The streets were full of people selling small bunches of mimosa today for International Women’s Day.

If you want to take a break near the Palazzo Reale in Naples, head to the cafe in the Teatro San Carlo (we had an excellent guided tour of the theatre last week). The surroundings are refined, the seating, in sumptuous leather sofas, is very comfortable, if not worn, and the cappuccino, only €1.50 a cup (the average here is about €2 – 3.00 a cup). Best of all, we had a pianist at a grand piano playing soothing music. A proper oasis of calm after the busy, noisy and crowded streets outside.

Tempted as we were to stay in the cafe listening to the music, we stirred ourselves to continue with our plans for the day.

Villa Pignatelli is a nineteenth century grand house first built for Sir Ferdinand Richard Acton, son of Sir John Acton, a former prime minister of Naples, and was left to the state by the last owner in the 1950’s.

In the dining room, each place was laid with a knife, a fork, and a spoon, which makes your choice of cutlery pretty simple. However, we saw examples of menus with several courses. What was one supposed to do? Keep back the cutlery when your plate was taken away at the end of one course, so you could use it for the next?

The choice of glassware was more complex. Each person had six glasses. What were they all for? I’m guessing champagne, white wine, red wine, dessert wine, port and water.

Our tour of the grand rooms ended here, there being no bedrooms to see, but we did go outside to the ‘English Garden’.

In the grounds we visited a large collection of horse-drawn carriages. No pictures of these I am afraid, but I was intrigued by the following notice next to a display of what looked like hunting horns.

Rather than rent a jaunty little open-top number to drive along the Amalfi coast, we chose to sit back and enjoy the view from a bus from Salerno yesterday. This was the cheap option and avoided any concerns Mark may have had with the Italian drivers on a long, narrow stretch of road with many hairpin bends.

The views were good, but it was a challenge to capture the scenery.

With the sunny skies and the warmest temperatures we have had since we left the UK, we had a lovely, lazy saunter round the town, a delicious lunch of fresh fish and, of course, gelato, before heading back to the bus.

We saw no sign of anything to mark the first day of Lent, other than a lot of children, who had been given the day off school.

More fireworks were let off on the street last night – on Ash Wednesday! Just another sign of the random nature of life here. Neither of us went out to look as we were tucked up in bed, exhausted after our long day.

We won’t know until the start of Lent tomorrow whether some of the behaviour we’ve recently witnessed in the streets around us is due to the Carnevale, or is just part of the madness that is Naples.

In the last week or so the neighbourhood has been treated to boxes of fireworks being casually let off in the street late at night. The most surreal part of this is that people, and cars, pass by without a second glance, while we watch from our balcony, mesmerised.

Today we bumped into our first parade, albeit one that was chaotic and disorganised.

Children’s fancy dress outfits are now being sold off cheaply, as they will not be needed in Lent. The confetti though, littering the cobbled streets, will continue to be evident for a good while to come.

Crowded streets, children in fancy dress and sunshine made for a holiday atmosphere in Sorrento yesterday. Very small children dressed as Minnie Mouse and dinosaurs, oblivious to the the fact they were presenting an entirely different persona, were wheeled in push-chairs, while older children, in Spider-Man, Cinderella and other gender-specific outfits, dropped handfuls of confetti on the cobbled streets. I would love to take pictures of the children, but it doesn’t seem right, even with their parents’ permission. It would be a different thing if they were taking part in a procession, but so far we’ve not caught one.

Sorrento is a town in two halves – the upper half, with its hotels, restaurants and shops, is smart and genteel, whereas the bottom half, on the shore, feels authenticity local, where you see work being done and has no illusions of grandeur.

We forgot that it was the first Sunday in the month, a day when museums all over Italy let everyone in free. The Circumetnea train we took from Naples, and which passes both Pompeii and Herculaneum, was absolutely packed, largely with Italians.

We must remember this money-saving tip, particularly next month as we shall be in much-more-expensive Florence, and will need to watch our pennies, or better still, cents.

Until air-conditioning was installed in Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the opera season only ran from November to May, as the other months were too hot. Visiting the theatre last week, we joined a guided tour.

The theatre was commissioned by Charles III of Naples (the one who left to become King of Spain) in 1737, and was restored after a fire by his son, Ferdinand IV. Ferdinand, suspicious of the number ‘17’, had the numbering on the boxes he passed, on the way to his own, changed, to read, ‘15, 16, 16 bis (meaning for the second time) 18.

Why Italians are suspicious of the number ‘17’. XVII is an anagram of the Latin word VIXI meaning ‘I have lived’. The use of the past tense, suggesting death, was considered unlucky.

When a theatre was considered for the Royal Palace of Caserta, the designer, Vantitelli, produced a scaled-down copy of Teatro San Carlo.

We were glad to be able to see the theatre at Caserta when we visited today, and also pleased that the formal garden was open, the wind having dropped. The English garden though (we are thinking manicured lawn and flowers) was closed for reasons of ‘safety’.

The formal garden is spectacular for its size, rather than for its colour or creation of varied vistas.

Modelled on the gardens at Versailles, there is a two-kilometre stretch of water and statues up to a cascade.

A poste-script to the above

A little Italian is a dangerous thing …

After our visit to the Palace, we got to the platform for the Naples train, where a train was waiting, with minutes to spare. We both looked up at the train indication board. Our train was top of the list, but what was this? We both noticed the word, ‘Cancello.’

‘Oh, no,’ we said, ‘Our train’s been cancelled.’ (The Italian word for ‘cancel’ being something similar to the English).

Then I noticed the word, ‘Via,’ before ‘Cancello’.

‘There’s not a place called ‘Cancello, is there?’ I wondered.

‘Scusi, Signor,’ I said in my best Italian as I approached a gentleman standing in the open doorway of the carriage, ‘Napoli?’

‘Si,’ he shrugged and we hopped on the train.

(Now I am home, I have looked up the correct Italian. If the train had been cancelled, I think the word ‘cancellato’ would have been used, and not ‘cancello’).

Despite the cold and wind while we have been in Naples, almost every day has been really sunny, wonderful for photographs and also for two UK-based nomads, happy to lose their winter pallor. However, shots of views have not been the best due to an ever-present haze.

Sensing it was clearer today, we decided to head up to Castel Sant’Elmo, just above Museo Nazionale di San Martino, which we visited last week. Then, we climbed the steep hill, but today we took a funicular train (€1.10 one way. Where can you go for £1 in the UK? I suspect nowhere).

As we came out of the station, and were trying to follow the directions to Castel Sant’Elmo on Mark’s phone, a gentleman came up and spoke to us. “Inglese?” he asked, and turning to Mark, “You look Italiano, it’s a complement.” We put it down to the silver hair and sunglasses.

The gentleman, called Giovanni, then started telling us that he had a cameo factory, and we were welcome to take a look. It was hard to say no, but actually it was fascinating. Naples, he told us, is a centre for cameos made from shells. His factory was started by his grandfather, continued by his father and now he and his three brothers work there. (We saw the photographs of the different generations on the wall).

Any of three different shells are used for cameos, mother-of-pearl being the best. Part of a particular shell is chosen for the layers of colour and is cut out. The section is smoothed to make a flat area which can be worked on, and is then temporarily stuck to the end of a wooden stick with wax. A picture is drawn on the shell with pencil, and parts are cut away with special cutting tools. Giovanni told us he then hands his work to one of his brothers, ‘the jeweller’, to be made up into a piece of jewellery. After a quick glance at the prices, we said our thanks, and were on our way.

Castel Sant’Elmo is imposing and looks pretty impregnable. The first difficulty would be climbing that steep hill!

Back in 79AD the inhabitants of Pompeii, Herculaneum and surrounding area were unaware that they were living in the shadow of a volcano. Vesuvius hadn’t erupted for centuries and was just a benign backdrop to their daily lives. When Vesuvius did start spewing out her insides, the wind first carried pumice and ash over Pompeii, where roofs and houses soon collapsed under the weight. The ash that was later dropped on Herculaneum, together with a sea of mud, buried the town to a depth of fifty to sixty feet without incurring the same volume of damage as Pompeii suffered. What the ash and mud buried, it conserved. Wooden rafters, wooden furniture and statues have all been found in Herculaneum.

Apart from being better preserved, Herculaneum is smaller than Pompeii, and much less crowded, which made our visit today very pleasant.

The scale of the royal palace of Caserta is jaw-dropping, the monumental staircase being the most stupendous feature.

The Palace was built for Charles VII of Naples (one of the Spanish lot) in the mid-eighteenth century, who abdicated in favour of his son, Ferdinand (to take up the Spanish throne when his father died) before he had even spent one night in it.

Paranoid about security and keen to put a little distance between himself and the dirt and crowds of Naples, Charles chose Caserta as the ideal location as it is both away from the coast (and the threat of invasion from the sea) and twenty kilometres distant from the city.

The Palace was designed to rival Versailles – in opulence, it fails, but in terms of size, it wins. In fact, in terms of volume, Caserta is the largest palace in the world. Whether this is a worthwhile aspiration to have for your palace, is debatable.

A huge avenue between Caserta and Naples was designed, but never built.

Two of the features that Caserta is especially known for, the gardens (including ‘An English Garden’) and a Court Theatre, were not open yesterday – the garden, due to the wind, and the theatre, as it is only open at the weekends. We will be back.

What do Neapolitans do when the wind blows at 70 mph? The answer is they stick their washing out to dry just the same as any other day. More than one person came home at the end of yesterday to find an item of their laundry missing. I know because on our perambulations we saw at least one sheet and a few items of clothing littering the pavements.

To escape the wind, we took a tour below ground where Roman remains have been found. From a seventeenth century church we climbed down through Mediaeval remains to the remnants of a market place from the third century BC, which was abandoned when, after three days of rain, a local hill sent a river of mud down to bury it. Fortunately, no human bones have been found as the mud slide is thought to have happened at night, when everyone was at home.

As a postscript on the wind yesterday – the wind was in gusts, rather than a consistent blow, but caused damage to a number of the badly maintained buildings here, causing large lumps of plaster to crash down on the streets below.

Thinking the weather was becoming more spring-like, I washed my winter coat yesterday prior to putting it away. However it seems I was premature as it is forecast to be three degrees centigrade here at midday tomorrow (but 12 for the same time in West Sussex). It’s all a bit topsy turvy. The Neopolitans have kept all their layers on through the milder days. I clearly have a lot to learn.

Walking up to through the Spanish Quarter and climbing the steps to the Museum of San Martino would be good warming exercise on a chilly day. The museum is housed in a beautiful former monastery dating from 1368 and has a terrace with what would be, on a clear day, wonderful views of the Bay of Naples. Today it was very hazy.

St Martin, whom the museum is named after, was a Roman soldier. When he met a man who was so poor he had no clothes, Martin took his sword and cut his cloak into two, giving the pauper one piece. The story goes that Martin had a dream that night in which Jesus was saying that Martin had clothed him.

The museum is well-known for its examples of nativity scenes. These are very popular in Naples and can be seen all over the city coming up to Christmas. They are not the simple scenes we may know with Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus, a few shepherds, the three kings and a handful of animals, but include individuals you would find in any settlement such as a blacksmith, a butcher, a shopkeeper and so on. The scene could be set in any period of history and antique nativities provide an insight into fashion, housing etc. Ordinary folk often make their own nativity sets.

I wonder if anyone, outside the US, has heard of Rick Steves. An American himself, he owns a travel company which helps other Americans travel in Europe. Of particular interest to us are audio tours he has recorded that can be downloaded free and listened to via a mobile phone. We discovered him only last year and followed a number of tours he has done set in Rome.

We used one of his tours yesterday when we visited the Archeological Museum here in Naples. We just homed in on artefacts that have been taken from Pompeii to be displayed in a safe environment.

Of particular interest to us were the mosaics, most of which are made from incredibly tiny pieces, so much so that at first glance they look like paintings.

Better dig my hat and gloves out from the bottom of my suitcase!