Month: March 2009

Today we made our way from somewhere on the coast of Calabria to Pompei. The main road that you take, the A3, Is under massive construction which was begun in 2001. They are replacing most of the road, bridges and tunnels. It will probably take another 15 years to complete. Since most of the way the cars are on one side of the road in two lane traffic, it is slower than expected.

The traffic in Pompei is horrific. Our B & B, the Certe Notte is not far from the center of town on a fairly busy street in an unattractive area. But the place is really nice and we have a bedroom, sitting room and bathroom all for only 70 euros a night. Antonio, the owner, explains where the ruins are and what restaurants are good. We plan on walking to as much as possible and maybe taking the train.

One place that Antonio suggests turns out to be a local cafeteria-style place called Todisco. When John and I step into the the restaurant we are given a number. Of course we are not sure what we are supposed to do. We try to look at the food on display. This is unfortunately perceived as us trying to cut in line. We are given a dirty look. I explain, “Americano, non capisco. ” The woman next to me says, “Ah, Americano,” a little resignedly I thought.

It’s our turn. We point to various dishes, a lasagna dish, some kind of rolled pork, grilled artichokes, and marinated octopus. We also get a bottle of their own vintage of white wine. As it turns out the lasagna is an eggplant lasagna, the octopus is quite delicious, the artichokes are wood grilled and the pork turns out to be rolled up pork rind. There are a lot of chewy things in this lunch. Also the wine turns out to be borderline undrinkable but of course we persevered.

After walking back to the hotel, we watch some tennis and decide that there is no way we can eat dinner after such a large lunch. So we go to bed early which probably explains why I am writing this between 5 and 6 in the morning.

First, yay for the internet. On Saturday we had no connection and so no post and now I am playing catch up.

I am a planning person. I like to have reservations. So yesterday when we headed out with no reservations I felt a little discomfitted. All went smoothly down to Messina and we got on the ferry and on our way through Calabria with no problems. Being a planning person, I did have a place in mind for us to stop. We got to Paola and the Hotel Blumentag around 2:45. Unfortunately there would be no one there until 4:30 so we continued on. But John was tired. Driving here is stressful.

We got off the main road a couple of times. No luck. We were on the coast road and it seems that most everything is closed this time of year. We stop at a 3 star hotel. Look at a room. Yuck! Four star is as low as I want to go. Finally we found a hotel residence club that was open all year. We got a room in a hastily constructed vacation villa – cardboard walls and the train outside. The train runs along the beach making the vista less than appealing.

We ate dinner at a pizza place at 6:30. The proprietor said to us, “You want to eat now!? We were there until 8 and only one other table got filled. I guess we were a little early.

On to Pompei tomorrow.

Today was a real vacation from the vacation day. We sat in the sun. We read our books. We caught up on posting pictures to the blog. We took a nap. Ho-hum, it’s hard being on vacation.

Tonight we went to a restaurant that several couples recommended. BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID! Especially be afraid if one of those couples is British. Have we ever had a really good meal in England? The answer to that would be no. But we went anyway. We started with carpaccio with rocket and parmesan. The meat was semi-frozen. Had a little crunch to it. And tasteless. Although you could tell that the waitstaff was offended we asked for lemon, olive oil and salt. Something was needed to make this taste like something more than meat popsicle. Then John had a zuppa of mixed shellfish. It was a giant portion with a ton of mussels. I’m not a mussel fan but he enjoyed it. I had one of the dishes that everyone was raving about – an eggplant involtini stuffed with spaghetti. The sauce was good, the eggplant was good but the spaghetti was so overcooked that it resembled something that Chef Boyardee would put in a can. Then we shared a slice of rockfish in a tomato sauce with capers. The sauce was so salty that even we could hardly eat it. The fish was bony. Well, yum, what a dinner.

We also watched the volcano for a while. It seems that the lava flow is getting bigger. Antonio from the front desk joked that it would explode as a special surprise for us.

The orange dot in the picture is lava flowing out of Mt. Etna.

Here’s the pasta that Aurelio and John made.

At the Villa Ducale we have caponata, ham, olives, various veggies and frittata for breakfast.

We ate at a restaurant in downtown Taormina for lunch. Yay, pizza!

These are part of the steps we took down to Taormina. (See main post for Thursday, March 12, 2009.)

Our hotel is way up on a cliff overlooking the Ionian Sea. In order to get down to town, you have a few options. You can call for a taxi, you can take the bus or you can walk down the maybe 5000 steps (John’s hyperbole) to get to the center where there are important things like a place to eat lunch. For some unknown reason we walked down the steps. Of course that made justifying eating pizza for lunch much easier.

Today was the big cooking lesson. We met Aurelio, the chef, around 7 PM. The kitchen was tiny. We decided that John would be the designated cook and I would be the photographer. So the lesson was part actual participation and part demonstration and explanation. It was a good thing that Aurelio spoke pretty good English. First we made caponata alla Arabica which was eggplant, onions, raisins, and pinenuts in a sweet and sour sauce. Next we made casarecce alla Norma. This was pasta in a tomato, garlic and eggplant suace. Then we made involtini with veal and oiled, parmesan breadcrumbs. Aurelio had also made eggplant parmesan.

After all the cooking the three of us sat down and Aurelio dealt out all the stuff we had made. You should have seen the size portion he gave to John! The pile of pasta had to be at least 5 inches high. We also ate the caponata, the eggplant parmesan, and the involtini. Also wine. Also some almond dessert wine. And the whole time we got to talk to Aurelio about his life here in Taormina. It was an outstanding experience.

Today we left Agrigento and stopped at Villa Romana along the way to Taormina. Villa Romana is this amazing archeologic dig which has uncovered a fabulous Roman villa. There are tons of mosaic floor tiles. Unfortunately my pictures did not come out so well although I may post one before I work on fixing them up.

From there we traveled on to Taormina. Up, up the squiggly road John drove and then parked in an incredibly tiny parking spot with maybe a couple of inches on each side. Wow, John has really gotten good at the driving here. He’s also a stick shift pro now.

Our hotel, Villa Ducale, is high on the cliff overlooking the Ionian Sea. The hotel staff are really nice and greeted us with a glass of prosecco and have catered to our every whim. It seems like everyone here is from the Bay Area and have been reading TripAdvisor. We had drinks out on the patio and played travel one-upmanship with a couple on the balcony. They opened with a site in Sicily, we saw their site and raised them an overall Italy, they saw this and raised a Spain and then in what they thought was a coup brought in their big guns of an India. We countered with an Istanbul. I think it was a draw.

It started raining and we opted for dinner in our room. It was pretty good and we didn’t get wet.