The Foodie's Edition

Like a previous trip I have been extremely remiss in not staying current on these posts.  However I did use that wonder App called Track My Tour (please tell Chris that I sent you if you check it out) which did a much better job.  Here is the link to this part of the trip -- Click here.

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It is annoying as you get older that your weight becomes more difficult to manage.  Remember when you were young you could eat and drink anything and everything and stay skinny as a rake?  Well forget it as you get older.  My weight seems to stabilise every so often at a level 5 pounds higher than it was before.  Mind you I suppose if I suddenly lost weight, that would be a bad thing.  But I do wish it wouldn't always be so.  

I've been around the same level for over 10 years now and all of a sudden when we got back from holiday in June, that level was now 5 pounds higher and try as I might (and I do confess to being very weak willed so my trying could really be better) I seem to have anchored around that level.  Viv tells me my tummy is hard now!  Just great.

I suppose it really is my fault going to places where the food is soooo wonderful.  Combine that with my weak will and an abundance of wonderful wine et voila!  There you have it.  Chub central.  So take a look and see when you could have said No.

Fragolini -- the perfect way to end a meal

Gelati -- simply the best way to pass the time walking back to the hotel

Amalfi anchovies

Home cured prosciutto

Home made gnocchi with clams from Amalfi fresh off the boat

Home made pasta with pesto and lemon sauce

The perfect end to a meal -- home made Limoncello from Amalfi

Fresh fish medley in Amalfi

Whole Barzino in baked sea salt

Linguine with anchovies, of course from Amalfi again!

Local seafood stew with Octopus to the fore

Multiple mini bruschetta

Home made (by us) mozzarella treats

Home made pasta with sage and spring onions

Local veal

Deep fried anchovy treats this time!

Home made linguine with red clam sauce (with shells)

Local linguine with lemon sauce

Amalfi anchovies

Home cured prosciutto again this time with home made mozzarella

Risotto alla limone at the lemon farm, just wonderful

Porchetta from Rome

The BEST linguine carbonara in the world from Maccheroni in Roma

Our shared meat plate in Rome

And the best linguine with anchovy oil in the world!!!

Who would have better will power than I faced with such delicacies?

Lemons, Steps and Pirates

Like a previous trip I have been extremely remiss in not staying current on these posts.  However I did use that wonder App called Track My Tour (please tell Chris that I sent you if you check it out) which did a much better job.  Here is the link to this part of the trip -- Click here.

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Quite why we decided to go to the Amalfi Coast is unclear at the moment.  I cannot quite remember why we chose to do this but boy am I glad we did.  It is lovely.  Very difficult in fact to take a bad photo or see a crummy vista.

We decided to split the week up into several sections: first the Greeks and buffalo mozzarella cheese. Next the coastal villages and finally lemons and a cooking class.  We had a day in between so in those days we were able to bimble in the Amalfi area itself and the little villages around.

Amalfi was the centre of a 100,000 person plus 'empire' that was a seafaring empire that essentially took over the sea faring of the Roman Empire.  It was a great trading empire that competed on favourable terms with Genoa, Pisa and Venice in the early days pre-1100 but sadly those bloody Normans again spoiled the show and sacked Amalfi and essentially killed everyone over the next generation leaving each village with 2-3,000 persons each and subsequently irrelevant.

Just a brief aside about the Normans, this is pretty typical of how they 'colonised' places.  Slide in through the back door on the pretext of helping out against some external danger and then simply killing all your former allies and taking over.  Architecture in this region is largely Norman and bears testament not only to their presence and control, but rather more sinisterly, their utter ruthlessness in taking over.  Witness the Harrowing of the North in the years after 1066 in Great Britain for how effective this strategy was.

The duomo in Amalfi is Norman dating from the 1200s but with the usual Baroque add ons

The Normans did build a series of watch towers along the coast as Barbary pirates often came calling.  The 9 coastal villages did a very sensible thing and built 9 villages up the side of the mountains that drop straight into the sea.  When the pirates came, the villagers decamped up the tiny mountain paths ... that we walked ... to their high villages.  Sensible precaution.

Food is mainly seafood oriented with my favourite anchovies everywhere!

The drive over the mountains from Naples was interesting.  The rain stopped over there while the sun was over this side... sorry, the Amalfi side.  Just as it should be in fact!

The divide between Naples and the Amalfi Coast

As for the lemons, well the land here is so steep that the only way to farm (and incidentally stop soil erosion) is to create terraces up the side of the hills which are then cultivated.  Quite why lemons are so popular here is a mystery but not so their original source.  Egypt.

Our first view of the Amalfi Coast was definitely not shabby!

Back in the Roman era, Egypt was quite possibly the most cultivated part of the known world, specifically in the vast Nile delta.  Pre-Caesar, Egypt worked with Rome as its exclusive customer to provide all manner of foodstuffs.  Post-Caesar (and particularly post-Cleopatra) the province was decimated and taken over lock stock and barrel.  As a result of this trade, Amalfi got seeds, cuttings, plants and know how and simply made wonderful lemons.

One fine use for the local product!!

They still do.

And the views, well you cannot find a bad one.

Our balcony

See Naples and...

Like a previous trip I have been extremely remiss in not staying current on these posts.  However I did use that wonder App called Track My Tour (please tell Chris that I sent you if you check it out) which did a much better job.  Here is the link to this part of the trip -- Click here.

**

We'd talked about it for quite some time or rather I'd droned on about it, that we wanted to follow the European red clay tournaments from Monte Carlo in mid-April through to the French Open in the last week of May and first week of June.  However life does get in the way some times so we finally agreed on a cut down version which looks something like this:

• 2 days in Naples
• 6 days in Amalfy
• 8 days in Rome for the Italian Open with a group of tennis guys from Bermuda and Canada
• 7 days in Portugal, bottom left part on the western Amalfi Coast
• 6 days in Paris for the French Open (just Viv and I)
• 5 days in England

That's about 5 weeks.  Fantastic!

I confess to being a little anal in that I really do like to know the whats, wheres and hows of the places that we are going to visit but what the heck!!

I'd never been to Naples.  Viv had but on a cruise ship years ago so our collective knowledge was rather light however I'd started to read the book called Pompeii by Robert Harris and a book about the fall of the Roman Republic so was in the right mindset for Naples despite its more recent history (and there is a lot of it) is really, really old.

The route in took us over the Alps!! Just beautiful.

Naples or Napoli for the Italians was Neapolis for the 7th century BC Greeks who founded the city and Napule for the Romans who used the region as a holiday resort as well as enormous port city (according to Wikipedia anyway).  Home to 3 million people these days, Naples is quite simply a mess and mass of steaming humanity... crammed pack full of wonderful old stuff and really tiny roads.

This of course means road congestion.  

Of course there can be no reference to Naples without reference to Vesuvius which is right next door. It dominates all landscapes being so huge a double mountain, these days.  Formerly it was a single peak before that famous explosion in 79 AD blew it apart and submerged Pompeii, Herculaneum and I am sure a host of other unnamed and unremembered places.

Our first view of Vesuvius

We'd organised as much as possible a driver for all occasions as there had been so many of those warnings about tourists being stiffed over everything.  I found Daniele on the internet, Trip Advisor and the various online tourist guides.  His company could provide transport and tours of the entire region but also he was a sommelier and provided culinary events as well!  Simple choice really. Daniele's website is here.  Do check him out.  He is great.

It was one of Daniele's drivers who collected us from Naples Airport and took us to our downtown hotel.  It was in a maze of little side streets but importantly just up the hill from the central square and the old castle that was the feature of this part of the city.  Not Roman but still 600 years old!  Just a snip in time in fact.

The day we arrived was cloudless.  This is the view from the hotel terrace with of course Vesuvius in the background and the castle in the foreground.  Naples has always been a significant port town.

There really wasn't much time to do anything more than have dinner so we took a recommendation of a place called Il Garum from the check in guy and strolled down the street to enjoy it.

Different cities and countries have dinner at different times.  Spain before 10 pm is unheard of.  Here in Naples, it was 9.30 pm so as we arrived an hour earlier we had the place pretty much to ourselves.  And of course it showed us to be tourists as well.

Dinner was spectacular and looking back on it one of the top 3 meals of the entire trip.

Linguine alla colatura d'alici

Local fare is seafood even though pork, boar and porcini mushrooms are popular local dishes too.  But this one is the #1 -- anchovy juice cooked into home made pasta with olive oil and garlic.  This one was sensational!  It is also very traditional dating back at least to the Romans.  They called this sauce... wait for it... Garum.  Coincidence, eh?  I think not.

I just love the local in season little strawberries called Fragolini served with lemon juice, local of course, and a little sugar which is mostly unnecessary but when in Naples... 

I'd really missed the end of day Gelato and was not going to get off on the wrong foot!

And the night time view over the city ...