Richard Jernigan -> RE: Flamenco: no es un show! (Jun. 4 2019 2:21:27)
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ORIGINAL: Escribano Capri gets around 20,000 a day in the Summer and is under a lot of pressure from boat trippers. Larisa came through once again when she showed me what to do at Capri. As soon as you step off the boat from Naples, get into a taxi and go over the mountain to Anacapri. Very few tourists do. When we arrived one early afternoon the town of Capri was being thoroughly trampled by day trippers, but Anacapri was uncrowded, quiet and peaceful. We checked in to the hotel that billed itself as the oldest in Anacapri. It was run by a beautiful, stylish and well dressed woman who told us her grandmother had started the business by renting out rooms in her house. The staff were attentive, helpful and friendly. The outdoor dining area was in a lemon grove. At lunchtime you were shaded from the sun by an overhead trellis with espaliered branches of lemon trees bearing plentiful fruit. A gentle breeze wafted through. The food was delicious, made from local ingredients. Larisa loves the beach. I can take it or leave it. She reported so favorably on swimming at the Marina Piccola on the Mediterranean side of the island that I went back with her. Wonderful cool, clear water, a shaded pavilion with chaises longues, cool drinks on order. On the western edge of the island there is a restaurant with good food and wine and a marvelous distant view of the island of Ischia in the sunset. The waiter told us that most people in the service industry on Capri show up for the tourist season, but spend the rest of the year elsewhere. His preference was Buenos Aires. On our last evening on the island Larisa suggested we eat dinner on the main square in the town of Capri, after the last boat had left for Naples. The tables in the square were still pretty full, but without waiting we got a balcony table in the restaurant in the clock tower overlooking the square. The night before we took the boat to Capri we stayed at a fancy hotel in Naples next to the yacht harbor and the fortress. The room was nice, the view was impressive, the food was good, but I got the impression that the staff thought their job was to kiss our asses. This is not a comfortable posture. There are better and more famous hotels where the staff are professional, attentive and helpful without pretending to be obsequious. We didn't run into this anywhere else in Italy. As a really old guy bemoaning the passing of the good old days, I will say that San Francisco seems to have been changing steadily throughout its history. I lived in Palo Alto for a while. My girlfriend at the time lived on the ground floor of a triplex on Twin Peaks, with a view down Market Street to the Ferry Building. She owns the building now, but lives in Larkspur across the Golden Gate. She was born and raised in Tokyo until she was 14, and used to joke that San Francisco was a hick town that rolled up its sidewalks at midnight. We parted amicably in 1991 when I left for Kwajalein. We still see one another once in a while. As a sort of farewell, we went to Acapulco for a couple of weeks. Speaking of change, Acapulco has now been utterly destroyed by gangster extortion, violence and murder, but then it was still vibrant and prospering. She had suggested we go, since her family vacationed there while she was growing up in Tokyo. We stayed at the Ritz, an old respectable place on the beach, not overly expensive, where they had stayed when she was a girl. In high school in San Francisco my girlfriend's boyfriend was the quarterback of the St. Francis High football team. They were still friends. Occasionally she wore his class ring on a slender chain around her neck. On the plane from Acapulco back to Mexico City a middle aged couple recognized the ring and introduced themselves. They reminisced about growing up in San Francisco, but said they had been displaced by "the others coming in." It's been going on one way or another for quite a while. A little further back, my father had a liking for the City, developed during a number of visits. I don't think my mother had ever been there. When Dad was 75 in 1979, they spent a week or two in San Francisco. Dad always liked to dress well. When they got back to Texas, he complained that nobody in San Francisco wore a suit any more to go out in the evening. I said I should have warned him that styles had changed in the '60s, the Top of the Mark was pretty much a gay bar, and the roof garden of the Sir Francis Drake was no longer the height of fashion. Ah, for the good old days...[8D] RNJ
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