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food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

After Pompeii and Herculaneum we went to Naples – using our Arte cards which had given us three days of sightseeing and travel – to get to the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, which held all the ‘good stuff’ from the excavations.

First, though, we were in Naples, so…

The museum. Big and pink!

Head of a poet.

Dear little pig of Herculaneum.

Demeter.

A recent treasure from Herculaneum, Testa di Amazzone, found in 2006. Showing that redheads ruled even then.

Absolutely stunning mosaics and wall paintings from Pompeii and Herculaneum:

The famous Sappho painting from Pompeii.

Then it was time to go to Rome. After a spell of wandering in the graffiti-heavy neighbourhood

we found – with some difficulty – the door to our guest house. Happily much nicer on the inside than the outside.

We asked for restaurant recommendations and ended up at a pleasant local restaurant where I had some buffalo mozzarella with zucchini alla scapece, an excellent combination.

Did not touch the hotel breakfast as it all looked too toxic to be released from plastic:

Went on a tour of the city and eventually found our way to the Trevi Fountain, which was being serviced. But it still drew a sizeable crowd, some watching a man who’d jumped the barricade and was busy picking up the coins that didn’t make it into the fountain, chucking in the smallest ones and pocketing the rest, until he was escorted out by the security guards.

Near this street…

we found a good lunching spot with interesting lighting

and excellent fragoli con gelato.

Next to the Spanish Steps where our first stop was Keats’ House, the lodgings where he died

And of course, being a Slow Foodie, I had to note the McDonalds, just around the corner on the Piazza di Spagna, which was the final outrage that caused the founding of the Slow Food movement in 1986.

Chestnut seller.

And that was more or less it for me for Rome this time. One final meal – excellent and local and recommended by the hotel – and I left for Turin the following morning. Giving another wide berth to the scary breakfast buffet.

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 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.

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.

Treated myself to a soothing time at Borough Market today; Thursdays are less fraught than Saturdays, and the weather was fine and the food looking good as ever.

Some Spanish cheeses at Brindisi..

Nice sausages, and plenty of them.

Tis the season of squash.

No visit to Borough Market complete without dropping in at Neal’s Yard:

And it is, again and no doubt about it, mushroom season.

Note the giant puffball slices at the front…

and all manner of others.

Ginger Pig has lovely ham, and bacon, and a few faggots. And lots of sausages.

Fish, looking fresh.

But it was, above all, lunchtime. The man at the fish stall puts together a stew…

The Argentinian empanadas were popular.

Maybe a chocolate to finish?

And now I’m away to Italy, not taking my laptop so postings may be erratic till I catch up with myself. A presto…