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.

Greeks, Yanks and Garibaldi

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.

**

Today was a really interesting day, not only because of the brilliant tour we went on but also because of what we learned, heard and talked about during the day.  Fortunately our driver and guide for the day, Umberto, was very garrulous but like Daniele the day before apologised profusely about his terrible English.  Oh that my Italian was as terrible as his English.

It also made me wonder what accent we English have when we attempt to speak a foreign language.  Do we all sound like Hugh Grant for example but in French or Italian?  Most non-English speakers have an enchanting accent when they speak English, is ours enchanting?  It feels terrible when I give it a go.

It rained on the way but the views were still great.  We also managed to get to know Umberto a bit and his story was pretty typical, it seems to me.  He is 30, married and still lives at home.  Like many in Amalfi, he works in the tourist industry because there is nothing else.  His degree and training were in shipping but that industry globally is in a mess so here it is.  His wife is the same.

Work here is for 6 months each year and then for 3 months, maybe more if they can get it, both go to a ski resort in the Dolomites where they are waiters.  He needs the money to live, he said.  Both earn 1500 euros per month so buying a property is out of the question as nobody locally sells and the only people that buy are from outside or foreigners who have silly money to spend.

Tough life.

Salerno in the distance

Where we were heading was over an hour away beyond Salerno and on the way down the coast.  First was a buffalo mozzarella farm that we wanted to check out.

The tour was interesting even though the guide was very grumpy.  Buffalo mozzarella is the premium brand as the milk is of a consistency and creaminess to make it that much better than regular mozzarella.  I agree, it was lovely.

The buffalo themselves are really big and very docile.  Curiously they pretty much take care of themselves which was quite startling.

When they wanted to be milked, they cheerfully took turns waiting to go into the milking machine.  I watched fascinated as the machine was robot driven and each of the 4 milking tubes had an infra red light it used to find the udder.  Once it found it, the tube simply rose up and fixed itself on all by itself.  Once all were done, milking began.  Once finished the process was reversed and the buffalo cheerily wandered off for a bite to eat.

Of course there's plenty of fertilizer for the gardens where they grow their own veggies and herbs for the top of the line restaurant located there.

Curiously they do not eat the meat.  The Italians don't like it so it goes to dog and cat meat.

As for the mozzarella itself, most interesting.  First of all the milk, swirl it around for a while until it starts to separate.  Take the part that is the curds.  Add some salt and a little water and leave it in a tub.  Get 4 burly guys to squeeze it and mold it into interesting shapes.

The other weird thing is that they don't sell their produce to the public! So how do they earn money to keep the farm going, I asked.  Tours like this (which cost 10 euros each!), the cafe and high priced restaurant (with only space for 30 covers) do the trick.  Sounds very unlikely to me!

Next and best of all was Paestum just down the road.

What a place!  This is where the first Greeks landed in the 6th century BC and where some of the best preserved temples and buildings from that time still exist.  Reason for this is that by the 2nd century AD, this place was a backwater even for the Romans so nobody lived here and therefore nobody nicked the big rocks lying around for building materials for their homes.  Also in the 4th century, a nearby river overflowed its banks and turned the entire area into a malarial swamp that deterred everyone, even the Barbarians, for the next 1200 years.

The Temple of Hera built in about 450 BC

One thing that makes this temple so interesting is that the inner part still remains so you can see how the original temple was laid out.  Also these buildings had stucco on top of the stonework which was painted.  This was pink and light blue.  I just can't imagine it today!

The entire location is approximately round and about 5 kms in diameter.  It is about 3 kms from the sea but back then was of course on the coast line.  Back in the 1850's before excavations really began in earnest, a road was built pretty much through the middle of the site because they didn't know that some of the buried buildings were there.  It was built by the then King of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (some Bourbon) who wanted a quicker way to get to the south.  The land to the north of this road had no big temples on it so was sold off to private people while the land to the south had the big temples so was preserved.  It is this part that has been excavated thoroughly according to our wonderful guide, Adele.

The swimming pool of the Temple of Vesta where all ladies congregated on one special day in the year for various ceremonies.  Men were banned on pain of death.

Again profusely apologetic for her pitiful English, she talked up a storm and how interesting it all was too.  She'd grown up only 1 km from here so used to play around these big old buildings... and therefore had a natural interest along with a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge.

Interestingly this was also where the Allies landed in 1943, being pretty flat and deserted.  The local mayor apparently begged the Americans not to bomb those big old buildings as they were about to which is why they are in such great condition today.

On the way back we somehow got into a conversation with Umberto about Garibaldi (or Gari-bloody-baldi according to Umberto).  Unification was not the unalloyed joy that it has been made out to be.  Pre-1860, Italy was divided into the small bits to the north that had nothing and were dirt poor, and the large southern kingdom which had been stable for 800 years (apart from the Boney years).  The south had all the people, industry, business and network to the world.  The north was just a bunch of quarrelling farmers with nothing.

Then for some reason in 1861, the politicians decided that they would join with the Kingdom of Piedmont (Turin) and the other northern bits and with just a moment's inattention, that happened and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was no more and they had a new king... the King of Piedmont, or rather now Italy.  Vittorio Emanuelle himself.

First thing that happened was that the north stripped the south of all its infrastructure, industry and qualified people leaving them with nothing.  According to Umberto, things have not improved.  All the young people have left so the only young people remaining are the migrant immigrants who do all the menial work.  This he said is why immigrants into the US tend to come mainly from the south and Sicily.

Umberto kicked into full flow at this point going into his Grandmother's predicament.  Apparently she has a pension of some 400 euros per month which is scarcely enough to buy food.  He was nearly spitting by now when he moved onto the topic of politicians who after only 3 months service in parliament are eligible for an index linked pension that pays around 4,000 euros per month tax free.  These are the new elite.

I asked what he thought of the EU and the UK's impending referendum on membership and Umberto has an opinion here too unsurprisingly.  The EU is run by and for Germany and their puppets, France.  Nobody else has anything. No say, no money, nothing.  Everything is decided by Germany.  Umberto said that if there were to be a referendum in Italy, 80% would vote to leave.

By this time we were back on the coast road and Umberto stopped at a small village called Maiori where US rangers landed to guard the left flank of the Salerno landings.  Umberto said they landed in the wrong place and were offered pasta and wine by the surprised locals.  However the memorial says different.  I wonder which is correct.

What a great day!