Misguidings of Southern Places by JENNY LEVINE
W
hen I began planning my birthday weekend in Sorrento, my parents and friends applauded the decision: “Oh, Sorrento’s a great home base, you can easily take a boat to Capri and a bus to Positano.” Once there, our Airbnb catered to every whim, and the piazza in the center of town sold overpriced margherita pizza and limoncello that made your mouth pucker. When my friends and I walked along the streets at night, we met British pensioners and European high schoolers on holiday. One club actually rejected the only real Italians because, according to the bouncer, they only let foreigners in. A lot of people are perfectly content going to a foreign country with a beautiful facade, only to interact with locals on a client-employee basis.
For the actual day of my birthday, we traveled from Sorrento to Naples; you can’t imagine how quickly people’s eyes glazed over when we told them. Even my own Sicilian mother was worried. “You know what they say about Naples— the pickpockets, dirty streets and grease—it’s all true.” I replied that people think about Sicily that way, too. She just shrugged and said, “at least our food is better.” I arrived to the place known to many Italians and tourists as the most dangerous city in the peninsula: Naples. My friends were planning to catch an afternoon train, so we had to rush to get to the Royal Palace, a 45 minute walk from where the Circumvesuviana dropped us off. I fired up Google Maps and directed our group down one of those impossibly wide 19th cen-
try boulevards. We barely walked a few meters when one of my friends shouted “what’s going on down there?” I was curious about the loud voices and seaside smells. But the more I looked down the side alley, the less I wanted to go down. It was a cramped neighborhood market with fish heads lying in heaps below the vendors. I cautioned my friends about how windy the streets were and how they tend to lead nowhere, but I was overruled in favor of spontaneity. My mood soured as we ventured further down the block. Neapolitans could sniff the tourist on us, and whispers from locals floated unintelligibly between our ears. I underestimated the size of a puddle and stepped into a pool of seafoodgut water. At the end of one of these alleys (a long, long way down), we found Pizzeria Brandi— the home of Margherita pizza. Covered in sugary marinara sauce and oozing with mozzarella cheese, Neapolitan pizza is unique for its brick oven crust. At another unplanned stop, my group stumbled upon one of the most impressive views of the entire trip—the Gulf of Naples, with the enormous Mt. Vesuvius towering in the background. The rest of the day, we wandered into open courtyards and climbed up large hills with cramped apartments’ laundry hanging out the windows. We threw our carefully planned itinerary to the wind so we could experience the spirit of the city. That’s what I came to realize—I could stare at as many places as I wanted to on Google Maps, but the best experiences come from letting go of our expectations and just enjoying the view. 27