A Napoli....

Ciao tutti. So here begins my Italian adventure! As arranged I was to spend my first week of work and the last week of the children’s school holiday with them at their grandparents’ home in Naples. I had a flight booked from Luton airport to Naples on 6^th September and I have to say I was more than a little bit nervous. It suddenly struck me that I didn’t know this family very well and I didn’t know anyone else in Florence at all! What on earth was I thinking?!

 I decided that the best thing to do would be to spend a day in London beforehand with some friends who were bound to be full of excitement and encouragement. Unfortunately when I went with said friends to Starbucks in Victoria I discovered that my handbag which contained my mobile phone, purse, camera, ipod and car keys had gone missing from under the table. It turned out to have been pinched from under our noses by a man sitting nearby and by the time we realised it had gone so had he – long gone. Not the best start and after that I really did consider turning straight back again, but my passport hadn’t been taken and I might as well go and start earning.

So there I was waiting anxiously in Naples airport passport and suitcase in hand (but no handbag!) for the family to come and pick me up (still thinking this could have been a mistake). They turned up soon-ish (all of them) and we drove through the bumpy streets of Naples to the grandparents’ house. N had learnt one phrase in English and repeated it all the way back, What’s your name? What’s your name? What’s your name?

Once there I explained my predicament to T and she lent me 100€ to tide me over the next month and let me phone home to let my family know I had arrived safely. After that she told me that she would wake me up at 7 to start looking after the children. And what a week of looking after them it has been – R and R (the grandparents) turned out to be lovely and have given me a lot of help. They have also introduced me to some of the fantastic food that the Campania region has to offer, especially the mozzarella, yum yum yum! Naples is quite dangerous so we have been confined to the house for the week so I have been using my imagination to think of as many indoor games as possible. I also got to meet the children’s other grandparents. Let’s call them Nonno and Nonna. Nonna was a little more insistent on children being seen and not heard than R and R and we had to mind our manners quite a lot, Nonno was just a great big personality who clearly loved his grandchildren very much.  



I also had a day off later on in the week much to my relief and paid a visit to Pompeii where I spent 15 of my 100 euros on a disposable camera and enjoyed the peace and quiet enormously. Pompeii was very busy but most of the tourists stuck to the main streets and I was easily able to find some quieter ones and put my camera to work.

 When I arrived back in Naples around 5pm I was greeted by Nonno who had decided that him and I were going to take the children plus one little cousin to a theme park called Edenlandia. So we all squished into his Smart car, not easy with five people even if three of them are children, and off we went. I think we must have been on every single ride in that theme park but by about 7 o’clock I was beginning to think that we should probably be getting back as none of us had eaten and it seemed quite late for three young children to be out and about. I tried to explain to Nonno that either we needed to go back asap or he needed to phone T to tell her where we were (I of course didn’t have a mobile), but to no avail. Instead we went on the runaway train on which Nonno squished up to me, pointed to my bottom and said, “You no small.” Thanks Nonno.

When we eventually got back home T wasn’t best pleased with her father but the kids described it as the best day of their lives so far. Nonno then gave the 6 of us another lift in the Smart car back to R and R’s.

And so ends my week in Naples, next stop Florence and where the job truly begins. I am looking forward to having my own room and a routine which begins when the children go back to school. I shall miss R and R helping me out though, they were just lovely.