Euro Madness

As January approached, Italy was carried along on a wave of enthusiasm towards the Euro. Unlike the Germans and the Frenchmen that I knew, most of whom considered the Euro as necessary but somewhat undesirable, as it meant the demise of much-loved currencies, Italians couldn’t wait to get it into their pockets. Right up until

A Tragic Day for the World

Work was ticking along very nicely. I enjoyed this part of the year. The trouble-makers, those who had never managed to fit in in Naples, and who had become bitter and twisted over their time here, making life difficult for everybody else, had gone home and had been replaced by a fresh bunch of enthusiastic

A New Challenge

“Thank you so much, young man,” said the elderly but sprightly English lady. “We’d have got completely lost if we hadn’t bumped into you.” This seemed to happen an awful lot on our walks. There we would be, hiking along one of the beautiful mountain paths that criss-cross this area, when suddenly we would come

Castellammare di Stabia

We wanted to do some Christmas shopping and it didn’t take us long to realize that Vico Equense was hardly the best place for that. We decided to spend the day in Castellammare and combine shopping with sightseeing. We had passed through Castellammare so many times on the train but had never actually stopped to

Benevento Revisited

Last weekend, Mrs Asinello and I decided to spend Halloween away from home. And where better to go than Benevento, the city of witches? So here is my article from some time back, now updated with photos from last weekend. I hope you enjoy them!

Fire and Brimstone!

I wasn’t expecting much from the Christmas period in Vico. And although I loved the Neapolitan family Christmas, December in Naples had always been something of a disappointment. Although, on the one hand, I was grateful that Christmas didn’t start in late September, as it did in the UK, a bit of festive spirit in

Sunday in the Village

In the 1990s there was a rather splendid TV programme that went out on Sunday mornings in Italy, and Giovanna and I always watched it if we were in. It was called “Sunday in the Village” and was introduced by a friendly, chirpy man, full of witty one-liners and warming bonhomie, who went to a

Mushrooms! What Passion!

Cooking and eating are art forms in Italy. The English eat to live, but the Italians live to eat. Meals are both clocks and calendars to the Italians, especially to those who live outside the big cities, such as the good people of Vico Equense. When I lived in Naples, I never really noticed autumn.

The Great Chestnut Festival

Summer passed all too quickly in Vico Equense, and I was sorry to see things returning to normal. I had enjoyed the holiday mood of Vico in the summer: the pedestrianized streets with artisans selling their wares to tourists and locals: the pan-pipers and human statues: the late-night concerts in the piazza and Miss Vico

An Update 1 – Vesuvius and Herculaneum

One of the things I regretted when I started my blog in the deep, dark days of the Covid pandemic, was the fact that many of the places I was writing about were places I had last visited back in the 1990s, armed with an old Pratika MTL3. That meant I did not have much