Archive for October, 2006
A Packard Bell that keeps breaking, crashing, self-destructing. It has just returned from the shop and I still don’t even have all my programs installed and it is already crashing on start up once a day or so.
After sale service is a real problem in Italy. It is slow and they act like they are giving you something that will surely ruin their lives once they give it away. The current problem is Windows XP, which a technician told me was probably installed incorrectly, something that apparently happens quite a lot. It doesn’t like one of the drivers. Which? It won’t say nor does the Microsoft web page say.
At the moment I don’t have word processing nor the camera installed. Ergo: no pretty stuff.
If I didn’t have access to this blog, I wouldn’t even have the recipes I’ve made up over the last couple of years. Desperate stuff!
October 31st, 2006
Two among us were shoppers, so it was my job to get them to shopping, preferably quirky shopping. Our landlord had described to Ann the position of a street of shops, so I aimed the Honda at it and voila!
Even dearer than that long and narrow street were the tiny side streets that opened off it. Some led to the sea and some to stair streets climbing the hills.
I was searching for something particular for my daughter’s birthday, but it wasn’t to be found anywhere. Instead I found something that to my mind was even better, but of course I cannot say what or show it to you until after November 18th. I’d have been clever to photograph the shop owner, but I didn’t want to seem dorky. I was playing sophisticated older woman of the world that day.
Every time we approached the port it looked different. One day there was a tall ship tied up, another day a tug boat. The streets were sprinkled with Coast Guard officers of varying appeal, but eg thought their white shoes were not spiffy enough in any case. Having had a handsome young naval officer as a dad, she is a connoisseur and a tough audience. Once again I couldn’t be dorky enough to photograph them as they passed us.
We ate everyday and I photographed none of it. I never remember until I’ve made an unphotogenic mess of it. Let’s pretend that this luscious eggplant dish is something we ate.
I did take some photos of interesting looking fellows, but later someone borrowed my camera and pushed every button once or twice and they disappeared. Hey, point and shoot means just that. Don’t get fancy. The only photo I took at Pompei was at request and it is pornographic by today’s standards, so you won’t see it here. In Roman times it obviously wasn’t, because it is a fresco on the front of a house, next to the main entry door. You’ll have to go to Pompei to see what it is. Hint: seek out the house of the infamously nouveau riche brothers, Vetii, perhaps the Donald Trumps of the day. I managed a big heel blister that day and had to console myself with a fresh lemon granita, for which lemon juice, seeds and all and slightly sugared, is mixed with crushed ice. Headache town, but lovely. I should have put some on my poor foot.
On the way back to Gaeta our Circumvesuviana train burned its brakes up, so we were offloaded in a place no one knew until another train could come. We missed our train from Naples to Formia, so bought tickets on an IC train that stopped there on the way to Rome. It was an hour late. We limped into Gaeta in the worst of shape that night at bedtime.
We went to Caserta to attend a huge, famous market. Fortunately we saw some buffalos along the way and later had a decent lunch, because we found the market closing up when we arrived. We also parked some three miles or so away from the market and walked across the entire city twice. Whatever we ate we earned it. Caserta is a nice town and worth another visit, but the market turned out to be just an enormous version of my hometown market. In truth, we took a bus part of the way. I went to a waiet in a bar and asked where to buy a ticket. He described a tabaccheria far, far from the bus stop, and then said, “At Caserta a bus ticket is something extra. No one buys them, you just get on and ride.” So we did.
On our last evening we found a great little shop called Clara, full of delicious clothes at 50% off. Money was spent. Happiness was purchased. When I am thin again, more money will be spent. Then we ate a forgettable meal in a restaurant called Re Ferdinando.
I was not enchanted by the food at most of the restaurants. It was not better than home, but our last day, on the way out of town, we stopped at a recommended sandwich bar over the sea. That was memorable. You asked for either a whole or half loaf of bread, and then they filled it with whatever you pointed at. Fresh and lovely mozzarella di Bufala with marinated tomatoes was as good as it gets. We sat at the ede of a terrace about a hundred feet above the sea and munched and moaned. Then we hit the road for Fiumicino and someone’s ride home.
And here’s news: Gia Gina has had a lovely baby girl! Love and kisses to the new family.
October 10th, 2006
Gaeta is terrific. It’s a promontory into the Mediterranean Sea with a deepwater port on one side and a sandy beach on the other. I slogged on down the A1 to collect the two Americane and then we zipped on down toward Formia and then Gaeta. I shall not reveal how lost I became and how we passed our building in the dark, because the number was teensy and in an unobtrusive, not to say invisible place until you got out and walked the street and figured, “It can’t be the butcher shop or the store full of antlers.”
It was good to get in finally, marginally less good to climb more than 80 feet straight up with all the luggage, groceries, pillows and magazines we’d carted. Third floor in Italy is fourth floor in the US, and the ceilings are really high. Three of us cleaned up enough to go out for a pizza and one stayed home, tired.
Things hadn’t altered much for that one the next morning.
A capuccino helped some. The beautiful town helped, too. Everybody had combed their hair, at least.
Then it rained one day, so we of course headed for a beach town to get money from an ATM or Bancomat. Where do you go on a rainy day? Is that right? We go to the beach.
And then we go to a Roman ruin, because I am the driver and I am obsessed with Roman ruins. This one is the seaside villa of the Emperor Tiberius.
I would not like to clean that house without a vacuum cleaner. Or with one. There’s a nice museum, too, but they don’t allow pictures, which is too bad, because there were some stunning sculptures in there found during excavation. Maybe I’ll find some online illustrations later.
The really unusual feature of this home is the party room, otherwise known as Tiberio’s Grotto.
How nice it is when your houseguests do evocative things in romantic places you are photographing. What is she thinking? Maybe about mozzarella di bufala, which is the number one top special food of the area? Or is she imagining what she could cook up for us with these denisens of the grotto?
http://www.sullacrestadellonda.it/archeo/mustiber.htm is a site about the museum. You cannot, unfortunately, see the enormous scale of the boat or the blinding of the Cyclops. They have one leg of the original marble that stayed entire and it was bigger than my car!
October 8th, 2006
Why is that Japanese were once smaller?
Half the food being prepped ended up on the floor when Mum’s kimono sleeve caught it.
Why are Japanese much bigger now?
Mum stopped wearing a kimono.
There’s a lesson in there that I should learn.
October 8th, 2006
