When we arrived yesterday we were greeted by the world's friendliest man, the apartment owner, whose name is Ciro. He even asked us whether he had our permission to bring us a bottle of wine the next day, in case we drank all of the one he'd already given us!
He also asked us whether we'd mind if he picked us up to see Naples by night. Well, how can you say no to such a friendly man and such a generous offer? So we'd agreed that he'd come by at 8pm, phoning first to confirm he was on his way. Quite naturally I assumed he'd be late, what with being Italian. Absolutely not; prior to 8 came the phone call saying he'd be there in 5 minutes. 2 minutes later came another phone call at the same time as a knock on the door; he'd sent his friend Nunzio up to bring us our bottle!
Down we went to find Ciro waiting in the street and the engine running. It was already totally dark and we didn't have a clue where he was going to take us. We must have seemed quite the strange pair, putting our seatbelts on; it seems that this isn't the done thing. The driving is horrendous; there don't seem to be any rules at all. People just cut each other up and beep their horns continuously.
After a while Ciro said he'd like to treat us and asked whether we'd prefer an ice cream, a dessert or a meal. I didn't want to take advantage and figured that an ice cream would be cheapest, so he pulled over and walked in the direction of the marina, whereupon we had to pick three of 20 or so flavours. The Italians are masters of ice cream. What was particularly generous is that neither of our hosts ordered one for themselves!
Once we were done, we walked in the direction of the marina:
Ciro then suggested, quite correctly as it happens, that I might like a beer, so he bought me one. Again, neither he nor Nunzio had one. We walked down some kind of peer:
It gave us a very pleasant view of where we'd walked earlier from having parked the car:
And that's everything, right? No; they wanted to drive us higher for a better viewpoint. It didn't disappoint:
We enjoyed being up there but felt it was soon time to go. By the time we'd been dropped off, we'd been out for over three hours, which means that Ciro had given up even more time than that to take us out. And he's got work tomorrow! Lovely man
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