Last April Ed and I attended the Robinson Film Festival in Naples, Italy. Naturally in addition to picking up two awards for “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” we found some time to do some exploring.

On our first stroll out in Napoli, we noticed blue and white banners everywhere. Since it was the day before Easter, we initially assumed the decorations were in honor of that High Holy Day…

But we soon learned that white and blue are the colors of the Naples soccer team. And they were leading the national league this year, so the city was festooned in celebration.

So in this first blog post on Naples I will focus on how the colors of S.S.C. Napoli dominated much of the cityscape.

With images of dearly departed Maradona far outnumbering those of all other players combined.

Maradona has already been beatified as far as Neapolitans are concerned. Certainly there were more street shrines to him than anybody else. (Pope? What pope?)

Napoli is at its most Napoli in the Spanish Quarter, where the narrow roads are even closer aligned and intertwined along a steep hill, and where the mopeds have right of way – if not legally, then surely functionally.

We’ll get to that castle on top of that hill in a future post…

Of course it was possible…

to take pictures in Naples…

without including the blue and white…

I’m including some of Naples’ grander architectural gestures here – but others will be taking up their own dedicated future blog posts…

These next two wall paintings were both in the Spanish Quarter:

Naples has best pizza. So good I haven’t dared to eat pizza since we returned nearly two months ago, because I know whatever pizza I eat elsewhere will pale by comparison.

What makes Neapolitan Pizza so amazing? Something about their water being so good it makes the dough especially tasty. That’s true. And then there is also the brilliant toppings. Whatever pizza we tried we were mightily impressed at the variety, quality and combinations of the toppings – in particular at a local restaurant (below) near our airbnb that caters more to the neighborhood crowd than tourists.

Yes, that is a fried egg joining the ground meat and cheese and cream on my pizza…

One local street food is deep fried pizza, served in paper like a Neapolitan answer to fish and chips.

We especially loved the desserts, like the local cake specialty, literally, the Pastiera Napoletana, an Easter tradition. Whole wheat berries are cooked in milk until creamy and mixed with ricotta, sugar, eggs, candied citrus and orange blossom essence for the filling.

Sooo good! Especially with extra thick hot chocolate.

We also had many rum-soaked Babàs.

And cannoli…

So often in New York I have been disappointed in Italian pastry in general and cannolis specifically. I thought maybe I just don’t like Italian pastry. Basta! I love Italian pastry – those cannoli you see me and Ed eating – found in a little out of the way bakery – were out of this world good! I just don’t love Italian pastry as made in New York City. But made in Napoli… magnificent every time!

We started this blog post talking about Easter.

This is what Easter Sunday looked like on Via Toledo, a major road in Naples, absolutely packed with Neapolitans taking their Easter Sunday stroll.

That night we came upon a neighborhood Easter street procession.

While a brass band played enthusiastically, every banner or float turned into an alley to bow before the statue of a saint.