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