Sunday 8th [8 January 1905] We got to Naples [Napoli] about 8 and I
went on shore directly after breakfast. It was bright but very cold - sun
and north wind, everything a wonderful colour but I wore a fur coat all
day. Shopped at Squadrilli's and then went by train to the Toretta and
on by tram to Pozzuoli, a delightful expedition. Lunched at a delicious
restaurant built out in to the sea on the strong foundations of a
monastery. They gave me maccaroni and fried cuttle fish and country
wine and oranges with the leaves on. Went up to the amphitheatre
which is one of the most perfect I have ever seen. All the
arrangements for flooding for the naumachia are quite clear - they
must have had a tremendous business filling the huge substructure.
Maidenhair growing all over it. Then to the Sarpedeon which was
under water, it being high tide. Then I fell into the hands of a guide
who took me out along the Baia road so far that I decided to walk on
to Baia. Dismissed him at a little lake on the other side of which was a
hole in the rock into which an obliging party invited me, lighting a torch
the while. He took me down a long rock hewn passage which grew
hotter and hotter till I thought I was going right down into Hell. At the
end is a boiling spring of sea water. We came back by another
passage. It's called the Baths of Nero. All the coast if full of masonry
which goes right out into the sea, a vast line of splendid villas. At Baia
I saw a huge octagon of brick crowned with a wreath of ilex, a temple I
believe it was, and climbed up into a great medieval castle, quite
deserted except for an old custode, and saw from the top a wonderful
view over the 2 bays, Vesuvius [Vesuvio] standing up over the end
and the water like blue steel - like the armour in 'Antari[?] and pools
which the wind ripples as it passes. So back in a little carriage to
Pozzuoli and by tram to Naples. What a country and what splendour
inherited by misery and rags. Had cakes at a fashionable tea shop
near the Galleria and got on board at 6. Bitter cold. We were off soon
after midnight.