Marbles, Bones, and Mozzarella

March 1-3, 2017

Wednesday we got to the Museo Archeologico. This is where most of the gorgeous stuff taken from ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum is on display.

Beginning in the 18th century, excavations uncovered treasure after treasure, and all of them were taken to the collection of the Bourbon king of Naples.

The subway station for the museum houses a bronze group (a replica most likely) of Laocoon and his sons being strangled by the sea serpents. It is almost identical to the marble in the Vatican.

Laocoon is the skeptic who told the other Trojans to beware of the horse. He’s the one, according to Virgil, who said, “I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts.” That’s why the gods who were on the Greeks’ side sent the serpents to kill him. Killed his sons, too, because that’s what gods usually do.

The artifacts recovered from the digs at Pompeii and Herculaneum were combined later with a collection from Rome owned by the Farnese family.

The mother of one of the Neapolitan kings was the last of the Farnese line, which had included cardinals and Pope Paul III.

The Farnese collection, which occupies most of the ground floor, contains huge bronzes and marbles.

One very complex piece from ancient times is called the Farnese Bull. It is a group telling the story of Antiope’s revenge on Dirce, who had run away with Antiope’s husband. Antiope’s two sons are tying Dirce by the hair to a raging bull.

The piece is generally believed to have been carved in the fourth century A.D. Like the Venus Pudica in Syracuse, it has a baroque flavor. The artistic skill to do that would decline long before the final gasp of the Roman Empire and would take Europe more than a thousand years to recreate. 

Another of the famous pieces in the Farnese collection is a large marble of Hercules, exhausted after completing his labors. For many years, the statue stood on legs that had been partly restored by an artist in the 16th or 17th century.

The original legs were discovered years later and eventually were reunited with the piece. The replacement legs are on display near the restored statue.

A stunning sculpture is Apollo with his lyre. It is one of the first you encounter coming into the Farnese Collection.

The robe that covers the body is carved from dark red porphyry to suggest intricate folds. The hands, feet, and head are white marble.

The parts are assembled to elegantly that you believe it is cut from a single block. Particularly intriguing is the way the wavy locks of hair fall over the shoulders. 

It looks so delicate. How could somebody fit them together so tightly? And not even break something?

Venus Kallipygos (that is, Venus of the Beautiful Butt) is also stunning, both from the front ….

… and the back.

We took a break for pizza and a little bit of wine and then went back to the museum. As bad as the streets are, the food here is terrific. We went into a shiny little shop and had pizza with mozzarella made with water buffalo milk.

The wine was a decently tangy house red, which was indeed terrific at 3 euros for a quarter liter.

The top floor of the museum houses frescoes, artifacts, and sculpture from a Temple of Isis that stood in Pompeii. The collection is a detailed example of the tendency of the ancient religions to mix and match images and beliefs.

The Secret Room is no longer secret. It is on the mezzanine floor at the end of several rooms of frescoes, sculpture, and mosaics recovered mainly from the so-called House of the Faun at Pompeii.

The famous mosaic of Alexander defeating Darius, what’s left of it, is on a wall here. The floor of the house in Pompeii, where the original was, now has a reproduction. 

Large parts of of the mosaic are missing. According to Rick Steeves’s guidebook, the damage done to the mosaic occurred when excavators removed it to Naples.

The mosaic is based on a much older painting, which apparently is known, so an illustration of the complete composition is shown alongside the fragmentary original.

The Secret Room, which at one time was open only to visitors who had written permission from the king of Naples, houses erotica retrieved from Pompeii and Herculaneum. 

There are large stone and wooden phalluses that were protective talismans for shops and homes. They represented fertility and prosperity.

The original advertising illustrations from the Lupanarium of Pompeii are also there.

For dinner, we went back to the usual place, which I learned is called La Stanza del Gusto. Not only is the food good, but it is about as far as we are willing to walk in this neighborhood after dark.

Joanna had spaghetti with a sauce of codfish, vegetables, and bread.

Mine was bucatini with a tomato sauce that contained Sardinian cheese. 

I thought they were both very good, but Joanna wasn’t so sure about her dish.

The red for the night was Piedirosso, from Cantine Federiciane in Campania. I took one sniff and a small taste and guessed that it was a blend that included a bit of Cabernet Sauvignon. 

I asked the waiter about it, who went and checked. It is a varietal, and Piedirosso is the name of the grape,. Apparently it is native to the region.

A distinctive spicy smell and taste dominate Cabernet. Piedirosso has some of that, but is not as strong as in the Cab.

Thursday morning, the day before we left, I opened an e-mail from Ken, husband to Joanna’s sister Gladys. He had mentioned a great pizzeria in an earlier message and was following up with the full name, L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele.

I checked Google Maps and found that it was about a mile from the hotel. Better yet, the route would take us within a block of the Naples Duomo, which we hadn’t seen.

We needed to find Via dei Tribunali and follow that to Via Duomo. Much to my surprise, it was actually easy to do.

We walked Via Costantinopoli to the street with the arch. Instead of turning right, toward Piazza Dante, we turned left. It wasn’t called Tribunali there, but took us through a couple of piazzas before the street name changed.

The street is very narrow, without pedestrian walkways. 

Narrower alleys branched off Tribunali and wound their way under balconies draped with drying laundry.

An occasional car would come through and everybody would have to get out of the way. Motorbikes were even worse, beeping in their annoying road-runner voices and weaving at speed among people on foot. 

At times this seems to be a country overrun by undisciplined children.

The Duomo apparently commands a great deal of respect here. Either that or it is subjected to extraordinary maintenance. Only a small part of it has any graffiti.

It is baroque, as many churches are that we have seen on this trip. I imagine its roots run older, though.

An unexpected high point involves San Gennaro. This is the saint whose festival is celebrated every year in Little Italy in New York.

Gennaro was bishop of Naples and visiting Christian prisoners in a nearby town when he was arrested and beheaded during the persecutions by Diocletian. San Gennaro died within a year or two of St. Lucy.

I am fascinated by cults of relics. In Singapore, for instance, we went to a huge temple in Chinatown where a tooth of the Buddha, as well as vials holding some of his cremated remains, are on display.

The Duomo has a chapel called the Treasury of San Gennaro. It is full of silver objects, but the treasure, according to signs outside, are the relics of the saint. 

A silver bust holds his head and some of his bones. There is a vial of his blood that alternately congeals and liquefies, and no one can explain why.

There is also a crypt below the cathedral’s high altar where a large vase holds more of San Gennaro’s bones.

I was walking around this place with my mouth open. Witnessing a tradition that goes back 1700 years can do that.

When we left the Duomo, we went back to Via dei Tribunali to find the Vico della Pace. It was next to a church, Santa Maria della Pace. So we had no trouble finding it.

Della Pace, a very narrow alley in which car and bike drivers like to make up for lost time, changes its name to Via Cesare Sersale, and Da Michele is at the very end of that, at Number 1.

There was a crowd of people outside when we got there. Joanna said, should we ask about getting a number? 

No, that’s just the end of the lunch crowd, I said. So we went for a walk around the neighborhood to kill some time.

A large corso runs not far from the restaurant, and that was interesting enough, I guess. All corsos in this part of the world are named for one of the Vittorio Emanueles or an Umberto. 

This one is named for Umberto I, the king who was assassinated in 1900.

We came back a half hour later and the crowd was still as big as before. So I went inside and spoke to man in a hat and apron, who told me the wait was an hour. 

We got a ticket with number 39 on it. Several minutes later they called number 15.

I tried to wait. I really did. But I got tired of standing in a crowd of cigarette smokers and became annoyed at being shoved by people who can’t be bothered to speak.

There was a good-looking restaurant, D’Angeli, right across the street. We went there.

We had already had good pizza in Syracuse and great pizza in Naples. How much better can it get that it’s worth that kind of abuse for an hour?

The Margherita at D’Angeli was superb. Thick mozz (probably not water buffalo milk, but tasty nonetheless). Great red sauce dosed with oregano. Leaves of basil.

After we got there, Joanna told me she really hadn’t wanted pizza anyway. She has been crazy for all the pasta dishes we have been putting away.

I can understand that. I like to eat pizza once, maybe twice a week, when it’s good. I can eat pasta every day. Indeed, we have been eating pasta just about every day for the past month and a half.

Besides, Joanna saw a picture on the wall. I think it’s a classic comedian of Italian movies. The face is familiar, although I don’t recall the name.

He is shown holding a huge knot of pasta in one hand and nibbling on the strands. It triggered Joanna’s pasta craving.

She ordered the Sicilian pasta. That means it is made with eggplant.

The sauce, served on rigatoni, had a flavor I can’t identify. Maybe it was a strong hit of sage. Maybe this was some kind of eggplant that has a strong flavor. I don’t know. 

Naples may be rotten to its core, but the food is great.

We took a cab back to the hotel and never did go out again. 

Joanna had picked up a pear at a grocery store. We had bread in a paper bag left from D’Angeli, and a hard-boiled egg from breakfast. 

We ate that around 9 p.m. and that’s all we could handle.

Moving day started at 7. We took a cab to the airport at 8:30 and had some breakfast there, coffee, croissant, hot water for Joanna.

I did some writing while we waited for the plane.

We took an hour-and-a-half flight to Munich that gave us a glimpse of the Bavarian Alps. Knowing we were headed for an airport with beer and sausages, I passed on the airplane food.

As usual when you change planes, especially at an airport you don’t know, your arrival and departure gates are as far apart as they can make them.

We traveled through people carriers to escalators and onto a subway train that took us to another terminal. More escalators and people movers to passport control. 

We passed restaurants and duty-free shops and rode more people movers to yet another passport control point.

The man had my passport and boarding pass. Where can I get a beer and something to eat?

Nothing down there. We had to go back.

Lucky for us, there was a place not far away. I had a half liter of Paulaner with bratwurst. The man in front of me at the counter got the last weisswurst with a pretzel.

Everything was so good that I got another Paulaner. 

We went back through the passport check and then came to yet another security post. The guy told us to hurry. They were almost finished boarding.

I knew he was lying. If they are really close to shutting the gate and you aren’t on board, they page you. Nobody had called our names.

We got onto the plane, which is less than half full, and watched several other people board after us.

I just finished a can of Warsteiner and am waiting for the drink cart to pass this way again. I’ll finish this later.

* * *

We got to Newark without incident, about a half hour ahead of the plane’s scheduled arrival time. I don’t know how that happened. Maybe the Jet Stream was slower today. Or maybe they forgot to fly over Iceland, and so wound up taking a short cut.

Anyway, we were back at Joanna’s house by 8 o’clock. Christopher was there. 

He has been staying in Hancock, N.Y., a small town I know from the days when my parents lived in upstate New York.

He was in Montclair to welcome us home. He also prepared dinner. Besides a fantastic roast chicken, there were black beans and rice.

He had expected, quite correctly, that the food we had been eating for the past six weeks have been very good, but had not included black beans or jasmine rice.

I took off after dinner and am now back at my favorite New Jersey residence, La Quinta on Two Bridges Road in Fairfield. 

Be well, all, and don’t lose your marbles.

Harry

The Descent Into Naples

February 27-28

I was warned that Naples was depressing. Even Rick Steves, one of the best travel writers for Italy, warns that it is crime-ridden and says just about the only thing to see is the Archeological Museum, where most of the recovered treasures of Pompeii and Herculaneum are on display.

The rail station wasn’t bad. Indeed, it was almost up to the standards of France and Spain. It had escalators, for instance.

It’s all downhill from there. We got a cab. the driver kept running back and forth to somewhere before he finally put our bags in the car. I don’t know what he was doing.

I booked a hotel less than half a kilometer from the museum. I reckoned that it had to be a decent neighborhood. After all, the Rijksmuseum, the Louvre, hell even the Sex Museum in New York are all in pretty tony neighborhoods.

Maybe this actually qualifies as a better neighborhood in Naples. I wouldn’t know. 

We were headed for the Belle Arti Resort on Via Santa Maria Di Costantinopoli in the old city. And it was full dark when we got the cab.

The longer the ride lasted, the darker the streets became. We followed a winding narrow alley uphill past barricaded doorways covered with spray paint.

I was getting very worried. Then we entered a stretch that was brighter and had couples on the sidewalks and in cafes. It was still dirty and smeared up, but better. 

Then the street closed up and grew a little darker again We saw people camping on the sidewalk. All the walls look like casualties of a graffiti war among street gangs.

I had a sinking feeling that this was our street. It was.

The hotel had e-mailed to say they didn’t have 24-hour desk service and so they needed to know when I expected to arrive. I had told them, and we were right on time, and no one was there.

I told Joanna to wait in the car. 

I went up to the big carriage door, and found the little door set inside it. After a few tries, I was buzzed in. It opened on a small courtyard.

I couldn’t let the door go because it would close by itself. I held it open while the cab driver brought me the bags. I put them inside the door one by one and then helped Joanna through the doorway.

I paid the driver and went inside. We came to another locked door with Belle Arti, on it. 

It took several experiments before I found the right button to push. After a few rings, a voice came over the intercom.

I wasn’t very calm anymore. He didn’t speak English, and I had forgotten all my Italian. I just wanted to get inside.

After a few short exchanges, the voice said something like “un momento.”

We waited a few seconds and nothing more happened. I started to pound on the door.

A group of people were coming through the outside gate. I hoped they belonged here. 

One man brought up the rear. “Mr. Hutchinson? Welcome.”

Some welcome. We were locked out.

The man introduced himself as Mario. We had been in communication by e-mail. He and the voice on the intercom had been in another building.

No wonder nobody came to the door when I pounded on it. The only people inside would have been guests, who were probably frightened that they were under attack by a street gang. Maybe armed with spray paint.

Had I known the Belle Arti operated by remote control, I never would have booked it. I guess that’s why they don’t tell you right away and give you a discount if you pay in advance.

The inside of the building looks a lot better than the decrepit outside. The room is OK, although the floors could be cleaner. 

The shower is a pain in the ass. There’s no place except the floor to put anything. I had a bar of soap in my kit, and that was a help.

I guess you’re expected to use the ceramic liquid soap dispenser on the sink to wash, because they don’t provide anything else.

We got directions to a restaurant, but the route we had to take became very dark and looked too dodgy. We stopped instead at a place down the street from the hotel, but all they offered was a buffet. No way am I going for that.

We went next door to a small joint whose name I didn’t catch. 

We shared grilled squid with a tasty caponata, and a plate of very flavorful vegetables.

I had a couple of glasses of a local Aglianico and we called it a night.

The Museo Archeologico is closed on Tuesday, so we were in no hurry the next morning. We got out a bit after noon.

We walked two blocks to the museum, to make sure we knew the way. Then we walked through an antique portico, which like everything else here is smeared with graffiti but has the added distinction of serving as a pissoir. 

Off that is an arcade, Europe’s 19th century forerunner of the indoor mall. It had a high glass roof and Beaux Arts ornamentation. The stores, all closed, had high glass doors.

It must be carefully watched and certainly has to be closed at night because there is almost no graffiti in it.

We walked up a street and were looking at the signs at a bus stop when a man came up and stood a little too close to give us the unnecessary confirmation that this was a bus stop.

We nodded and walked on. A minute or so later, he was in front of us again.

He asked Joanna if she was Japanese. We said we are Americans. Another man stepped up. Americans?

The first man shook hands with Joanna and then with me. He bumped into me and I felt the same tickle inside my jacket that the lady on the subway had given me a few years ago in Rome.

I stepped away. What the hell is going on? (I knew damned well, of course.) 

He did the same thing the lady had done. He uncovered his hand and showed me that the open purse on his wrist was empty. 

Then he and his partner continued up the hill.

That brighter, more open space we passed on the way to the Belle Arti is full of cafes, so we went there for lunch. 

We stopped at a bar and split a terrific omelette made with spinach and cheese. I had an OK house red, but don’t know what it was. Then Joanna and I shared a crepe.

The man who waited on us had a very good command of English, with a slightly British accent, although I was pretty sure he was Italian.

Later, Joanna asked him what herb was in the pot on the table. He said he didn’t know because he didn’t work there regularly. 

He was there to help out his friend, who had just taken over the place.

He was born in Naples, but has lived for several years in Australia. He was on holiday, as he put it.

While we were eating, a guy came up to us twice trying to sell us a cigarette lighter. Another came through the restaurant begging for change.

We walked a short way farther down a street called Porta d’Alba, which is filled with book stands, to Piazza Dante.

The square is dominated by a public building of some kind which is fenced and gated and has a couple of dozen statues on the roof. Not quite St. Peter's, bit still very Baroque.

It also merits three soldiers standing guard in the middle of the plaza. One was holding a machine gun. 

I’m really having flashbacks to Phnom Penh. The place is filthy and beat up. There are crooks everywhere. 

There’s a 16th century palazzo on our street. The top stories are covered with Baroque sculpture. The walls as high as an adolescent can reach are covered with graffiti. 

Same thing with the Museo Archeologico.

I’m letting this get to me too much. Joanna keeps telling me to lighten up.

After all, we’re being careful, and the food is still good, and so is the wine.

We may go back to the same place for dinner. It isn’t far and there’s light all the way. They also have a selection of craft beer. I may try some of that before we leave.

So here’s wishing you good food and drink. May all your trials be as trivial as mine. And may you send all the pickpockets away empty-handed.

Be well, all.

Harry

Northbound

February 25-27, 2017

We took a long walk on Saturday. There is a fortress in 

Reggio called the Castello Aragonese. I found it on the map and said, “Let’s go.”

We toured the Lido first. We strolled for a while on the beach and revisited the Vittorio Emmanuele III monument. 

I missed our turn and wound up at the Piazza Duomo, a few blocks farther than we needed to go.

A lady heard us talking and asked, “Speak English?” She seemed excited to practice her English. But the conversation kept slipping into Italian so I didn’t get much of what she said.

She was so enthusiastic, though, that it made us uneasy. I was thinking to myself that we were being worked toward something.

Apparently not. She told us about a bed and breakfast nearby, and that she was a teacher.

We asked her the way to the Aragonese Castle and she pointed. We parted and she wished us a happy trip.

The castle is a few blocks from the Duomo. It is a high medieval fortress. It’s in great shape for its age, but I have learned that it has been extensively restored. 

It’s surrounded by a fence and wasn’t open to the public when we were there. I understand that it is used sometimes for art exhibitions.

There are markers on the lawn with people’s names on them. According to a sign, they are memorials to victims of the Mafia. 

We walked back to the hotel and on the way passed Le Palme, the seafood restaurant to remind us where it was.

We went back there for dinner.

We had carbonara di mare. That’s the sauce similar to Roman carbonara, made with egg and black pepper, but this version substitutes tuna for the guanciale.

We followed that with filetto d’orata alla Mediterranea. I think that’s bream. It was cooked with potatoes and olives.

I saw Ciro wine on the menu. Larry told me to be on the lookout for it. It’s a Calabrian wine made at a place called Ciro Marina.

The wine was good, especially considering the whole bottle cost only 12 euros. The really unusual thing about it was the spicy flavor, which reminded me of cinnamon. 

Sunday we went to the 11 o’clock service at the Duomo. Well, we went to most of the service. It’s a considerable walk to the Duomo and we didn’t time it all that well. The sermon was in progress when we walked in.

As I once told the rector at St. John’s in Montclair, I usually get to church in time for the second lesson.

After church, we stopped for lunch at a place called the Bart Cafe on the Corso Garibaldi. It’s in a building that I thought was a hotel, but is in fact a concert hall.

Joanna was pining for vegetables, and there was a selection of them at the cafe. We also had an interesting eggplant Parmagiana. The eggplant was not breaded and fried, and there were slices of hard-boiled egg in the mix.

It had been cloudy all day, and the rain came when we were halfway home. We waited out the worst of the shower by sheltering on the porch of a bank building. 

We walked back to the hotel after the worst of it was over, but had we waited another 10 or 15 minutes, there would have been no rain at all. By the time we got upstairs, the shower had played itself out.

At dinner time, we went downstairs and asked the man at the desk to recommend a place. He gave us directions to a restaurant on Via Roma.

We found the street all right, but the only place open was Pepy’s Pizzeria. We walked a couple of blocks to Villegiante, which also was closed.

We walked around for a while, but the only places open were a sweet shop and a tiny take-out pizza service.

We went back to the hotel where we expected to get a salad and a reprise of a small pizza we had had during our previous stay at the Continental.

The hotel had no food on Sunday. We were about to settle for bread and butter left over from the morning’s breakfast when the desk man said we could have pizza delivered.

Problem solved.

We ordered a Margherita and a Caprese pizza. They are much the same except for the tomato. This Margherita used tomato sauce with mozzarella and a few basil leaves. The Caprese had thin slices of plum tomato instead of tomato sauce.

I’m not sure, but the Caprese may have been closer to a traditional Margherita than the one called that.

I had most of the bottle left that I had bought downstairs the other night, the Gioviano Irpinia Aglianico.

We got our wake-up call at 6:45 on Monday morning. It’s the earliest that I’ve been up in weeks.

We made it out of the hotel around 10 and had our tickets to Naples in hand by 10:30.

Our train didn’t leave till 10 after 3. It was the first direct train available to Naples. I didn’t want to take an option with a change of trains. 

We’re getting better at handling the bags on the long sets of stairs, but a 15-minute window, especially at a station we don’t know, is just too tight.

We took the bags to a baggage office and checked them until 2 p.m.

It was fun to do that because we were being helped by a man who spoke no English and another who spoke about as much as I speak Italian. 

We got it done, though, and I was able to make sure they wouldn’t close the office at a critical hour for riposo.

The trickiest part was setting the time we’d be back to pick everything up. I kept saying “fourteen” and the man didn’t get it. Then I remembered “cuatro dice.” 

That must have been close to it. The man held up both hands: “Do you mean ten ... ” He held one hand up: “ ... plus four?”

Si.

Done.

We walked through a square dodging traffic and admiring a statue of Garibaldi on a pedestal. We walked a block and found another park full of kids in costumes and midway games, although most of those were closed.

Lent starts on Wednesday. That’s why the streets are littered with confetti. Stores, bars, and restaurants are hung with streamers. 

When we went to Villegiante on Friday night, there were streamers and party hats on the tables. We thought it had been reserved for a birthday party. 

Instead, that’s for Carnivale. That’s why there were kids in costume outside the Duomo in Syracuse.

There were a lot more tiny costumed kids in this park. They were at the foot of a temporary stage where costumed adults were dancing and lip-syncing to children’s songs.

We followed a commercial street and as usual it wasn’t marked. We weren’t sure where we were till we came to the Piazza Duomo.

It was the Corso Garibaldi, but a part we hadn’t walked before.

When we got back to the carnival park, we sat on a bench and watched the toddlers leave. They were lined up in small groups wrangled by adults, one leading, another bringing up the rear, and two or three more in reserve.

The children walked in single file, each with a hand on the shoulder of the kid ahead.

We went to Bar Garibaldi, across from the train station, for lunch. We shared a panini made with something breaded and fried, like the innards of a New Orleans po’boy.

The sandwich also had tomato and what appeared to be lettuce, but even better, was in fact basil. Oh, boy.

I had a Moretti on draft that tasted so good I had another.

As I’ve been writing the last bit of this, the train has been heading up the west coast of the Italian peninsula. Sicily is well behind us now.

We’ve been passing through a forest of olive groves. We passed a small river that is the color of cement, probably because it is carrying clay. A herd of sheep walked through an orchard and seemed to go under the tracks.

I’m waiting to get to Napoli. We’ll see what happens there.

Happy Fat Tuesday, gang. Everybody be well.

Harry