Naples, Italy

Updated: Apr 10, 2023

Happy Easter. I hope you're enjoying a special day with family. We're missing Easter with our wonderful kids and grand and it has me a bit homesick.

But that said, spending Easter in this part of the world is surreal. We arrived early and got off the ship about 8:30. We learned there was an Anglican church with a 10:30am service in english. Our friends Scott and Anita also wanted to attend a church service, so we all went together. It was only a 2.4 km walk and we had plenty of time so we hoofed it. Along the way we saw some beautiful architecture and sculptures.

We arrived at the church early so we went for a coffee at a local pastesserie.

The Church was modest by European standards. Nice stained glass but not much more in the way of adornment. The capacity was probably about 250. Only about 100 were in attendence, 1/2 of which were from our ship. Definitely not what we expected.

The Anglican service was very similar to both our Methodist and Presbyterian traditions. The sermon was about good coming from bad, Hope from Death. We're glad we made the extra effort to attend a service.

Before the service, I had a nice conversation with another visitor, but not from the cruise. He and his wife were British and in town to find the church where his parents were married. It was in this Anglican church, 1942. They arrived on Friday and met with the church's office admin to view the register his parents would have signed at their wedding. The ledger held marriage records from 1831-1960. She opened the book right to the page his parents had signed and it also showed his mother's address and the name of the best man. His father (23) was British stationed in Italy during WWII. His mother (18) was from a very wealthy Napoli family. His parents moved back to England, where he and 2 brothers were born. So much history to follow just from that small entry in an obscure book stored in the basement of an old Anglican church wedged between 2 new office buildings in downtown Naples. There are thousands of such churches with such books in such basements. It's mind boggling. Services like Ancestry.com have a lot of work still ahead of them.

After church, we heard there was great Gelato down the street so we decided to give it a try. We got 2 scoops and it really was good.

As we made our way back to the ship, we decided to stop for lunch where we ordered individual pizzas. 1 pizza would have been enough for the 4 of us. But we managed.

It's so interesting that neither cheese or sauce are a standard part of a pizza here. Just dough....pizza is always served on baked dough. But there are many combination options. My wife ordered a classic pizza with some cheese and sun dried tomatoes. I ordered one with eggplant. They were delicious but I still prefer our Americanized version.

Then back to the ship by 2pm. We're here till 7:30, but with Easter, not everything is open and we've been to Naples before so we're going to take some time to rest. It's hard to believe but we have 7 port days in a row and it's a bit exhausting. So we're pacing ourselves. Pics from the walk back. There was rain predicted and so we're fortunate again to have nice weather with moderate temperatures.