endlessrarities | Aug. 21st, 2011

It's Sunday, which for this week only (I hope!) is the new Saturday, and the alternative weekend has not started well.

I was trying to cook some veggie bacon butties for breakfast when the cooker went phut!!! and a brief display of aurora borealis manifested itself under the hob. Then everything went dead.

J footered around with fuses and stuff (while the Quorn bacon loitered limply in the frying pan) and - lo and behold!!- everything started working again.

Whether it's actually SAFE is a different matter. Needless to say, we planned a trip to Comet to check out the cookers, hummed and hawed over what to do with the kitchen (which was there when we bought the house, and was a bad DIY job if ever I saw one) before moving onto the vacuum cleaners (never rains but it pours, does it? Our vacuum's on the brink of annihilation, too). I then tried to buy a printer cartridge, but predictibly forgot which kind I needed (!) so had to leave empty-handed.

If that wasn't enough, I've got a baldy tyre on the car. J swapped it for the spare (I'm not much of a mechanic, I fear) and then reported that the undercarriage of my trusty Honda Civic is so rusty that the jacking point is almost unusable. So I'm now going to have to start looking for a new car, or face a hefty MOT at the end of the year. This is not unexpected, but I'd hoped to delay this purchase until after we'd finished surveying the munitions factory. Last thing I want is to ruin a perfectly servicable car by trundling over unmade roads and acres of mud...

After all this angst, I'm exhausted. I'm planning to do posts on Hugh's Castle in Skye and Haltwhistle Parish Church in the immediate future, but today, I'm going to take refuge in some pretty pictures of Neopolitan architecture.

We were warned not to go to Naples. We'd be disappointed, we were told, because it's a dump. Full of rubbish, and run-down buildings. This was something of a consensus amongst visitors, but... In reality, I found the place wonderful. My description would be 'Like Bladerunner, but sunny.' The buildings languish Miss-Havisham like in their faded corners, dreaming of past glories. They're on a vast scale, imposing, impressive, and in-yer-face.

My personal favourite was the Galleria Umberto, which sits opposite the Museum of Naples:-

This was the only building we inspected closely. According to my guidebook, it dates to the mid-19th century, and was built on the site of a block of buildings linked by a dense network of alleyways which were renowned for the criminals who lurked there, preying on the unwary. Guess things haven't changed much in Naples then, in the past 140 odd years!!

We didn't have much time to spare in the city - we took the City Sightseeing Tour to get some idea of the place, and that served merely to whet the appetite.

This particular building was incredible. I didn't even have a chance to look inside, but what I saw made me quite frustrated that I couldn't get better acquainted with it. This view along the loggia shows its monumental scale:-

And look! It's been defaced by so-called 'street art'. Yeah, please don't tell me that these revolting scrawls positively enhance this building - but then, since when have these muppets cared about positively enhancing anything? The good news is that this building is so mind-bogglingly BIG that when you view it at a distance, these pathetic little doodles just shrink into insignificance.

Ornamental features abound:-

And the doorways, too, are suitably imposing and grandiose:-

Then you look inside:-

How I wish I'd had the opportunity to go exploring! I don't think I'd advise anyone to actually stay in Naples, but it's certainly worth several visits. I'm certainly eager to go back., so I can get better acquainted with its architecture, because it's certainly worth it...

And the pizzas are good, too!!