Strongly Worded

Trip Highlights/Adventures

In no particular order ... some memorable aspects of the trip ...

1) Lemons
I love everything lemon--lemonade, lemon cake/cookies/mousse/ice cream. And Amalfi is famous for its own unique lemons, which are much bigger than ours, and lumpier. Somehow, entire lemon groves have been terraced into the cliffs, covered with black nets to attract light. One night, we stopped in a produce shop to buy fruit, and I noticed a whole pile of these lumpy lemons. The shopkeeper saw me, and I was afraid he was going to yell at me, because Italians have this very protective attitude towards their fruit, and customers are definitely not, under any circumstances, supposed to touch it (the fruit gets doled out by the vendor. If you try to touch it they will yell. I know from firsthand experience). But this guy didn't yell. He took an ancient-looking knife from behind the counter, and hacked a few flecks off the skin of the fruit, just to show me. Suddenly I smelled groves, and gods--a fresh, intense scent, a burst of tart.

2) Transit to Herculaneum
We took the train to Herculaneum. It was unclear where to get off, but a very helpful guy indicated the stop, after which we disembarked, only be to informed, through the conductor's urgent gestures, that this, in fact, was not the stop. We got back on the train, just a little rattled, and then got off where it says "Herculaneum/Porticia" (or something. If you haven't noticed yet, I don't speak Italian). At "Herculaneum/Porticia", where, I'm assuming, droves of tourists arrive every summer to see World Class Ruins, there is no sign, no ticket office, no indication of anything that would suggest where the hell the ruins are and how to get to them. We asked a young Italian woman who also got off at the station, and she shrugged kindly but unhelpfully. There was only the train station and a deserted driveway and a small kiosk selling soda and popsicles. We consulted with a popsicle-selling guy, and it turned out he was also the seller of bus tickets to the ruins (again, no sign or other indication of the sale of bus tickets, the existence of a bus, or a bus stop).

We stood there, a little dazed, wondering what to do with these newly purchased tickets, when the tiniest car you have ever seen lurched into the driveway, and the formerly shrugging passenger got in, waving at us to come with her. Somehow she conveyed in Italian that her aunt (the driver) would take us to the ruins. We looked dubiously at the tiny car, where three women are already seated (the driver/aunt, the formerly shrugging passenger, and her cousin). They gaily said what I imagine is the Italian equivalent of "Pile in!" And because there was no bus, no stop, and no other easy option, we did. My parents and I squished into this tiny car (me sitting on my mom's lap--tilting my head sideways so it wouldn't hit the ceiling--my neck was strained for days). The aunt zipped through the city (the non-ruins part of Herculaneum is actually a pretty busy urban place), honking and swerving at oncoming traffic, and then they left us at the gate of the ruins as casually as if they picked up random foreigners at train stations every day of their lives.

But wait! The adventure continues! We wandered around Herculaneum (which really is incredible--it's a town excavated from under 30 feet of lava, where you can walk through streets from Roman times and explore villas full of wall paintings and mosaics. Amazingly, the edges of the ruins but up right next to the city's modern apartment buildings.) Then we decided to leave. We had bus tickets in our hot little hands, and emerged from the ruins to another dusty, deserted driveway with no sign, no bus, and no bus stop in sight. We approached a police officer standing nearby, and again, with elaborate Italian gestures, he conveyed that the uncoming bus (the one now screeching by us) was in fact the one we needed, and he stood in the middle of the street and stopped the bus and explained to the driver where to let us off. As if stopping and redirecting buses for clueless foreigners was the kind of thing he did every day of his life.

3) La Tavernetta
The very smarmy-but-helpful clerk at the hotel in Salerno recommended a restaurant. "It's where I go myself," he told us. He called the restaurant to reserve a space for us, gave us a card with its address, and explained the complexities of getting there. "It's at the end of the fourth alley after the lantern, near the church." (FYI the church he mentioned was some very old romanesque-looking building with a neon cross. No kidding). We got to the fourth alley and saw nothing. No sign, no evidence of any kind of restaurant (theme?). We knocked tenatively on the only lighted doorstep--it was like a speakeasy. A beautiful waitress named Valeria opened the door, and we took in the cozy tables, the brick walls, the wooden beams, and the trove of wines set into the wall. When we were seated, Valeria put down a basket of bread and a bottle of wine. No menu. Then the food started coming. First antipasti: noodles made of eggplant skins. Strips of pickled green pepper. Marinated fancy mushrooms. Marinated zuchinni. A kind of quiche with scallions. Deep fried gnocchi with herbs. Veggie croquettes. The cook/owner, Olga, emerged from the kitchen at this point to check on us. She wore an apron, her completely-white hair pulled back in a bun, and enormous Jackie-O glasses. Through gestures and a mix of Italian/Spanish/English, we conveyed that everything was fabulous. We looked over at the next table to see what the diners were eating, since there was no menu and a need to "budget" the food intake based on what was coming up.

In bubbling ceramic bowls we were presented with a delicately seasoned stew of white beans and spinach. Then pasta with cream sauce, with tiny bits of ham and potato mixed in. Then pasta bolognese. Then a cold squid salad with parsley. And fresh buffalo mozzarella. And THEN the main course! Very thinly sliced pork with rosemary. And FINALLY, homemade canolli and lemony custard cups. At each course Olga came out to "talk" (better to say "attempt to communicate") with us and spoon more food on our plates and insist that we eat more, but piano, piano. Which I assume means slowly. After finishing with limoncello (a very potent lemon liquer-definitely not my thing), we waddled back to the hotel. I had just eaten one of the best meals of my life.

4) Italian coffee and gelato. They were just highlights. Delicious, pure, and simple.

5) Giovanna (my dad's host at the university). She was hilarious and delightful and totally enhanced the trip by providing a local perspective on all things Italy (and not just the food!). She took us on the Paestum tour (not itself a highlight--as I mentioned, I'm not a ruins person, and it was freezing cold and windy), with her husband, son (a brat), and mother, and we had lunch with her Italian family in this rustic "agri-tourist" place in the middle of an artichoke field. (No sign. No indication at all of anything "agri-tourist." The directions said "turn left at the large tire on the side of the road" and it took us ages to find the building, the entrance, and eventually the restaurant.) The former farm now functions as an inn, with a fireplace, a rustic dining room, and a fixed menu of endless local dishes including a silky artichoke risotto. Without Giovanna, neither that or another fabulous meal in Avellino (where I had ricotta cheesecake and raviolli with truffles and no romance) would have happened. And I wouldn't know all I do about contemporary Italian culture.

Posted by Dori at 6:12 AM