Southern Italy (cont.)
It’s arreviderci Amalfi today. We’re up early and up to breakfast shortly
after 8:00. Vincenzo is at the desk and
Lydia is in the breakfast room so all is right with our world. Neither of us are too sore after our long
day yesterday which makes the trot up the stairs to the terrace pain free. It is too cool and breezy to eat outside but
the sky is bright blue without a cloud in sight. Our spread is the same as the last couple
days. On day one it was a painful
splurge as we had to try some of everything but now we have our favorites and
eat slightly more intelligently.
Before leaving we still have one chore on the list—our tour
of the Amalfi basilica. The real tours
don’t start until 10:00 so we have the place to ourselves. That enables us to nose around with our own
printed tour guide. We have been through
a lot of ancient churches and this one ranks right up there. Its main claim to fame (outside of a thousand
year history) is that it is the burial place of St. Andrew. There is a pretty serious chain of custody
that puts his bones under the main altar.
They have been there for 800 years, enough to make believers of us.
We do one more walk around town and then back for our final
packing by 10:30. Franco (our driver
from 3 days ago and again dressed in a suit and tie) will be picking us up at
11:00 for a transfer to Naples with a stop or two in between. It’s hugs all around with Lydia and
Vincenzo—we have decided that if you stay at a B&B and don’t get a hug at
the end you may as well be at a hotel.
It is straight up over the spine of the Amalfi peninsula
heading north toward Naples Bay. The
distant sea and town views are breathtaking.
Exactly what you were promised in the guide books. As we pass over the top, the views are equally
amazing of Naples, Naples Bay, Vesuvius, and a dozen little towns in the valley
below. One of them, San Marzano, is the
home of the famous tomatoes of the same name.
A good Italian restaurant in the U.S. would never use any other brand. Franco pulls over for a couple photo ops.
The next stop, recommended by Franco and planned for, is a
wine tour and lunch at the base of Vesuvius.
It is obviously a perfect setting in a villa surrounded by acres of
grapes growing in the rich volcanic soil.
The wine tour is a hustle through a couple vines and a peek at some
barrels in their aging vault. The real
deal is the lunch. It is an antipasto of
cheeses, tomatoes, bread, sausages and lots of olive oil (pressed on site) followed
by a kick-butt spaghetti with local tomato sauce, all served on the beautiful
veranda with a view of the Mediterranean.
We know it is a cliché to say that spaghetti with tomato sauce is
different than the quick dinner at home but it really is delicious. It is all wrapped up with a ricotta based
cake and some apricot brandy to pour over the top. Obvious there was wine with each course, 5
wines in all, and they were pretty good.
The last special reserve red was very good but we passed on the 28-euro
price per bottle.
When we get into Naples Franco is in his element as he
drives like a madman with zero regard for lane markings or rules of the
road. It helps to have someone who knows
the ropes on your team. We get to our
next one-night-stand, Orsini 46 B&B at 2:00, a half hour ahead of
schedule. Gabrielle (male) buzzes us
into the building where we get the lift to our third floor reception area. This is a tiny operation with only three
rooms next to each other off the small reception area. We get all the details—where to go, where to
eat, how the keys work, how breakfast works, the map and the pizza
recommendation. There is no discussion
about what to eat, it is a given that in Napoli you will eat pizza. We agree.
We take a quick peek at the walk around the harbor but since
this will be our destination for later we go into the heart of the city. There is a long pedestrian street that
basically cuts the town in half going away from the water. It is packed with people, entertainers, cops
and every sort of humankind that may have washed ashore here over the
centuries. Some critics say Naples is a nest
of thieves, murderers and other cutthroats who will cull out old Americans and have
their way with them. We find the city
pretty exciting with a great energy and pace.
There is certainly grit to it but that is a feature of southern Italy as
opposed to their learned sophisticates to the north. This is a big city but it also has a small
town ambience as people seem to know each other and can deal with the
helter-skelter constant motion that surrounds.
There are little groups here and there playing Michael Corleone type of
wedding music and another doing opera.
It is definitely a feast for the senses.
The city has 400 churches and something like 399 are Catholic. We find one little side street that is all
shops selling ceramic miniatures for your Christmas Nativity manger scene. If you want to put your 3 wise men on Harleys
or have Joseph baking pizzas they can take care of that too. The big event of our afternoon is a pretty
big protest march. We can’t read all the
signs but it is a collection of groups who are pretty much mad at
everybody. They are especially mad at
the European Union as well as the U.S. but they don’t much care for Israelis or
Nazis either. They are mostly communist
based from the signs we can sort of interpret.
High unemployment in Italy makes some folks a little edgy.
We get a couple of cold beers for our happy hour in our room
before heading back out for dinner. It
is a nice stroll along the harbor, and again there are thousands of people out
and about. This is the hang out place
for the teenagers but the older folks and families blend in as well. About a mile down the harbor walk is
Sobrillo, our host-highly-recommended-authentic-Napoli pizza place. We score a table outside and try to check out
the place mat/menu without a lot of luck.
Mary asks if they have something in English. NO ENGLISH!
It seems that all of the pies are different combinations of
the basic margarita sauce, crust, cheese and basil. Most of the differences are different
tomatoes or different cheese. Finally we
get a waiter to give us a couple recommendations and we just say yes. Is it good?
Yes. The sauce is the magic
southern Italy tomato sauce we have been raving about and the charred crust is
a great flavor producer. Is it the best
pizza we have ever had? No. Maybe if we would have grown up here this
might be the only way we would eat pizza.
Maybe we could have used some pepperoni and a mushroom. We’ll get that in Rome.
It’s a mostly full moon as we do the Italian stroll along
the water. Still tons of people out as
we were in the early dining crowd (before 8:00). A fun Saturday night in a new and different
place.
What did we learn today?
The southern Italian personality is a kick in the pants, in a good way.
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