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Italy

Herculaneum & Vesuvius Oct 19

It seemed to us that modern Herculaneum is covered, like most of what we saw of urban southern Italy, by a lot of graffiti.


Kind of liked this street name:

And then we found it…

And it was amazing that anyone found anything here. The town was well buried, beneath another town. This is the depth of lava they had to dig through to find what was buried.

The streets of Herculaneum, unlike those of Pompeii, did not run with odure. They were straight and clean

because householders could empty waste into the drains. The drains are in such good shape here there’s a whole field of study around them.

A 2000 year old bed

and the corner of another one:

And some 2000 year old rope. For some things, surprisingly little has changed.

The baths, in good condition: benches still in place…

and a beautiful floor.

More amazing wall paintings…


and mosaics

Had time to notice the interesting labels on the recycling bins near the mini-bus service to Vesuvius.

We had a swift and occasionally alarming ascent up to the summit of Vesuvius. It’s about a 20 minute drive followed by a 20 minute or so walk up the trail to the top.

Helpful signpost.

Hard to know whether the inside or the outside of the path felt safer!

Rewards are many and heavy if you make it to the top. Or even nearly to the top. There were at least two souvenir stands up there. The local wine, Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio, is made, so they say, from the many vines growing on the slopes of Vesuvius and is named for the emotion Christ felt upon noticing the beauty of the Bay of Naples while he was ascending to heaven… or else for the tears Christ shed when Lucifer grabbed a chunk of heaven and threw it into the Bay of Naples. Or something. Anyway, we tried the red one night and found it a nice southern Italian wine, dark and mineral.

Big, big hole.

Still smoking. Quick visit.

We zoomed down the hill again in our mini-van. Front seat passengers later revealed that the vehicle had no working speedometer (pah, who needs that??) and we’d already figured out there were only four working seatbelts… lucky for us there were only four passengers. Nobody was brave enough to point out to the driver what that ‘no passing’ sign meant as he had clearly decided it was not relevant to drivers in a hurry. However, we were under the protection of the caped crusader, so no harm befell us.

Pompeii – Oct 17-18

Pompeii is a many-faced city. There is tat

and moonlight;

and a fine basilica…

We started off our weekend with an excellent meal at La Madia, where the degustazione menu was too much but too good to stop. Melanzane Parmigiana

followed by pasta, with cream, veal and potatoes

– wonderful but so filling it was all I could do to enjoy the tagliata that followed – could be the best steak I’ve ever had.

Our dessert – a regional specialty – was a layered excess of chocolate, custard and marzipan…

Thus fortified we were equipped to spend the following day in the ruins of Pompeii.

It would have taken several days to see them properly, but we did what we could. The wall paintings were wonderful:






The baths were impressive…



Many fountains in town, most still giving drinkable water:




This one sweetly decorated with shells:

The mosaic floors were stunning:



Pompeiians obviously enjoyed their bread; there was more than one bakery with its own flour mills:


and ovens, of course:


They ate out a lot too, at thermopolii, where amphorae were propped in holes in the counter; the food stayed hot without flame, because of the heat-preserving properties of terra cotta.



And the colosseum is in pretty good shape, at least on the outside:

Back in town, the preparations for the papal visit were well underway, which included taping up the mail slots and garbage bins and installing some rather fetching porta-loos.


We decided to splash out on a meal at the town’s finest dining establishment, Il Principe, and what a disappointment that was. We were ushered into a near-empty restaurant, sat next to a giant arrangment of fake flowers. The appetisers were good and interesting, souffles of cheese with various vegetables:

Things went really wrong when it was time for our second courses. The sea bass was ok, but like the meals of all four of us, was nearly stone cold when it was served.

And the quality was just not worth the price tag. The proprietor appeared to be too busy catering to the only other table in the restaurant – clearly peopled by old friends and/or local dignitaries – to trouble his head with a quartet of stranieri. We were so disheartened by the experience we fled immediately for a little cafe near the hotel, where we were served nicely decorated and not over-priced caffe macchiato by friendly proprietors.

In Italia

Don’t have my laptop and so unable to download the squillions of photos I took in Pompeii and Herculaneum last weekend… will have to post these retrospectively when I can. Suffice to say we had a delicious time with perfect weather.

There were three celebrity sightings to round things out: I was seated on the plane next to Bob Geldof (who might not be a foodie, as he ate the horrible BA sandwich and said he thought it was tragic that I had brought my own food on the plane… though whether he meant it was pathetic behaviour on my part or that the tragedy is that the airlines serve such abominations wasn’t clear, so I can choose to believe the latter). Upon disembarking we saw him hook up with star journalist John Simpson. And on Sunday we returned from Herculaneum and Vesuvius in time to see the pope leave town after his all-day visit to Pompeii.

After a day in Rome – main excursion was to see Keats’ house – and two good meals, I left yesterday for an epic train journey. It took about seven and a half hours to get to Turin and I arrived to mild foggy weather. Just about to set off for Terra Madre. More as it unfolds.

Still Cheeselessly in Parma

If you’re a believer in signs, when you read my tale you will perhaps understand why I gave up my attempts to get to Cheese this morning.

First, the friend who was going to come with me had pulled out before I left London. Next, I found out on Thursday that the plans to visit a winery Friday morning with another classmate had changed – the rental car wasn’t rented after all and there was no way for me to get there without leaving on Thursday and staying an extra night — somewhere. I was busy to-ing and fro-ing with packages to the post office and various other errands and just couldn’t manage it, so decided to go on Saturday. Then arose the possibility of getting a ride with someone else to Bra on Saturday morning, but that fell through on Friday. So I went to the train station Friday night and bought a ticket for a train leaving at 5.53 this morning, which would have got me to Bra at around 10.

Got up 4.30, walked to the train station and arrived I guess at about 5.51 – with just enough time to reach the platform and watch my train pull out, in the full knowledge that the next train wouldn’t get me there until an hour after the start time of the talk I most wanted to hear.

I took all this to mean the cosmos was indicating my presence was not required at Cheese this year, so I turned around and walked back home, since it was still too early for the buses to be running. Well at least I got my exercise. And was spared a three-stage, four hour train trip each way. The way things were going, chances are excellent that I would have missed one of those connections and ended up late anyway.

I don’t know how many of you out there have tried to plan trips using Trenitalia‘s rather good website, but it does have one major flaw, which is that it doesn’t tell you the ultimate destination of the train you will be catching/connecting with or the platform you’ll need, which means you have to figure that out on the fly by checking the departure list posted on the platform, and then find the platform listed, and hope it hasn’t changed. A lot to manage in a strange station with sometimes only three or four minutes between trains.

Think I’ll go out and buy myself some… cheese.

Pausing in Parma

So I’m back in Parma, bracing myself for an earrrrrly train tomorrow. I’m going to Bra, which is not so very far but an absolute pig to get to by train. Four hours or so. Oh well. The destination will, I hope, be worth the pain of getting there: Cheese, glorious cheese.

I got here on Wednesday afternoon: left London where the generally fine weather I’d been grateful for for most of my stay so far had turned cold and grey with spitting rain. I sprinted down the street and got onto the airport bus with about three minutes to spare, made it to lovely Stansted in good time, and then killed it in various queues. The check-in queue was enlivened by a frequent occurrence at Stansted, namely the embarrassed departure of a pair of English holidaymakers who thought they were in the queue for Palma, Majorca. The endlessly unhelpful airport staff of course know all about the confusion – the word Palma is totally indistinguishable from Parma in the English accent over a loudspeaker – but make no concession to the weakness of travellers when making flight announcements. What fun!

My heart sank when I saw the number of Italian teenagers boarding the flight. We used to have to share buses to Colorno with this species on occasion, and in quantity they are among the loudest, most obnoxious and charmless creatures that walk this earth. But other than bolting out of their seats only seconds after a rather bouncy landing (and after a stern voice-of-god reprimand they hastily sat down again) they were surprisingly, gratifyingly well behaved.

Our welcome gift at the micro-airport was at the luggage carousel. The light started flashing, the beep sounded, and through the rubber curtain emerged… the guy who’d waved us into the passport control. He waved and smiled and then disappeared out the other curtain. I do love the way life can be so weirdly casual here.

All else in Parma is calm and quiet.

I have made lightning strikes on some of my favourite eateries – so happy everything is open again! Lunched at Sorelle Picchi and supped at La Croce di Malta (gorgeous torte of melanzane followed by a layered thing with potato and anchovy – interesting but a bit of a waste of a perfectly good anchovy I thought)

The meals have given me occasion to think about the matter of service in restaurants though. I’m thinking is it better to have friendly but inept service, which is more or less the case if you are recognised here, or snotty but correct service. Though usually the snotty service is also bad. So I’m settling for friendly. But it grieves me to see good restaurants losing points with new diners through simple ineptitude.

That having been said, I must praise once again my favourite chef in town, Davide di Dio, whose well deserved holiday seems to have given him some new verve; and I was pleased in the interests of his continued health and sanity to see he had more helpers on board at Ristorante Mosaiko. I hope they can keep up with him. I had a starter of Baccala on a wedge of what looked like a crouton

but turned out to be artichoke, drizzled with balsamico, yum: and I can honestly say I now see the point of Baccala. Then on to a primo piatto of prawns wrapped in crunchy blankets – Involtino di Gamberi Croccanti

with a puree of fennel and lemon cream. Perfect. And then Rombo in crosto di patate alla zucca:

some beautiful turbot, perfectly cooked in a potato crust, docked on a few perfect roast potatoes in a thick orange sea of pumpkin soup. Since it was a night for overindulgence, and as I hadn’t had tiramisu since arriving in Italy, I thought I might as well. Very very nice. I went home well fed and looking forward to my next, and probably final, visit in November.

Tonight will be a quiet night of packing and resting.

Everybody’s gone away…

A final lunch yesterday at Sorelle Picchi, which afterwards closed for the holidays. One more bowl of cappelletti in brodo for me and tortelli di zucca for Kathy. Yum, we did it.

And here’s how the rest of the neighbourhood’s looking:

Andy whipped up another wonderful Taiwanese dinner last night; then on the way home Jenn, Tim and I paused for a K2 conetto. Mine was passion fruit (sooooo goooood!) and peach.