on the beach. We left in the late afternoon and had an early dinner at the California Bar near the beach. It was nearing dusk by the time we got back to our pensione in Naples. It was just a short walk down to the water where we caught a boat tour around the harbor. It was quite spectacular as all the city lights came on. | ||