Soccer and the Traveler

Getting in the spirit of the place you're visiting is perhaps the true essence of traveling well. On a warm night in Naples, we're sitting outdoors at a restaurant serving the famous Zuppa di cozze, mussel soup. We order. Then the waiters trundle out into the piazza with a huge television: Italy vs. France, the World Cup finals. It was a good thing we'd already ordered; once the ball started flying everyone in the restaurant was glued to the set. You could hear cheering from the buildings towering over us as Italy took the lead, only to loose it in the final moments. A city rose as one in indignation. Pots flew out windows. Suddenly we found ourselves in the frantic Naples depicted in scratchy old black and white movies.

The point of all this? Ah, well, there's a new World Soccer site on about, where you can learn all manner of things Soccer.