Category Archives: coffee

Today was fun indeed. Goose was off today to make up for being SDO this weekend so we decided it was time to brave downtown. Plus, I was running low on my liquid crack (read: Nespresso capsules) and there’s a boutique somewhere downtown. So we made it a mission to go find it, how bad could it be? I mean, really – it’s just down the highway and off the tangenziale, we can DO this!

So we get in the newly fixed VW Golf and get going. (Sidebar: turns out the Golf needed a new distributor coil and a few new spark plugs. $350 later and it runs better than before.) Things are great until we get to our exit from the Tang (that’s the local, cool kid slang by the way. Okay not really, everyone just calls it The Tang) and get in line to pay our 0.85€ toll. Then, we exit the booth (bypassing the gypsy, thankyouverymuch) and we hit traffic. Not exactly sure what was going on, we just kept going with the flow. At one point, I counted 7 cars across. There were only 5 toll booths. Yeah, no idea. Turns out those 5 (7?) lanes were narrowing down to ONE lane. Which went through a tunnel. And then stopped at a red light on the other side. Wonder what genius designed THAT exit.

Then the fun part. Oh yes, you read that right. The fun hasn’t even started yet. We now have to get through town, find somewhere to park (hadn’t even considered that! Good thing we drove the small car!), and then find the boutique. One of the roads was an incline and Goose is apparently not exactly….adept at driving a manual transmission on an incline. Cue impromptu lesson of How To Use The E-Brake When Driving On A Hill, Part 1. Since it’s still stop and go traffic and we’re still on an incline, parts 2 and 3 follow quickly in succession.

Then comes the part where Goose almost manages to hit the car BEHIND us because apparently our lane was ending and he couldn’t get the car to engage in gear quickly enough to keep from rolling backwards AND merge at the same time. Cue Necessary Chinese Fire Drill: Downtown Napoli Edition. That’s right folks, we swapped seats so yours truly could take over. Toss in a few awkward waves and smiles and having to restart the car because someone *cough*Goose*cough* was so flustered he stalled the car out to boot and we were on our merry way. A few mishaps with the GPS and missed roundabout exits but we finally found our destination. Now to find parking. Luckily, we stumbled upon a small parking area for 3€/hour. Nice!

We walked through the streets of Naples, bypassing the emergency first aid happening on the sidewalk, with a chair borrowed from the laundromat, of course, and the ambulance parked on the sidewalk, back to the town’s pedestrian shopping zone.

First stop: local cafe. No trip is complete without the requisite tasting of the local cafe and pastry! Two cappuccinos, a cornetto, and a turnover later, we exit into the now rainy and dreary outside. Quite different than the sunny and cheery Naples that we were in only 10 minutes sooner but who’s paying attention?

Next: Operation Find Nespresso Boutique begins. Armed with a vague address (86/100 Via Scarlatti), we start looking. Find building 100 and find out that it’s kind of a department store with boutiques inside. Think Bloomingdale’s or some sort of comparable US store. Objective accomplished! As a bonus, the store also happens to be the home to the MAC boutique for here, nifty! Everything is way, way overpriced though. I think I’ll just stock up when I head back stateside later this year. So we buy coffee, get a free coffee and biscuit, I spend 15 minutes explaining to Goose that when I said “no, it’s a biscuit. You know, like a cookie?” I really meant food, not a coffee flavor and that no, there really isn’t an almond biscuit flavored coffee and that the biscuit he just ate? That was what was in the other box he was asking about.

Time to go but wait! Is that….? No way! It can’t be! Hey look! It’s George Clooney!

See? The man himself! Clearly Goose was excited. Oh and please excuse his day glow jacket, he apparently feels it makes him more visible to the Neapolitan drivers or something silly like that. Shortly after this was taken, I got yelled at for taking pictures so we high tailed it back out into the rain and headed back towards the car.

We made it home fairly safe and it was homemade pizza night, woohoo! I bought the dough premade (yes, I’m lazy, what’s your point?) at Auchan and had all the fixings for a regular pepperoni pizza. Well, Goose may or may not have ended up with a calzone instead of a pizza because his stuck to the prep board…Mental note: more corn meal! All in all, not a bad way to spend a free, random weekday off I’d say.