Author: Ursula Schmitz

It´s about time to get lost in the narrow alleys of the Spanish Quarters! Football inspired streetart and SSC Napoli devotional items on every corner, laundry, roaring vespas, children playing (and sometimes even driving the vespas), neighbours talking over the streets, little shops and bars and thousands of little (and bigger) shrines everywhere!

There’s an intimacy here in this working class neighborhood where so much action–love affairs, arguments, jokes, happen right out in the open, right before my eyes. I walk past altars put up for someone’s mamma, street level doors open to family kitchens, and my eyes meet a signorina as she stirs at the stove. Often tables from those kitchens are simply moved out to the street–so what I thought at first must be a great family restaurant, is actually simply a great family dining al fresco outside their front door, giving me a smile as I pass by. Susan Vanallen