Aaaah Amalfi
The beautiful Amalfi Coast, bella bella. The sea, the sunshine, the food, the
ambience, the 50-degrees and rain. Oh
well, this one was forecast and was factored into our plans for today. Rather than do any of the coast things that
people do here our plan for today is to relax a bit and then wander about the
village of Amalfi and try to soak up the local flair for good living.
This is the second of our two hell weeks on this trip, as
much as being in Amalfi, Italy can be included in a hell week. Earlier in the trip we had a series of one
night stays which are miserable, and this week we have four of them. There are some travel transitions involved,
the night on the ferry, the traveling night at Villa Vea, one night in Naples on
Saturday just because it’s there and we should have one of their pizzas, and
then Sunday night at the Rome airport before flying out on Monday. It can’t be helped and we’re used to it. In the meantime we have three blissful nights
here and we will enjoy every second. The
weather no longer has power over us.
The first thing we smell when we open our balcony doors this
morning is bakery. It is heavenly—hope
it’s ours. Breakfast is a lovely spread
this morning. It is usually served on
the terrace of our B&B but today is inside where they have some tables and
a beautiful view. Again, meats, cheeses,
perfect tomatoes in olive oil, prosciutto, homemade mozzarella, cheese omelets,
pitchers of blood orange juice, croissants, cakes, breads, cereal, yogurt,
fruit—you get the idea. Vincenzo’s
mother-in-law, Lydia, is running the room and is a nice blend of loving to us
and demanding of her helpers. She
doesn’t speak English but speaks in smiles and hugs. The room is full so we offer to come back
later. She says okay but then comes up
with a different plan. She says (we
think) wait a moment and then has one of her helpers bring in one of the tables
from the terrace, dries it off, adds chairs and we’re good to go. Excellent communicator.
Mary is still working on bidet-laundry after breakfast for a
while. No hurry with the rain
continuing. We venture into a drizzle to
walk the length of the main street from sea to cliff. Paper production replacing papyrus was the
ancient industry here and consequently this is home to the paper museum. Apparently there are still paper mill remains
along the cliffs but why in the world would they build them there. As we walk the street there is the sound of
rushing water from the storm drains below us.
We’re told that there is a river running down from the hills above and
it flows directly underneath this street.
As we get near the top of the town we see the river as it begins on its
urban trip to the sea.
Our trip uphill began a little short of the center of town
so now we retrace our steps back to the middle and then on down towards the
marina. Up one side and down the
other. There are at least a dozen tour
buses lined up waiting to resume a trip along this part of the coast for their
customers. The towns that dot the coast
form a little string of pearls and tour buses and boats skip from one to the
other disgorging their passengers into a frenzy of shopping, eating and gaping
at the visuals. In the summer it is
literally difficult to move here and even now it seems very crowded to us. Vincenzo tells us that it will slow down next
week as we get into November but it never completely stops. The tour boats are not running today because
of the crappy weather which either increased or decreased the number of people
in town—not sure. We compare today to a
summer rainy day up north when everyone heads into Nisswa for a retail bonanza.
We try to visit the cathedral. It is a 3 euro charge and when we get to the
ticket window the follow tells us they are out of the English brochures that
explain everything. We tell him we’ll
come back when they get more. We do a
bit more poking around in shops while dodging rain drops and cars. We mentioned that this street is a mixture of
pedestrian zone and vehicle traffic and the two are interspersed. For one long stretch of the town there is a
stop light at each end creating a take-your-turn one-way scenario. The uphill cars will wait for a couple
minutes while the downhill cars pass, and then the lights will switch and the
uphill guys can go. If you are walking
in the street you get into the flow of knowing which way to expect the car that
will run over you.
It is almost 1:30, time for the shops to close for their
afternoon break. John is a little
hungry, Mary not so much. We stop at a
little fish stand and John gets a fish couppa, a paper cone filled with fish
pieces and a long skewer to stab them with.
His choice is the mixed shrimp and calamari. Mary eats a few of the
shrimp and John eats everything else.
Mary gets a birthday card for Aunt Marianne and we join the Italians for
our afternoon time off.
We do the main street stroll again after 4:00. We snobbishly look down on the tour bus
people but we were standing by the city gate when an older American couple
walked into the main square. The fellow
looked up and said, “Wow, would you look at this.” What a nice experience for them. The weather can’t decide what it is going to
do and we decide to watch it from our balcony until dinner. A cone of fish only goes so far.
We think we should try someplace new for dinner tonight but
Vincenzo was telling us today how his mother makes the eggplant parmesan. It is a bunch of steps with a 7-hour wait
between each to make it just perfect.
John also has his eye on the carbonara so we’re going back to L’Abside
again. Mary was taken with her anchovy
and sun dried tomato spaghetti last night so she gets that again. We sort of share the eggplant parmesan
appetizer (Mary got one bite) and it was as good as advertised. John’s carbonara was beyond perfect and Mary
even raved about the one bite she was able to snare. Another fun evening with Giovanna.
A quick walk in the heavy after dinner mist and off to bed.
What did we learn today?
You can’t speak Italian by saying Italian words. You have to sing them. There’s a melody involved.
No comments:
Post a Comment