Fortunata cooks dinner

We were all exhausted from our trip to Capri and had another late morning. Sheila and I had organised Fortunata to cook dinner for the evening and Fortunata started in the early morning with Sheila watching occasionally to see how Fortunata was cooking in the Italian way.
I went down town with Sheila later in the day to see if the young lady in the photography shop might be able to recover the photos that I had mistakenly deleted.
“Sorry Signor, I can not do, you must be more careful in Future”!
“Grazie” I replied, but not feeling very thankful for either the result or the advice.
While we were near the shops Sheila took the opportunity to purchase a Positano plate and encourage me to buy a shirt.

href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7450/1861/1600/386844/DSC00749.jpg"> Our ivy covered villa
A closer view of our villa just to the right of the pencil pines
In the late afternoon Adam, Rosalind and I went for a walk around to the next headland and looked at the view of Positano from a scenic spot where there was a statue and a small car park that is very popular with visitors.

Some of the pictures we took from that place are as follows:



Adam
Rosalind
John
In the top left of this picture you can see the little village that Adam went to on one of his little jogs.
When we returned to the villa Sheila was supervising Fortunata making lasagne and tiramisu. Fortunata was pulling pieces of some minced meat from a bag and scattering it across a layer of her lasagne and Sheila was trying to find out what type of meat it was, but neither Sheila’s Italian or Fortunate’s English shed any light on the matter. I decided to interpret and my “oink, oink”, produced a very similar “oink, oink” and much smiling and nodding of her head, from Fortunata. So it would seem to me that animals all speak the same language which ever country they are from; scary thought that one.
We were shown the various dishes that had been prepared and the antipasto looked superb, it included smoked peppers, lots of olive oil and the marinaded anchovies. The marinade is just lemon juice and olive oil, but the end result if fantastic.
The lasagne and the tiramisu were both in different large dishes but each about half a metre long and six inches deep.
The tiramisu was excellent and lasted us quite a few days. The same however could not be said about the lasagne it was very, very dry containing no tomato or béchamel sauces. It was a bit like nachos, but even drier. We all attempted some, but it was too crunchy with very little taste and son after dinner I did the drop at the nearest waste transfer station so that there was no evidence left that we had not enjoyed the lasagne when Fortunata inquired in the morning. Well I think she inquired as I guessed what she asked and rolled my eyes while rubbing my stomach and exclaiming “buono”.
This was the first course prepared by Fortunata and the marinaded anchovies just to the left of the breadbasket were my favourite.
We ate in the loggia as we felt that the dinner deserved more of a formal setting than the rooftop patio.
We all had a relatively early night as Adam had planed an excursion to Paestum the following day.

Isle of Capri

Monday 11th September 2006
We all got up at 0730 to ensure that we were down at the beach front at 0900 to take the private boat that Adam had hired to take us to the Isle of Capri.
The first illustrious residents in Capri were the Roman emperors Augustus and Tiberius. For the last decade of his life, Tiberius ruled the Roman Empire from Capri and the ruins of his luxurious villa, Villa Jovis, can still be seen today. When one considers the time it must have taken for communications to get to and from the island. As one approached the island from the east by sea a large ‘cave’ may be seen, this is called ‘Tiberius’s drop’, from which people he wished to dispose of were supposedly thrown into the sea.
After the fall of the Roma Empire, despite its noble history, the island was largely ignored until the19th century, when a poet named August Kopisch made the Grotta Azzurra, (Blue Grotto) well known to travellers on the Grand Tour. The Blue Grotto is so called because of the vivid blue colour of the water in the grotto, (sea cave), a result of the light refraction. Tourism flourished as a result of the Grand Tours of Europe including Capri on its itinerary, and Capri became the haunt of foreign politicians, artists and intellectuals, Alexander Dumas and Oscar Wilde among them. The singer Gracie Fields and the writer Norman Douglas, author of Siren land, made the island their home. Gracie Fields was a very popular music hall singer in England, but lost much of her popularity in England when she went to live in Capri during World War II. Sheila tells me that Gracie Fields had an Italian husband so that might be the reason why she sought exile there. However I can remember when I was in the Royal Navy and one of the squadron of ships I was with in the Mediterranean called into Capri and Gracie Fields invited sailors from the ship to go ashore and use her swimming pool. A few took up her kind offer and then were dismayed to find that she wanted to charge them thirty shillings each to use her pool.



We left Positano on time and were pleased that Adam had hired a private boat when we saw how packed the normal tourist boats were. The views of Positano from the boat were excellent and as we went west along the coast the villas and old watchtowers on the hilltops were spectacular.


It took us about 40 mins to near the east coast of Capri and pass close to the rocky outcrop near the south eastern corner, the most imposing of which is ‘I Faraglioni’whose top is 109 metres above sea level. About midway along the coast we stopped at an archway inside of which is the ‘Green Grotto’. The captain of our boat urged us all to jump in for a swim while he took the boat around to the other side of the passageway and picked us up at the other side. Sheila found the water a little cold, nah Sheila found the water a lot cold. I guess that as it never gets the sun on it the water in the grotto is always colder than the surrounding sea. However having taken the plunge we all had no choice but to swim through the passage and climb back on board when the captain met us at the other end. We did pas some swimmers coming through from the other direction but they were all a bit wimpy as they all had life jackets on.


After getting back on board the captain drove around to the north weest corner of the island and stopped outside the blue grotto. However we saw the hordes of other tourists disembarking from their cruisers into little dinghies to be ferried through the grotto we decided to give that a miss and keep going to the main town of Capri that gives the island its name.



We were put ashore on a jetty in the Marina Grande, where all the large boats and ferries tie up.
From there we took the five minute ride on the funicular railway that lifts you from the harbour up to the town of Capri. It was a very hot and sunny day and FULL of other tourists and by then we were also feeling very hungry. Adam led the hunt for a suitable place for lunch and as we neared the outskirts of Capri it was clear that we would have been hard pressed to find one that was not overrun by other tourists. In Adam’s search for a more private lunch spot he decided that we might as well keep walking and see what was available in the town of Anacapri, that he remembered from the guidebook we had left behind in the villa. What Adam had not recalled however was that Anacapri is quite a bit higher than Capri and that top of Monte Solaro at 589 metres is only a little higher than Anacapri. Sheila and her knees were the first to rebel and flatly refused to join the hike up the hill, Rosalind and I quickly joined the rebel forces and retreated while Adam forged ahead up hill. The ladies and I hailed a stretched cabriolet and negotiated a fifteen Euro price for the trip for four to take us the four kilometres to Anacapri. We soon caught up with Adam and I think he was relieved to join us in the taxi ride to Anacapri, especially when we passed other hardy walkers struggling up the hill dispensing much perspiration in their wake.





Anacapri was a lot less crowded and as it was siesta time many of the quaint streets were deserted. Luckily we found a very pleasant restaurant and enjoyed a great alfresco lunch followed by a pedestrian exploration of Anacapri, which I found more to my liking than Capri. After a walk around we took a similar cab back to Capri and wandered along many narrow streets that were hosts to lots of very up market shops, much to the delight of the ladies. It was almost and hour before I found out that our meandering around these shops also had a specific purpose and that was to find the shoe shop that provide shoes for Her Most Serene Highness Grace Kelly (I forget her married name); and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Despite a diligent search by the ladies they were unable to find the shop and Adam and I keenly guided them back to the funicular railway for the trip back down to the Marina Grande. The crush of people to get on the funicular railway was particularly hot and crowded and when we were pressed into the sides of the stairway trying to keep up with the press of people all pushing to get into the small platform we all wished that we had taken the taxi all the way down to the harbour. But there was no way we could turn back and just had to go with the flow, or I should say sweaty trickle and occasionally block the way of very determined Nonas who had mastered the art of pushing through any mass of people queuing. Two in particular were experts and as they breezed past us I indicated to Sheila that we would be best riding along in their wake and it worked very well.







When we approached the harbour all I could see was a mass of boats and had no idea where ours was moored or when I thought about it I had no clear idea of what it looked like. However Adam soon spotted him and waved him into the jetty and we all clambered aboard and relaxed on the quick trip back to Positano.



That night we walked just two minutes up the hill to a more ‘local’ restaurant and in fact enjoyed the cheapest and one of the best dinners in Positano.
When we got back to the villa after dinner I decided to delete the ‘bad’ photos that I had taken of our trip to Capri.





With our digital camera it is quite easy to select from the menu to delete the current photo you are looking at or delete all the photos that you have currently in your memory card. Yup, I deleted ALL the photos that I had taken that day so all the photos are ones that Adam took with his camera or ones that I took using his camera.

Just a quiet day in Positano

Sunday 10th September 2006
We were all a little late in getting up from our beds, particularly Adam and Rosalind which was not surprising given their very late morning and beach salsa dancing. They surfaced about 1300 and late afternoon Rosalind, Adam and I walked down to the town. The main purpose was to get some of our photos downloaded from the camera memory cards onto CDs. My photos only took about ten minutes but Adams and Rosalind’s took about an hour; I think it is because each of their pictures has far better resolution, more pixels per picture, and so takes more time to copy. I caught the bus back up to the villa while Adam and Rosalind did some more shopping while they waited for their CDs. The other purchases that they made were pizzas for dinner so that we could just stay in for a change and relax. Adam and I also took the opportunity to watch the Italian formula one Grand Prix on the television in the kitchen. It was a great race in that it was not decided until the last few metres of the race and the distance between first and third was less than fifty metres, which is astounding after that many laps.
We all had an early night as we planned to go to Capri in the morning

Pompeii

Saturday 9th September
The owner of the villa next door left his car keys in a plastic bag on his gate so Adam was able to move their neighbour’s car then get his out without too much difficulty and we headed off to Pompeii. As is our want be were a little bit geographically embarrassed and found ourselves in an outer suburb of Naples called Torre Annunziata a little bit further away from Naples than Torre del Greco. Torre del Greco is a poor dockside area where the housing is not good but infinitely better then Torre del Greco. As we drove around looking for road signs to Pompeii we became increasingly aware that it was not a very salubrious suburb and looked more like an urban battle field. Rubbish disposal and collection in Italy usually involves householders taking their bags of rubbish to very large metal bins that are portable waste transfer containers which are hoisted up by hydraulic arms and their contents emptied into the back of large rubbish trucks. In Torre Annunziata the householders take their bags of rubbish to huge and growing mounds of festering garbage in the middle of the road and around which we had to steer. Rosalind and Sheila started to feel increasingly vulnerable and asked Adam “please get us out of here quickly.” Adam responded with his accelerator and we were all feeling a lot happier when we found a road to Pompeii which although close by seemed ‘miles away’ from Torre Annunziata.
Pompeii is a fabulous site and far bigger than we expected and to put it into some context:
An earthquake in AD 62, which shook Pompeii and damaged some of the buildings, was merely a prelude to the tragic day in AD 79, when Vesuvius erupted, engulfing the city and its inhabitants with a terrible storm of cinders and ash. When the remains of Pompeii were discovered around 1750 it looked as though a spell had been cast to freeze all life. The bodies of people were unearthed along with their houses, temples and works of art and everyday objects. The first archaeologists removed the most important and portable finds which became part of the royal collection and were then transferred to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in the Decumano Maggiore area of Naples.
We were very pleasantly surprised how well many of the buildings had been preserved and we were able to clearly see frescos on many of the walls. It was a very warm humid day and climbing the hill from the entrance gate to the sites of the public building was a bit of a struggle, but well worth the effort. It would be easy to spend days exploring all of the various areas but we concentrated on the main road called Via dell’abbondanza, with excursions along the Vicolo del Lupanare to see the hospititium (I guess this is the origin of the word ‘hospitality’) or caupona. Most of the guests at this establishment were gladiators, as more important visitors were put up in private homes. In the hospititium and in the lupanares, or brothels, paintings and graffiti depicts that world and the specific services offered by waitresses and prostitutes, girls and boys, to satisfy their clients. Apparently these sites are the most visited and photographed parts of the whole town. Our other ‘excursion was to see the gladiator’s barracks, the large forum or theatre and a small version of the colosseum. The list of houses that each have particular features worth seeing is long, so it is sufficient to say that a day spent exploring Pompeii is a day well invested. Most of the photographs that I took at Pompeii are as follows:









One of the Lupanare, hospititium or caupona



Note the depth of the ruts worn by chariots and carts





The next two pictures are of casts made from mummified bodies that were recovered from the ash







A fresco on the outside of a building



Adam propping up the bar at an inn









The colosseum



The ‘gladiators’




We marvelled at these structures that were all created without any mechanical help.






On the way back to Positano, just before Meta, the road utilises about five long tunnels and as we were approaching one of the tunnels we saw there had been a four car crash on the other side of the road to us. What we think happened was the driver who was exiting the tunnel had not had time to adjust to the sunlight and failed to see a car joining the road from a small lane on his right. Two more care following closely behind also did not have time to stop. It is a very real hazard particularly if you use transition sunglasses and you keep them on in the tunnels. The time taken for the transition is too long when exiting tunnels into bright sunlight. The as we drove up the hill to cross the peninsula and around a tight bend there was a car coming towards us; this was no a major issue given Adam’s experience of the narrow roads. However on this occasion on the outside of the car was a motorbike overtaking on the bend. Adam did not have any time to react other than look quickly into his rear vision mirror after the bike had squeezed between the two cars at high speed and developed a speed wobble. We were all a little shaken by the incident, particularly Adam who said that he thought the motor cyclist was going under the rear wheels of our car. I assured Adam that was not the case and that he had straightened up and speed off. To tell the truth I had no idea, but I figured that if he had come off there was not much that any of us were going to be able to do; and he had been the architect of his own fate.
We had a large plate of antipasto on the roof top patio and Adam and Rosalind decided that they were going down into the town as there was a festival that night, to celebrate the new moon. Sheila and I were to tired, but we did go out onto the street and watch a few of the bands walk past playing their drums, trumpets and lager phones. The music seemed Moorish to me and the stomping of the lager phone players made it all seem very pagan.
The music did not go on until too late though Adam and Rosalind did not get back until 0430 after many ‘limon cellos’ and dancing on the beach front with some other Australians that they had met in a bar.