25 Aprile 2006
It’s ANZAC day today, with remembrance ceremonies, wreaths, poppies and a public holiday for Australians (those that don’t rise for the Dawn service or watch the Veterans parade through the streets of Sydney on the ABC) to sleep late, picnic, wash the car, go bushwalking or have a backyard BBQ. On the other side of the world it’s Liberation Day. It’s also a public holiday here in Italy but I have no idea what they were liberated from. However, from our excursion today it was apparent that mid week public holidays all over the world encourage people to picnic, have BBQs, go hiking or to the beach.
This morning we had a follow up appointment with possible landlords. But I’m not talking about looking for a house so we’ll skip this bit and go straight to the next bit.
On the southwest side of Naples is Pozzuoli, the birthplace of Sofia Loren. Sofia Loren is truly an icon here in Italy. She is admired for her beauty, acting, humour, grace and other assets the world over but here in Naples, her hometown, Sofia is considered a goddess.
Further west of Pozzuoli is Baia, where our potential landlords have a villa. It’s a beach side area, once “a fashionable Roman bathing resort known for its debauchery” (Lonely Planet) and more recently inhabited by NATO base recruits (Americans). It now looks like a shantytown on the outskirts of Johannesburg, or a somewhat rebuilt war zone and the main drag is lined with hookers of every shape, colour and nationality. We visited the nearby area of Cuma, which was the “earliest Greek colony on the Italian mainland” (I quote Gigi who I know realise was quoting the Lonely Planet). In particular we explored the Acropoli di Cuma, the ruins of the Greek colonisation, with it’s dug out sandstone, Temple of Apollo and Cave of the oracle Sybil.
The park is well maintained and pleasant in that it’s not an overly known or touristy site. However, one of the best parts of the afternoon was leaving just as a large group of high school students arrived. We inevitably run into groups of school students, French, German, and American on our sight seeing adventures. But it’s the Italian kids that are the most painful. As if to support my opinion there was a couple walking some distance behind the last of the loud, disorderly stragglers. I told Gi I thought they were teachers, he thought they were friends out strolling. However as we passed them we overheard the woman say something like “let them get ahead a bit so we can have some peace”. With good reason too, I thought.
We didn’t have breakfast this morning and it was mid afternoon by the time we left the ruins and the teenagers in our wake. Skipping the expensive junk food at the kiosk we drove back towards the centre of Pozzuoli. On an isolated road lined with orchards and mounds of rubbish we stumbled across a roadside restaurant that looked more like a ramshackle shack. The delight of the afternoon was finding it busy and popular, with generous squares of tasty pizza, warm loaves of bread, and cold drinks ready for roadside feasting.
So, that was Liberation Day. Today is the day when Italy was freed from the Nazi Fascist regime as a result of the signing of the NATO Alliance Pact, with Americans arriving on Italian soil in 1943, helping the Italians to topple Mussolini from power and ending the infiltration by Hitler’s Third Reich and army.
Liberation Day, ANZAC Day – somehow it seems to me that history keeps repeating itself. Australia is still at war, Italy is still not free.
It’s ANZAC day today, with remembrance ceremonies, wreaths, poppies and a public holiday for Australians (those that don’t rise for the Dawn service or watch the Veterans parade through the streets of Sydney on the ABC) to sleep late, picnic, wash the car, go bushwalking or have a backyard BBQ. On the other side of the world it’s Liberation Day. It’s also a public holiday here in Italy but I have no idea what they were liberated from. However, from our excursion today it was apparent that mid week public holidays all over the world encourage people to picnic, have BBQs, go hiking or to the beach.
This morning we had a follow up appointment with possible landlords. But I’m not talking about looking for a house so we’ll skip this bit and go straight to the next bit.
On the southwest side of Naples is Pozzuoli, the birthplace of Sofia Loren. Sofia Loren is truly an icon here in Italy. She is admired for her beauty, acting, humour, grace and other assets the world over but here in Naples, her hometown, Sofia is considered a goddess.
Further west of Pozzuoli is Baia, where our potential landlords have a villa. It’s a beach side area, once “a fashionable Roman bathing resort known for its debauchery” (Lonely Planet) and more recently inhabited by NATO base recruits (Americans). It now looks like a shantytown on the outskirts of Johannesburg, or a somewhat rebuilt war zone and the main drag is lined with hookers of every shape, colour and nationality. We visited the nearby area of Cuma, which was the “earliest Greek colony on the Italian mainland” (I quote Gigi who I know realise was quoting the Lonely Planet). In particular we explored the Acropoli di Cuma, the ruins of the Greek colonisation, with it’s dug out sandstone, Temple of Apollo and Cave of the oracle Sybil.
The park is well maintained and pleasant in that it’s not an overly known or touristy site. However, one of the best parts of the afternoon was leaving just as a large group of high school students arrived. We inevitably run into groups of school students, French, German, and American on our sight seeing adventures. But it’s the Italian kids that are the most painful. As if to support my opinion there was a couple walking some distance behind the last of the loud, disorderly stragglers. I told Gi I thought they were teachers, he thought they were friends out strolling. However as we passed them we overheard the woman say something like “let them get ahead a bit so we can have some peace”. With good reason too, I thought.
We didn’t have breakfast this morning and it was mid afternoon by the time we left the ruins and the teenagers in our wake. Skipping the expensive junk food at the kiosk we drove back towards the centre of Pozzuoli. On an isolated road lined with orchards and mounds of rubbish we stumbled across a roadside restaurant that looked more like a ramshackle shack. The delight of the afternoon was finding it busy and popular, with generous squares of tasty pizza, warm loaves of bread, and cold drinks ready for roadside feasting.
So, that was Liberation Day. Today is the day when Italy was freed from the Nazi Fascist regime as a result of the signing of the NATO Alliance Pact, with Americans arriving on Italian soil in 1943, helping the Italians to topple Mussolini from power and ending the infiltration by Hitler’s Third Reich and army.
Liberation Day, ANZAC Day – somehow it seems to me that history keeps repeating itself. Australia is still at war, Italy is still not free.
No comments:
Post a Comment