Mozzarella, Vino and the best view in the world!

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.

**

One great thing about Daniele is his enthusiasm for life.  Everything is in absolutes.  The best mozzarella, the best wine in the region and the best view in the world.  All today!  Who couldn't be excited by all this?

Meet Daniele! On the left.

First stop along the coast road was half way up between Positano and Ravello on one of the many hairpin turns.  Of course being Italy there were cars everywhere, even here, but I suppose it was still just about walking distance from the jammed streets and lanes of Positano.  Easier to walk in and out than struggle with the traffic.

Not a bad view!

The scenic overlook was spectacular though.

Ravello as far as I can make out is the 3rd biggest attraction in this region after Positano and the coast road itself.  It is a very pretty little village but it is not at the top of the hills here like all the other high villages which were created as refuges from marauding pirates.  It is sort of about half way up and on either side of a ravine through which a river passes.  Swanky hotels are here a-plenty.  This is definitely the place where the rich and famous come.

The other side of the ravine with Ravello in the centre

Our purpose here though was rather more prosaic -- we'd asked for a day of local gastronomy and of course the local vino and this was it.

First stop was a childhood friend of Daniele who just happened to be the local cheesemaker but not just any cheese but the local mozzarella -- not buffalo milk, just cow this time.  His name is Biagio and he owns the local cheese factory... which just happened to be next to a bar owned by Eugenio, an Anglo-Italian who sounds more English than I do but whose family comes from Ravello.  And if there's one thing the Italians do well (other than pasta, cheese, wine...) is family.  The call home even if he'd never lived there was too strong.  Factor in a young lady also from Ravello and really there's not much chance Croydon has it over this little jewel of the Amalfi Coast.

Together they thought of starting up a hands on thing for tourists on a lovely shady spot opposite their respective business fronts also overlooking the spectacular ravine.

Viv and I were experts on Mozzarella now but have never actually handled the stuff which is what Biagio made us do.  The cutting, kneading and stretching are all pretty simple.  The stumbling block comes with tearing the perfect little balls you've made off the larger chunk of the stuff.  Mozzarella when stretched and kneaded has the consistency of rubber so to rip off the lovingly moulded little ball without mangling it beyond recognition did not come as second nature to us.  Biagio of course soothed our grumblings and said they were really very good, symmetrical and perfect to serve in any 5 star restaurant.

Biagio at work. Nest step is to tear the little ball off the dangly bits without making it look odd

Just to prove a point he went away leaving us to sip wine with Daniele and eat some little deep fried appetizers from Eugenio's bar, returning with a huge tray of artistically arranged mozzarella based treats.

He served our creations alongside his and looking at them arranged on a tray it did make us think how much they looked like a sperm.  Or rather the pictures of them you see in a biology book from school. Sort of like an early stage tadpole but that white colour.  I think I better stop here before this segment becomes too mixed up with the wrong kind of thing.  Really it was all about the mozzarella, not the... OK, you see what I mean.  Move on.

See what I mean?

The final word on the mozzarella interlude will come from Monty Python. Good luck Biagio and Eugenio.

The trouble with sipping a little wine with deep fried yummies and some odd shaped mozzarella meant that our immediate next stop at Tramonte in the mountains at yet another friend of Daniele's vineyard for lunch promised to be an all out assault on our stomachs and our very ability to keep going.  As it turned out we gritted our teeth and managed a good showing courtesy of a reasonable delay while they got things ready after we arrived.

The vineyard

This part of the region is actually over the hills and on the other side so has no sea view at all.  Just more pretty hills and valleys.  The region has been farmed since the pre-Roman era and is very fertile.

Our favourite was the rose

Daniele filled the gap by manfully uncorking wines seemingly by the gallon.  They were very good indeed particularly the rose which was a simply lovely colour, the same as the local roses as Viv pointed out.

Daniele is really something.  His background like so many Italians seemingly is the hospitality industry.  He has worked in hotels and restaurants and has a background as sommelier meaning he could talk with enthusiam and knowledge about the wines we were drinking.  The local varietals of course include some of the common grapes but many date back to Roman times which are very unusual.

Lunch was home made pasta with fava beans and veal with local broccoli and just the 4 wines: 1 white, 1 rose and 2 reds.  We of course agreed to buy a mixed case of wines to be shipped home which will probably make them the single most expensive wines ever once landed.  Ah well.  It was a great lunch and terrific time.  We just hoped the next segment would not include food or drink.

We made it to Ravello around 5 pm which was when things were gradually winding down and Daniele dropped us off in the central piazza which like many things here is on the side of a ravine and which is home to a whole bunch of tourist shoppes (of course), bars and restaurants and just down a little, actually not so little, lane to the Villa Cremoni which these days is a very swanky hotel.  However they do allow people to stroll around the gardens and take in the view which just may be the best view on the Amalfi Coast.

Ravello from the central piazza. Ravines everywhere!

That bit is right at the very end of the gardens on a long terrace with Romanesque busts of probably emperors or gods at every turn.

As for the best view in the whole world.  You decide.

The Jewel

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.

**

Having taken one look at the road and even walked a decent chunk of it into and out of Amalfi from our apartment, the last thing we wanted to do was rent Vespas to scoot along the coast road like I said I'd quite like doing.  I've had a Vespa before in Bermuda and it was great and I could just imagine the Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn thing with Viv on the back and the wind through our hair...  But in those days there wasn't much traffic.

Norman castle on the way to Positano.  Never a shabby view in sight.

That's the thing for even at this time of the year which is NOT high season, the roads are pretty jammed particularly when the buses and coaches get going.  We'd failed miserably trying to work out when or even where the buses went from Amalfi even though we had tickets and Amalfi was a sort of terminus for buses in the region.  We discovered we'd either just missed the hourly bus, or it was full, or even that the direction that we thought we wanted was in fact the diametrically opposite direction.  So much for bloody GPS and no maps.  It may help you finding some place but it gives you zero idea of where you are at any given point in time or where anything else is in relation to where you are.  (Apologies for this digression, we actually didn't have a GPS or car at this moment so this is more of a general rant rather than specific to where we were at this time.  This was brought about more through total lack of the language rather than anything else).

So thanks to Daniele again who suggested he should take us up and down the coast but start early because of the crowds who started to arrive in the big coaches after 11 am or so.  By that time he said we should be up in the mountains doing some other really fun stuff and of course that little surprise without which no day is complete.

Sounded good to us so we hit Positano around 9 am when we could both find parking down town and be fairly tourist free (other than us of course).

Positano is the jewel according to many and it really is very, very charming.  Water taxis go up and down the coast all the time too so if we'd been a little more energetic, we could have done that too.  But like everything else they go only once an hour and after 10 am are jam packed full so getting on isn't guaranteed at all.

It is very steep though.  Very, very steep actually.  Far more so than other little villages.  I asked Daniele why it was so popular and he said that it was down to the Americans really who were stationed here in WWII.  There wasn't a road into or out of the village so it was accessible only from the water and was hence virtually deserted.  The Roman road went up in the mountains by-passing the village.  So the GI's built a single lane road into and out of Positano which was widened (Ha!) post war to two lanes and there you are.

One thing I found interesting were the Siren Rocks just past the ubiquitous Norman watchtower.  This is where the Sirens lived and tortured poor old Odysseus in mythology.

The specks are the Siren Rocks, not very big really.  Of course it was the wind whistling between the rocks that created the 'music' of the Sirens.  Mythology sounds so much more interesting than the reality.

It was said that it was the sweetness of their singing that lured sailors to their doom on the rocks and one of the three Sirens took a fancy to Odysseus so cranked up the volume.  He managed to avoid temptation by sticking corks into his ears and sailed on safely.  Great story.  Here's The Cream singing about it!

Local industry other than tourism (90%+) is lace and sandal making.  Every shoe shop had hand made sandals for 15 euros.  Talk about Sirens sweetly singing!  Torture of a different kind for poor Viv.

But what a cool and lovely place it was.  We have to come back and spend some more time there.