Our Excellent Italian Adventure – Part 7

Half Way Point

It’s Friday today and tomorrow will officially be the halfway point in our Excellent Italian Adventure. That also means that today will be our last full day in Sorrento and as a result, we all have a full day’s agenda ahead of us. For Barb, Liz and Peter, they will be making a visit to the Roman site at Pompeii – definitely one part of the trip that Peter had been talking about anxiously for many months now.

A few months ago I told Peter and Liz that I have had my fill of ancient ruins sites on the various trips to Europe that we had been on so I was going to pass on this particular trip to Pompeii. As a result, I was going to be on my own today and my plans were to take the ferry across the bay and do a day trip to Naples.

I had done some reading about Naples (or Napoli, as it is known in Italy) and had some mixed feelings about going there. Most comments that I had read were that Naples was a dirty, crime infested city with an insane amount of traffic where you took your life in your hands every time you crossed the street.

But there was a consistent stream of comments that I always read that said that Naples has a life about it and there is an excitement that the Neapolitans share that is something that is not usually seen in more northern Italian cities.

It was this part of Naples which intrigued me and which I wanted to see.

Barb, Liz and Peter left the hotel around 7 AM to get their train connection to Pompeii but since I was on a much more leisurely schedule, I didn’t even get up until around 9:30. Since it was too late to get breakfast at the hotel restaurant (which closed at 10:00 for breakfast), I went to a local cafe and enjoyed a cappuccino and croissant.

As Naples was just across the bay from Sorrento, I felt that the fastest way to get there was by ferry. I bought a ticket to Naples at the marina for about €8 and waited for the departure time.

The line-up to board the ferry to Naples was right beside one going to Capri. The only difference was that there were about 300 people in the Capri line-up and about 10 in the Naples line. I can only assume that this was indicative of the amount of people who wanted to go to Naples (vs. Capri). Undeterred, I pressed on.

Right around the area where the ferries leave Sorrento there are a number of large boulders at the shore – presumably to stop any waves from reaching the shore when there are storms. Anyway, I noticed that sitting on top of many of these rocks were about a dozen cats – all lying about like they owned the place. As I had said before we had seen lots of cats running about in Rome the last time we were there on our honeymoon but saw little of them on this trip. However here in Sorrento it was a different matter and seems to see both stray cats and dogs all over the place.

I ended up boarding the hydrofoil and within 30 minutes I was disembarking at the pier right in the heart of Naples.

… In Old Napoli, that’s Amore

It was raining as soon as I got off the ferry and stepped into Naples. The rain would end up following me throughout the day non stop.

I had not done much advance planning for what to do in Naples with the exception of a brief browse through a few travel books that morning. As a result, I didn’t have any specific agenda other than to walk around and get a taste of the city. Actually, that’s not 100% true as there was one thing on my mind that I wanted to accomplish in Naples but I’ll get to that later. 😉

The first that that I confirmed within the first few minutes of walking around Naples was that it is completely true what they say about the traffic in this city. It is nuts.

Traffic signals seem to be mere suggestions for drivers and for pedestrians, crossing every street corner an adventure.

Car horns seemed to be a constant noise and between all of the cars, motorcycles and moped drivers would ride – uninhibited by lanes.

Sidebar: I’ve observed that the usage of the car horn seems to carry a different meaning in Italy than it would at home. In most cases, the horn is used here as a was of saying “watch out, I’m here” as opposed to what I’m more used to meaning something like “you idiot” at home!

I walked along a busy street in Naples for about an hour stopping occasionally to take a picture. As I walked along the street I would look down a side street every now and then and notice the stark difference between these side streets and the main one. The main street was filled with nice clothing stores and other shops while the side street would have laundry hanging from the windows and generally look like a poorer neighbourhood. It seemed that the two environments coexisted side by side in Naples.

I ended up walking down one of these side streets and came across a street market several blocks long. What I found so amazing about this market was the sheer activity going on. Merchants were shouting at customers and waving their hands about, people were talking loudly with other people both on the ground and above in windows. All the while I was just soaking it all in and occasionally taking pictures of the different stalls here and there.

All kinds of seafood were present in the market and of course barrels and barrels of different kinds of olives. All manner of fruits and vegetables were on display as well as spices and herbs. Everything that the local people would need to cook could be found in this local markets.

After about 30 minutes of walking around this street market, I was beginning to get hungry and decided to find a place for lunch. Being that I was in Naples and it is the birthplace of pizza (yes, they invented it), there was simply no option as to what I must have. I walked another few blocks and came up to a Pizzeria sign but unfortunately there were about 20 people lined up out the door. Luckily, I was able to find another restaurant just a block further away.

Pizza Heaven

Pizzeria Trianon was where I had lunch and it said “1923” on the sign so I figured that they must be an institution here. The restaurant had about 100 tables and was packed with locals. I was able to find myself a table and in a few minutes a surly waiter threw down a paper place mat and some cutlery. Obviously people didn’t come here for the ambience so I assumed that the food must be why. I wasn’t disappointed.

Not 60 seconds after dropping down the menu, the waiter was back to get my order. I figured that they expected everyone to know what they wanted to order so I quickly made my selection.

While I was waiting for my pizza to be served, I was able to see all of the guys making the pizzas. They would start out with fresh dough and then hand assemble everything before it was given to another guy with the flat pizza paddle who put it into the brick oven. From there is went directly onto a plate and to someone’s table.

Although I had to wait about 20 minutes for my pizza (not surprising as they hand make each one and the place was pretty much full), after the first bite I knew that it was all worth it.

I had died and gone to heaven. Pizza heaven.

My pizza was a good 14 inches across and of course, thin crust (I don’t know if thick crust pizza even exists in Italy). Unlike other places where we have had thin crust pizza, the edges weren’t hard like crackers but still soft. The toppings were not overdone but simply tomato sauce, mozzarella (not over every square inch of the pizza, mind you), mushrooms, some basil leaves and of course, a drizzling of olive oil.

I got back to the hotel about 6:30 and over dinner that night we compared stories of how each of our excursions went. I’m hoping that Peter or Liz will write another article describing how their trip to Pompeii had gone.

As this would be the last night for us in Sorrento, we had made reservations at the restaurant at the hotel La Tonerello which was next door to our hotel. Interestingly enough, La Tonerello was the hotel that we had booked when we had first planned to go to Italy in 2002.

During dinner at La Tonerello, we were treated to a spectacular lightning display as we eat dinner. On and off, different sections of the towns along the bay lost their power during the storm and for a while we weren’t sure if we were going to have to finish our dinner in the dark.

One of the things that I had as an appetizer was prosciutto and melon. The saltiness of the prosciutto and the sweetness of the melon are a perfect combination together.

My first course was a ravioli dish but the tomato sauce was made with real tomatoes, reduced down in their own sauce. Time after time we had all commented on how the tomatoes tasted so good here – unlike the bland tomatoes that we seem to get in most of our stores in Vancouver.

It’s Saturday today and we are heading to the Naples train station again to go to our next stage of our Adventure: Tuscany. We’re hoping that the weather in Tuscany will be an improvement over what it has been here in Sorrento. While we have had our sunny periods here, we have had more than our share of rain and a break in the weather will be a welcome change.

One other item of note is that it’s Barb’s birthday today. As it has been for the last few years, we have been in Europe during her birthday. As a result, we usually end up going out for dinner for her but it’s not a bigger deal as it would have if we were not in Europe at the time.

Under the Tuscan Sun (we hope)

We’re on the train now headed north to Florence for our third leg of our journey in Tuscany. I looked on the map and our villa that we are renting is located about 30 Km south of Florence. Our plans are to pickup a rental car in Florence and then drive to the villa from there. Exclusively for the next week, we will have a car at our disposal as the villa is pretty much off the beaten track and there would be no options to get to town without a car.

When we arrived in the Florence train station from Naples, we needed to get to the AVIS car rental office nearby to pickup our car.

I use the term nearby a bit loosely as it seemed close on the map but in fact took some doing in locating it.

What we ended up deciding was that Barb and Liz would wait at the Florence train station with the luggage and then Peter and I would walk to the AVIS office, pickup the car then drive back to the station to pick them up and head off to the villa. It seemed like a simple plan and it should take us hardly any time to drive the 10 or so blocks back to the train station.

It ended up taking us about 1 1/2 hours to get back to the train station.

It actually took us very little time to get the car from AVIS. Everything was prearranged in advance and the car was all ready to go. No problems there.

Where the problems started was actually driving those 10 blocks. There are so many one way streets in Florence and the street signs are pretty difficult to see when you’re driving that the odds of getting lost are pretty much guaranteed. All of the guide books that recommend not driving in large Italian cities do so for a reason. And all of the reasons are true.

Nonetheless, we eventually made it back to the train station and picked up Barb and Liz (who said that they were minutes away from sending out a search party for us). We then managed to make it out of town and down the highway towards our destination town of Barberino Val d’Elsa – right in the heart of the Chianti wine region.

We were given detailed directions to get to the villa by the owners and we made it there without any problems.

When we got out of our car to meet the owner we all took a look around and were blown away by the incredible view of the surrounding countryside. It was just like the postcard views that you see of the Italian countryside. Although it was beginning to drizzle when we arrived at the villa, we couldn’t wait to see it in the sun shine.

Soon after settling in, we decided to take a quick run to the nearby village of San Donato in Poggio to pickup some groceries and get some dinner. After getting our groceries, we had dinner at a local restaurant and also celebrated Barb’s birthday. One of the things that was unique about tonight’s dinner was that the restaurant served us our wine in regular drinking glasses and not wine glasses. I have heard from friends that they had usually only drank wine from drinking glasses at home but I’m not sure what the reason why it was done in this restaurant and no other we had been to in Italy so far?

These, and other important questions would need to be answered while in Tuscany.

Tuscan Morning

As it was decided that I would wake up early and get some fresh bread for breakfast from the local store, I got up around 8 AM and was going to just jump in the car and go. I opened the curtains to our bedroom to see how it was outside and saw nothing but blue skies and sunshine. After seeing the stunning hillsides all lit up by the morning sun, my first thought that popped into my head was: “Peter’s going to have to get more film”. Peter was running low on film and was trying to ration the number of shots he was taking. This was going to become a difficult task to maintain with all of the pictures worth taking here.

I drove to the store in San Donato and came back with two warm loaves of fresh bread in my car. For the first time in about 10 days we had a meal that we made ourselves and not in a restaurant or hotel. It was a satisfying meal of scrambled eggs with bread and jam. We’re not sure how Tuscan the breakfast was but it was simple and delicious nonetheless.

Over breakfast we heard the Sunday church bells from the local church and this little touch, in addition to the sun shining into the villa just seemed to add the right ambience and a great start to our Tuscan Adventure.

Unfortunately, as we were planning on leaving for the day, Peter said that he needed to stay at the villa to try and rest to try and shake his cold. He asked for us to try and find an open pharmacy to get some additional cold medicine. As it was Sunday – a day which most stores are closed in Europe, finding an open pharmacy might be a tall order.

The Towers of San Gimignano

Our first place to visit today was the town of San Gimignano which is known for it’s 13 stone towers. Originally having over 72 towers, the town was fairly crowded with tourists and considering that it’s October, I can’t imagine what it must be during July and August.

Despite the crowds, we all agreed that the unique feature of towers made Sam Gimignano a must see destination and we were not disappointed.

While having a car to get around the Tuscan country is really a must, it carries it’s own burden that we never had to deal with at any other part of our trip: finding parking. It really varies in every town but in popular places like San Gimignano, it can take some time to find an open space in a parking lot.

Speaking of driving, I’ve found that driving in Italy is very much like it was in France last year. That is the drivers like to drive very fast and the roads off the major highways are narrow and winding. As a result of this you will often expect to have a car very close behind you on the road until they can pass so for people who are not used to this it may be unnerving. Since I have been the only one driving so far, it isn’t a huge problem but I suspect that Peter may drive for the first time tomorrow and it may be a different story – we’ll see.

After leaving San Gimignano, we briefly toured some other local towns of Colle di Val d’Elsa and Castellina in Chianti where we stopped by a flea market that we being held in the town square.

We always seem to find flea markets when we visit Europe and there’s always some treasures to be found. I have this theory that if we could take everyone’s old junk from Europe and bring them to North America they are somehow magically transformed into priceless treasures and we could make a fortune selling them. 😉

As we felt that Peter probably didn’t want to go out for dinner tonight, we picked up some cuts of meat and cheese and a bottle of wine for dinner. The wine was a Chianti made in the town of Barberino Val d’Elsa. This town is about 5 Km from our villa and is actually the town on the hill that we see from our kitchen window.

I think that this gives a whole new meaning to the term local wine.

Baden

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