Ravello and Amalfi (the town)

Tuesday we hiked down from Pontone, a bit below Ravello, where we are staying for the next two nights, to the town of Amalfi, which was once the trading capital of the Amalfi coast, and then back up to Ravello.  Our walk is called the Path of the Mills, because Amalfi was once famous for its rag paper, and there are several ruins of paper mills along the river, some dating from the 9th century.  The invention of wood pulp paper in, I believe, the 19th century led to the (almost) end of the Amalfi paper industry.  We visited a paper museum, which still makes some rag paper for special clients, including the Vatican, as this mill is one of the few sources of true, unchemically treated rag paper.

We walked all the way back to Ravello, through woods, roads and lots of steps (steps will continue to be a theme of this trip)

This is Amalfi from above, as we walked down.

This is the entrance to an old paper mill.

This building is the ruins of the drying room of an old paper mill, where the sheets were left to dry on long beams.

A view of Amalfi from lower down, showing the (rather small) harbor, but also the way it is built into the hill.

M. C. Escher, the artist, spent time in Amalfi.  If you know his work, you can see the influence of the tower at the top of this photo in one of his pictures.

One of many absolutely gorgeous wisteria plants.  I'm being photobombed by our guide, Vincenzo.

 We had dinner at a place that has local "home cooking" grandma style, where I think I got food poisoning, but that's a tale for another day.
 

Pompeii

Today we started our VBT hiking trip on the Amalfi coast.  We are a small group, ten in total, with everyone but us being from the East Coast. We got shuttled to Pompeii for a three hour private tour -- definitely the way to see this place, as when she found something that was crowded (and the place was pretty crowded, even on a day that threatened rain and is very early in the tourist season), she could find something similar elsewhere on the site. 

I was amazed at how undamaged the site is.  Most everything that was higher than one story caved in, but most of the walls are a full story high.  I had seen the model in the Archeological Museum in Naples, but I interpreted those walls to be half a story or less.

Some random photos

This is one of the bedrooms in a brothel (one of forty they have unearthed in Pompeii).  According to our guide, a 'session' would have cost about the same as a glass of wine.

In one of several public baths, this was the women's "changing room".  The niches on the wall were the equivalent of lockers.

The actual bathing area in the same women's baths.

The men's baths had a more ornate changing area.

Undamaged mosaic in a private home (the really good ones were removed and taken to the Archeological Museum, but this isn't too shabby.

This is called a Thermopolium, where wine and cold foods were sold.  The mosaic in the back honors gods of wine and food.

Another Thermopolium.  The tile work was impressive.

This is a fresco in a private home that shows lemon trees.

This fresco in a garden is known as "Venus on the Shell", and predates Botticelli by 15 centuries.

And finally the city amphitheatre (Pompeii most likely had about 20,000 inhabitants at its peak), where gladiators battled.

For lunch we managed to continue our run of bad Italian food in tourist places (Hint: don't order seafood unless you are very close to the ocean), but we have high hopes for tonight.

We are spending three nights in Ravello, a tiny town of 2500 perched on the side of a mountain (we will walk down and back up each day).  It's very quaint.  They are known for their pottery, and I indulged in a lovely olive oil dispenser (which I forgot to photograph before he wrapped it up, sorry).

Eating in Italy

Well, it's better than London, but we did find mediocre food in Naples.

Our first night we ate at a nearby restaurant that got reasonable online reviews, but we both had pretty hohum meals. The calmaretti we started with were good -- these  were squid that were about 1-2" long that had been deep fried. I had a pesto pasta with prawns, and there were a total of two prawns and the pesto was unlike any other pesto I have had -- no idea what it was based on, but not really very green at all and somewhat slimy.  Jay had a cacio and pepe with clams, and the clams were good, but it had about four times the cheese as any cacio and pepe I have ever eaten.  The next day we had pizza for lunch, at a place near the Archeological Museum, and the pizza (buffalo mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and basil) was watery.  We weren't off to a great start.  We stopped in the afternoon for a well-known Naples pastry treat, sfogliatella, which is very crispy, probably fried, croissant-like outer layers with a lemon cream center.  We both found it way too rich.

But things are now picking up.  We had much better pasta last night.  I had a simple tomato sauce and Jay had spaghetti vongole (clams).  Both were excellent, both the pasta and the sauces.  And today at lunch we shared a whole grain pizza with roasted veges that was quite good -- both the toppings and the crust. And for tonight, Jay had a fresh pasta and I had risotto, each with seafood (we are at the ocean after all), and both were delicious (and we both had salads, me arugula and parmesan, Jay a mixed salad, and it's so great to have veges/produce again).

Apparently in Italy one has dessert for breakfast (and also for Sunday dinner, as we saw some elaborate cakes at our lunch time restaurant).  There were sfogliatella, chocolate almond cake, babas au rhum, and a bunch of other pastries and cakes (but no pain au chocolat, my favorite breakfast treat).  But there were also VEGETABLES for breakfast -- there was a green bean and carrot saute one morning, with a gnocchi dish that had chicken and broccoli, and the other morning it was a seafood and vegetable stew.  Since I'm really tired of steam table scrambled eggs, but I do need some protein to get through the morning, this was great on two grounds.  It's been hard to find vegetables this entire trip (except when I was doing the cooking), so I'm a happier camper.

Naples

We've been in Naples for two days, and have seen pretty much all the sights.  Saturday we started with the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, which is full of treasures taken from Pompeii, Herculaneum and some other places during Roman times.  There are some impressive intact statues, such as this, the Toro Farnese.

The twin sons of Lycus and Antiope are tying Dirce, who seduced their father, to the horns of a bull, so that he can bash her against some rocks.  You can see Antiope standing in the background.  It's the largest statue group ever recovered from early Roman times.  It is (as many of the statues were described as being) a third century AD copy of a first or second century BC original.  This one was "improved upon" by Michelangelo and others after it was recovered in the 16th century.  

There is an entire floor of mosaics from Roman houses that would put to shame a lot of early Renaissance art for its mastery of dimensionality and perspective.  And another floor of frescoes, including something called "The Secret Room", which is all erotic frescoes, mosaics and statuary. A little bit of everything, though very focused on the male -- lots of huge penises, some attached to owners and some alone.  Men with women, men with men, men with animals, men with gods/mythical creatures.  

The top floor had an interesting sundial.  It went the length of the main room, maybe 40 ft, and was meant to show you the date.  Here is one end of the dial

And here it is, a few minutes after 1 (1 because of DST, not sure why it was 4 minutes "late"), showing the correct day of the year according to the zodiac:

You can't see it at this resolution, but the circle fits between the markings for two different days.

After the museum, we took the Rick Steve's walking tour, through a bunch of interesting neighborthoods, past palaces and churches.  None of them were really worth going into, but the outsides were impressive and Rick always has great historical tidbits.

That evening we were walking along the Bay after dinner (where apparently all of Naples strolls), and I caught this view of the water

Notice how rocky the shore is.

Sunday we took the funicular up to to Castel Sant'Elmo, a fortress that has been around for over 1000 years.  It's impressive as really old fortresses go, but mostly you go for the view.  It's at the top of the city and then the Castle itself is seven stories higher (by the way people at that time counted stories -- we would probably consider it to be 10 or 12 stories high).  Here is a view looking out over the port from the top

Next to the castle is an old (no longer in use other than as a museum) monastery, which the hotel receptionist told us was "not to be missed", but we mostly found to be ho-hum.  However, it contains a collection of Nativity Scenes that were quite impressive.  In the style that you see at the NY Metropolitan Museum at Christmas -- quite large figures, and many, many of them, representing townsfolks of all sorts of occupations and activities. 

Here is just one of the setups (though the most elaborate)

I was only able to capture a small number of the angels descending on the place.  It's almost like a "Where's Waldo" picture, where you could spend hours noticing all the details.

We found a lovely park, Villa Floridiana, which had a porcelain museum, but the tickets had to be purchased at the top of the hill, which was far from obvious, and the museum/Villa was way down the hill, and we weren't motivated to trudge all the way up the hill again.  Our trip back down to the hotel was an adventure -- Google sent us on a very quiet street, quiet because we went down 400-500 steps, so it was quite traffic free. 

Tomorrow morning we begin our hiking trip with a visit to Pompeii

Random observations

Things I noticed in London

• I am always impressed by the London Underground.  It's clean, it's well signed, of the more than 30 tube trips we made during the week, we only waited more than three minutes for a train twice, and one of those was about 10:30 at night.  Even then, our wait was only 10 minutes.  And it goes everywhere, at least everywhere we as tourists wanted to go.
• It's a cliche that the English are unflaggingly polite/apologetic, but it's so true.  Our guide in Oxford would say things like "do you mind if we walk in this direction?" when he wanted us to turn onto another street.  Almost everyone who bumped into me apologized, and people were very good about giving up their seat on the tube if I was standing (which I suppose means that I look my age).
• On the other hand, Londoners are not particularly law abiding.  Traffic lights are "advisory" for pedestrians and cyclists.  My theory is that they would drown if they waited till the light turned green at some of these intersections.  Londoners also let their dogs poop on the sidewalk (even when right next to a park or verge where there is actual grass) and leave more trash around (though that could be tourists).
• The most common foreign language I heard people speaking (including English with an American accent) was German.  Germany did have a four day holiday during the time we were thre, it is close by, and Germans are doing well financially, so lots of them can afford London, but I was somewhat surprised to find such a high concentration of them.
• In contrast to most of the places we've gone elsewhere in Europe, London tends to have senior discounts to various attractions (the museums are mostly free -- not the Churchill War Rooms, though).  The few places I have seen senior discounts in continental Europe, you need to be an EU citizen with a retiree ID.

Fanny and Alexander and our best meal in London

We started Wednesday with a quick trip to the British Museum.   We sort of did the "highlights tour", seeing things like the Lewis chess set, a lovely ornate set that dates from the 12 century, and this Easter Island statue.

It's smaller than a lot of them (at least I think so, I haven't seen other Easter Island statues, except in pictures), maybe 15 feet or so high, but also incredibly well preserved, because it spent most of its pre-museum life in a chief's house.

Our afternoon was our final play, Fanny and Alexander at the Old Vic Theatre.  It is a stage adaptation of an Ingmar Bergman film, with all of Bergman's Scandinavian gloominess and his symbolism.  We chose it at the last minute, based on a tube poster, because of the cast -- Penelope Wilton and Kevin Boyle from Downton Abbey and Michael Pennington, a noted British stage actor whom we had seen before in Lear.  What we didn't manage to read before we got to the theatre was that the play is three and a half hours long!  Not sure I would have chosen it if I had realized that, but we sat enthralled through all three acts.  Fanny and Alexander are two young children (I would guess the "stage ages" to be about 5 and 8, and the actors to be about 7 and 11, assuming they were small for their ages).  Fanny doesn't have much in the way of lines, but Alexander is the focus of much of the play.  In short, it's about a semi-happy family of actors, including the lover of the matriarch, an old Jewish guy who runs a magic shop (symbolism alert).  When the children's father dies, the mother, who is trying to find herself (symbolism alert) marries a strict and cruel bishop (symbolism alert) who mistreats the children (big symbolism alert).  The old Jewish guy helps them escape, the mother gets out too, and they live somewhat unhappily ever after.  

The cast was fantastic and despite the heavyhandedness of the story, it was compelling to watch.  I enjoyed it as much as Hamilton, though I suspect it isn't for everyone.  The descriptions of the meals they ate (narrated) were both comedy gold and detailed enough to make me hungry (the play would have been at least 15 minutes shorter without them).  You could have fed a small village with one of their meals.  

We had our final dinner in London at The Five Fields, a restaurant I found online, but turns out to be a Michelin one-star.  We had the three course prix fixe menu (the other option was an 8 course tasting menu, though the portions of that were small enough that I don't think it was significantly more food than we had).  Both the food and wine were superb.  We both started with the foie gras, which came with pieces of beet and some pickled mushrooms, that sounded weird but cut the richness of the foie gras very well,  I had mutton (chosen for the accompaniments, but it was nicely tender and flavorful) and Jay had venison.  Our desserts were a rhubarb concoction that is hard to describe.  It was good, but not rhubarby enough for me.  Jay had a chocolate decadence with sesame ice cream.  There were the usual amuse bouches, pre dessert, chocolate after dessert (we could have had a cheese course, but skipped that) and they sent us home with two cannelles.  It wasn't cheap, but after our disappointment with almost all of our London eating (J Sheekey was good, but not as good as this place), it was great to end on a high note.

Thursday we leave for Frankfurt, to spend a day catching up on laundry at the airport.  On Friday it's on to Naples for a few days before we start our Amalfi Coast walking tour.

Museuming, cream tea and Hamilton

We started Tuesday with the Churchill War Rooms, which is a museum created from an underground warren of offices and living spaces that the people running the war effort in WWII England used to work and sleep (they were down there so many hours, they were required to have sun lamp treatments to prevent rickets).  Very interesting museum, with lots of rooms set up as they would have been at the time.  I've read the series that starts with "Mr. Churchill's Secretary" (the Maggie Hope series), and the author was clearly inspired by visiting this museum.  It's really important to get tickets in advance (on line).  Not only does it save money, but they only let in people who didn't buy advance tickets after all the ticketed types are let in.  We were there at 11, and the non-advance ticket line, led by a rather entitled acting guy, was in revolt after being told they probably wouldn't get in till after 2pm.  (and of course, it was raining).

After that we went off to the Tate Britain, so that Jay could get his fill of JMW Turner, his favorite painter (I love some of his work, and other pictures just do nothing for me).  Apparently his (self) portrait and most famous painting are going to be shown on the 20 pound note starting in 2020.

We found a quintessential British tea shop, the English Rose, for a cream tea (given our various play schedules, we been going for a two meal a day schedule).  Tea, warm scones, clotted cream, jam, finger sandwiches and cakes.  I love clotted cream, but it will clog your arteries just by slavering over it, so I try to have it once every year or so.  We tried out the two ways of eating scones -- in Devon it is cream then jam, in Cornwall it is jam then cream.   Jay likes jam first and I like cream first -- both of us because cream first causes the cream to melt a bit.  I had a piece of Victoria sponge, another very sweet British cake.

The highlight of the day/night was Hamilton.  We had row F seats for the cost of the nose-bleed seats in New York City.  The productions was everything people say it is.  It was in a newly refurbished theatre (the Victoria Palace), which is gorgeous.  Here are a couple of photos of the theatre

They obviously wouldn't let me photograph the performance, but here is the set

I can't say enough good about the production.  Of course, I haven't seen the Lin Manuel Miranda version, but I can't imagine those actors were significantly better.  The dancing and singing was superb, and the story, from what I can tell (I haven't read the Hamilton biography that it was based on) ,veers from historical accuracy just enough to make the story exciting.