Where Naples meets Cairo

I have recently come back from a short trip to Naples. (The real thing, not the one in Florida.)

It is loud and extremely, really extremely dirty. Rubbish seems only occasionally to be collected. Rubbish collection – I was told – is in the hands of the Mafia and they must be concentrating their resources on collecting money, which leaves them little time to collect the rubbish.

However, the people – that is everyone I met, in the hotel, taxi drivers, restaurant staff, passers by in the street, just everybody – are remarkably friendly. Quite different from what you come across in Venice, Florence, and Milan.

This remarkable overflow in friendliness and dirt reminded me of Cairo. Both are full of life and there is much to see and do and both cities. I would not like to live in either of them but they are a joy to visit. 

The café owner was delighted when I showed him the photo I had taken of the sign in his toilet: 

Sicily I - Mafia

The man leading his daughter to the altar was wearing dark wraparound sunglasses. Was it only my imagination or was he really also wearing a bulletproof vest under his suit? He could, of course, also have been a fat blind man, but when in Sicily...

My next Mafia meet was at the Temple of Concordia in Agrigento. This 5th century BC Greek temple, that was turned into a church in the 6th century AD (and thereby preserved) was taken over by the Sicilian State Police for a ceremony in which certificates of merit were handed out to policemen who have shown special valour.

Policemen singled out for arresting a Mafioso