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Naples
As taken from out apartment's study.Ursula and my trip to Naples for New Year's (capo d'anno = 'head of the year') was a feast of experiences, mainly related to actual feasting.
Staying in the apartment of Ursula's family friend, Simonetta, we would awake every morning to one of the best views of the city - right down over the harbour from Vomero, Naples' equivalent of Chelsea. The morning experience included being waited on hand on foot, fed enormous quanitites of 'pandoro' which I am now deeply addicted to, and poured continual 'little bombs' of some of the best espresso I've tasted outside my beloved home country, New Zealand. After our hard days' touristing we were spoilt wrotten with delicious Neapolitan home-cooked dinners.
We were recommended a couple of the best restaurants - not the most flash or expensive though - where we could experience the pure, unadulterated joy of Italain cooking. On our first proper day of stay we did the inevitable massive amount of walking around sightseeing. We went into Castello d'Uovo (Castle of the Egg (!?)), and walked down cobbled streets with unbelievably naff miniature figurines in elaborate lilliputian mini-worlds: 'preseppi'. It was a long day's effort and by 3pm we were
Capo d'anno!
Seeing the new year in with some decidedly filthy spumante. justifiably tired and even more acutely, hungry. Fortunately, we were not far from one of the restaurants that Simonetta had recommended. We walked through the old town's dark, narrow lanes and arrived at the restaurant. Although it was nearly full, the surly waiter told us we were too late for lunch. It's difficult to describe how painful this news was. So on we trudged to the second restaurant, even less flash than the first. We were the very last people to be let in. The angels sang.
Aside from food at this restaurant (which was fabulous), it was here, on this day, that I discovered the true meaning of service. Ursula accidentally spilled some drops of heavy oil onto her top -disaster!- and within seconds a waiter floated our way and covered her chest with a mysterious aerosol spray. Within a minute the liquid turned to a fine white dust that she brushed away. Hey presto! Perfectly clean top.
Italians claim that, while the English have one word for 'blue', they have about 12 just to describe the different shades of sky and sea. The following day was definitely 'azure'. We took advantage and boarded the delightfully squalid
Wine Porn
Nivole is a truly delightful moscato d'Asti that is only 5% alcohol and tastes like sparkling peach juice. 8 Euros a bottle - a must-drink for anyone with a fully functioning soul. Circumvesuviana train to Herculanium, picking up two enormous proscuitto and buffalo mozzarella panini on the way. We'd been assured by various reliable sources that Herculaneum pips Pompeii in every respect other than scale - detail, preservation, beauty - and they weren't wrong.
On New Year's Eve we hopped on a ferry to Capri. We were not alone. The famous piazzeta was rammed full of Southern Italy's most successful proponents of organised crime, wearing Dolce and Gabbana and drinking fancifully-priced prosecco.
We spent midnight back on the mainland with a large crowd of more ordinary folk celebrating with music and fireworks. Fortunately we were long gone when some guy nearby expressed his happiness by firing his gun and accidentally killing a bystander.
With a yen for the sea, we hopped on a bus the following day and headed to the famously glorious Amalfi - one of Italy's hidden gems, nestled on a coast replete with craggy bays and dramatically positioned villages creeping up the mountain sides. My touristic heaven of watching this scenery pass by was rivalled only by Ursula's hell as she amusingly tried to keep control of her stomach around the hairpin bends. We disembarked at
Atrani - Amalfi's little brother in the next bay. Much to our good fortune, our hostel held pride of place in the piazzetta - a tiny, bustling hub of village life lined with bars, shops and restaurants, and still glittering with a low ceiling of blue christmas lights. Being deserted, we were ushered straight to the best room in the place (having booked and paid for the worst). We cracked open a bottle of delightful 'Nivole' (an uncannily peach-flavoured moscato d'asti) to celebrate our good luck, on our private balcony overlooking the square.
All in all it was a culinary orgy in the country that in Roman times honed orgies into a fine art. Bene!
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