Today I felt like we needed a glimpse of nature after all of this gritty, city experience so we took off for the Naples Botanical Gardens.  On the way we stopped for coffee and a great conversation with the barista who’s aunt had moved to Orlando and saw an slligator her first week there.

We walked through some interesting  back streets with the cars coming within inches of us as they passed.  Then we cut over to via Foria, a main downtown thoroughfare. 

The gardens were lovely with well labled trees from all over the world.  I had expected to see more flowers but apparently it’s not their thing.  There were lots of school groups with their cute matching hats. 

One group was having a play done for them, sitting out in a nice grassy spot.

We walked back through the downtown and passed a large shrine with a saint we’ve been seeing everywhere in Naples and I asked a woman walking by who he was.  His name is Padre Pio and he was from a town very near here so he’s kind of the local hero who became a saint quite recently.

Next stop was the Duomo of Naples.  Big and beautiful, there are two side chapels here which seem very important.   One had a stream of people going in so we followed.  It is the chapel of Saint Gennaro and, even though the printed information was in English, I’m not quite clear on him but I do remember that they have a relic of his blood which turned into liquid like a miracle.  I hope the sacreligious and maybe less than factual explanation will suffice.

Di Matteo for lunch.  We knew to walk through the kitchen now and up the stairs where there are 3 small rooms.  They gesture to a table that has a folded up red paper table cloth and so we set the table. Check out their menu cover:

 We tried the frittadini.  It’s a Naples version of friend mac and cheese.  Shaped like a large burger, there is spaghetti with a smokey cheese, peas, white sauce and a bit of ham.  All fried and delicious.  We also shared a pizza with bitter greens and sausage.  Pretty good!  On the way home we stopped on our corner and got a bunch of pastries which did me in eating wise for the rest of the day.

Rain threatened the whole afternoon so we didn’t go back out until the early evening.  We just walked around the Spanish quarter and back on via Toledo.  And it started to drizzle so we came back.  Ate some left over stuff and that was that.