Continuing 2013 Italian Style

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Naples, Terracina, Civitavecchia

By Geoffrey Dean

[Sequel to "Starting 2013 Italian style"]

On January 2nd, we arrived in Naples after a mere 70-minute ride on a train that averaged about 240 km per hour. I had picked our hostel, Ostello Margellina, for its hilltop position and proximity to the bay of Naples, but the drizzly weather didn’t offer us much in the way of views, so we headed back towards the center by subway. From the Cavour stop we followed the signs to the San Gerraro church, where used firecrackers were stacked by the entrance, topped by a banana peel [left photo below]. Then we followed a group of tourists into the walking district, up a narrow street lined with souvenir shops, most selling various stylized cornetti—bull’s horns—which people wear for luck and to ward off evil spirits. A display of spaghetti measurers also caught our eye [right photo below].

We admired the cutaways in the floor of the San Lorenzo church that revealed the ancient Roman mosaics below before noticing that everyone now seemed to be in lines waiting to be seated at a very small number of restaurants (all the rest were closed). I took the following photo, with San Lorenzo church to the left, from the steps of what I think was Saint Trinity church as an African rapper—unfortunately not pictured—regaled the restaurant crowd.

We ended up eating at the sit-down pizza place next door to the take-out pizza place shown below, where the handmade brooms reminded us that La Befana, the old woman who chased after the three wise men on her broom to offer them shelter (after originally refusing them such), would soon be bringing gifts on Epiphany eve (Jan. 5).
    As we made our way back to the subway, we noticed many fruit-bearing orange trees along the boulevard.

The following morning (Jan. 3) the weather had cleared and an entirely different view greeted us from our hostel room window:

That view enticed us to the shore just as the sun was making its appearance over the harbour:

Nearby we saw these palm trees mixed with Roman pines:

We were tempted to stay and explore more of Naples and perhaps check out Mt. Vesuvius, but our tight schedule dictated that we pick up our rental car and start driving north, hopefully along the coastline. It was time to test our new GPS, so we needed some place names to plug into it. After a few minutes of careful study of the Italy wall map in the hostel lobby, we came up with Terracina and Civitavecchio, loaded them into the GPS, and were on our way.

We reached Terracina around 1 p.m. and winded our way past several Roman stone archways in search of the tower we had seen from the highway. When we overshot it, we winded back and parked in a shaded lot before climbing up to the street that seemed to lead into the old part of town. We asked two teenage boys, the only people on the street, where to find a restaurant. The two they recommended were just up the street—and closed. We then asked two middle-aged women where to find an open restaurant. We followed them under another archway (not the one shown below)

past the tower and the town offices, down the other side of the hill to their restaurant, which was also closed. Our search took a positive turn when we finally went out to the main street in the new part of town and found a great fish restaurant, where we had one of best meals of our trip. The other two were in Pisa and Arezzo.

The restaurant search had put us behind schedule, and it was already dark when we reached the Tyrrhenian seaport town of Civitavecchia. We found a hotel facing the sea and awoke on Jan. 4 to the view from our room shown in the photo to the right.
    Walking toward the port itself along the waterfront, we saw this statue, apparently one of a series of sculptures by J. Seward Johnson called “Unconditional Surrender.” The two photos will give you a sense of its scale.

We didn’t get any information on the sailing vessel docked at the harbour, but here it is:

Next stop: Ardenza!
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Copyright © 2013 by Geoffrey Dean

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