Napoli

Napoli is intense, and that's one reason I love it.

It's been fairly mild as a busker, with mostly fun anecdotes. This is a place where baristas fill their tip jars with water and living statues chain theirs to the podium, where a street kid "accidentally" dropped a mitten into my case a few years back and picked up a few coins with it. I did recently see a baseball-bat street fight break out five feet away, but that was as a pedestrian rather than as a performer.

My busking, however, has been lovely this trip. The weather has been uncooperative but there have been enough intervals between the raindrops to play and enough traffic to make it fun. A few particularly generous people have compensated for the more general economic pessimism, and a lovely older couple tipped me a colomba cake on Easter. This more than made up for the accordionist who at one point obnoxiously solicited my audience and chased them all off, or the argument I had with a noseless beggar woman (Slumdog didn't lie, and I conceded the pitch). My Monday was made when a cop pulled his patrol car up beside me to ask about the instrument.

I'm taking Tuesday off to go touristing in Sorrento, and heading to Sicily on Wednesday. My health is good and my spirits are high!

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