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A trip to southern Italy is always a good idea, and I plan to savor everything I can. I say savor because in my opinion, it is the absolute best eating area in the world. Cannoli, cassate and pasticciotti are fantastic southern desserts. But the last two, also idioms in Italian that can mean trouble or mistakes.

In this series of articles I will tell anecdotes that happened to me in

• Calabria
• Basilicata
• Molise
• Apulia
• Campania
• Sicily

In this specific article I recount anecdotes with particular strokes of luck or misfortune

But sometimes I win! Against all

In June 2006, I had just bought a house and had no money. They gave me a voucher for a very discounted vacation where I had bought furniture. These were weeks in resorts, a type of experience that I was convinced was not for me. But as I studied the catalog, I found the ideal solution. I was going to drive to Salento. I was going to take advantage of full board. But getting the lunch box because I would go to a different place every day, city or beach.

Horrified I discovered that some did not even leave the village: all week splashing around in the pool crowded with brats and playing the animation games. Even those who stayed two weeks in a row in there, when in a few steps, but there was even a shuttle, you could reach one of the most beautiful beaches in Salento.

The animation people tried to engage me, particularly motivated by seeing me alone and I assume with the prejudice that I must have been desperate or shy. But I would, as soon as after breakfast, escape for my rounds among the olive groves, red earth, and white walls. After dinner I would go out again. One night I couldn’t resist and found myself at a village festival with an eggplant theme and had dinner a second time.

After the first few days, the entertainers gave up and in fact began to look at me a bit cross-eyed. The last night was the national soccer team’s game at the World Cup. I stayed and participated in the final super raffle with rich prizes, convinced I would win.

After an interminable series of thank-you’s and award ceremonies in which everyone was bursting with gratitude and pleasantries, it came down to the most coveted prizes, which were presented with big hugs and congratulations. When I went on stage to collect the first prize (a stylish rain jacket), frost descended on the faces of the poor entertainers.

Not welcomed to the restaurant because only

A very unpleasant episode, on the other hand, happened to me while shooting in beautiful Naples. Besides the beautiful sights, artistic treasures there are also to natural peculiarities such as the phlegrean fields which not everyone knows, but it is the most dangerous volcano in Italy.

At that time you could get close, not too close, but the relative whiff of rotten egg (sulfur) could be smelled all the way from the Pozzuoli train station. In Naples I was obviously always very dedicated to food, but a very unpleasant thing happened to me.

At one of the most famous pizzerias downtown, they would not let me sit down. They told me there was no room, while the couple behind me had them seated right away. This discrimination against those who go to dinner alone besides being really bad is also very stupid. I alone can consume and spend more than some groups of 4, as well as bring an army with me the next day.

Another incident unfortunately also occurred in Salerno years later, this is the textual dialogue.

do you have a table?

for how many?

only I

Ah, no, we are full

I ate at the next restaurant, it was 8 p.m., and after not even an hour I passed by the first one again, which still had ¾ empty tables: how sad these mediocre shopkeepers are.

My first trip to southern Italy: losing a brother in Pompeii

As a child with my parents and 3 younger siblings we used to take 2 weeks of vacation in the mountains, always in the summer. One year my father, on the other hand, had been given a company award that consisted of lodging on the Amalfi coast.

I loved it, and even though I was still in elementary school I was already excited about the archaeological remains and in particular the ruins of Pompeii. Wandering the streets where I imagined ancient Romans on chariots and in inns, at one point we lost a brother, and I, who already had enough sense of direction despite being 9 years old, scrambled to find him.

He had ended up in a bar outside the digs where an authoritative gentleman had intimated to him not to move from a chair and offered him a drink. At that time there had been super raids of camorrists, and it had affected me so much that I imagined my brother had been protected by a distinguished neighborhood leader.

It made quite an impression on me to return to Pompeii as an adult and appreciate what, in my opinion, is one of the must-see places on trips to the south in Italy as well as one of the best managed. It is less highly regarded, but equally deserving Herculaneum.

Next stop Wrong travel companions touring southern Italy

Trips taken, travel stories divided by continent

Countries visited in my travel stories

Anecdotes, divided by type in travel narratives

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Fabio Viroli

Ho sempre avuto tante passioni, ma da sempre più o meno latenti, le principali sono viaggiare e scrivere. Tra le altre cose ho una laurea in psicologia; ho fatto per più di 30 anni l’allenatore di basket; leggo tanti libri; sono stato molto appassionato di sport e di musica rock; e faccio improvvisazione teatrale. IL mio primo romanzo, che non parla di viaggi, si chiama LE TUE GAMBE SONO BELLE COME LE TAGLIATELLE

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