Easter in Worcester

 Worcester is a cathedral city on the River Severn in Worcestershire.

Let’s get this out of the way first:  the correct pronunciation of Worcester is “wuus-ter” not war-ches-ter.  The sauce that Lea & Perrins makes here is pronounced “wu-stuh-shuh sauce”.  I had a friend in Nebraska who pronounced it ‘war-chester-shire sauce’.  (She also pronounced ‘hors d’oeuvres’ horses ovaries).

Worcester is about 45 minutes south of Ludlow, and a favourite location for backgammon tourneys.  Scott’s been several times without me and once with.

Now we go together and stay at Brown’s at the Quay hotel.

It’s an eccentric little place converted from the home of an wealthy, eighteenth century merchant.

Yes, that's a silver deer holding 
a tray of champagne flutes next
to a poster of the Hermes 
flagship store in Paris

Brown’s overlooks the Swan Sanctuary, favourite spot for watching the 150-250 swans living here at a given time (more in winter less in summer).

Swans gathering next to one of the many boat
houses along the Severn where we saw several 
single-, four- and eight-man sculling boats 

It’s also an easy walk to the Cathedral, which is a formidable sight. 

Worcester Cathedral on the River Severn at dawn

Part of the original cathedral from the 11th c.

King John (yes there’s only one King John - signer of the Magna Carta) is buried here. 

Among the many caskets and sarcophagi scattered about the church is one I particularly liked.

        Have a look at the detail on the plaque above the casket:

I don't suppose any of my nieces would be interested in recreating
something like this for me.

        Worcester has been around since the Neolithic period (New Stone Age) and was fortified by the Britons around 400 BC.  

So, you know, it’s old. 

Backgammon is older.  From about 5,000 BC, probably in Mesopotamia, and a board was found in King Tut’s tomb in the early 1300s BC.

Anyway, Scott hasn’t seen much of Worcester because he’s usually in an old legion clubhouse playing all day. This time it’s the Easter Bunny Bash, hosted by the Worcester Backgammon Club. 

This sucker weighs about 10 1/2 pounds. 
Scott carries it to all his tournaments.
The silver strip on the right is a 12 inch ruler

While Scott is out playing, I am out walking, dining and sightseeing. The walk along the Severn is pleasant, especially when the sun shines.

A swan statue looking out over
the River Severn

The Severn connects with the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, so it’s not unusual to see narrowboats floating down the river.  It’s also not unusual to see modest pleasure yachts motoring by. (Don’t think ‘super yachts’ they’re too big for this river).

In spite of the wonderful history and good food at good restaurants, it was a crappy weekend. It was cold and rainy, I had a miserable chest cold and Scott won only one match. 

We were glad to get home.

The Villa

  After a really bad night on a pretty nice ferry, we disembarked at the port in Palermo about 8:00 in the morning.

We hadn’t researched exactly where to find a taxi queue at the port, but there was a guy standing near the men in uniform (Port Authority) who saw us and said, “taxi?”

We followed him, Scott learning along the way, that he was indeed no taxi driver, but a gypsy taxi guy. 

Oh well.  He was a pleasant enough fellow and he enjoyed talking to Scott in Italian. He brought his price down (€25 to €20), cash only, and got us to the hotel in no time.

We arrived at the front desk anticipating our room would not yet be available, but at least they would store our baggage.

Only a Five Star Rocco Forte hotel would have our room ready at 8:30 in the morning. Of course they did. 

Let me say a little something about the positively anticipated overnight ferry ride from Naples to Palermo.

If you look closely, you an see the crescent moon setting
just above the hill

First of all, it was a relative bargain at less than €200, including an ensuite outside cabin (with window).  Comparing it to the P&O ferry we took all those years ago from Aberdeen Scotland to Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, this was a couple of steps up: the room had twin beds not bunk beds, a vast and comfortable lounge and an better-than-expected restaurant with white tablecloths and excellent wait staff. The ferry to Shetland was full of motorcyclists who sailed to the Islands every year at Simmer Dim (the longest day of the year). They were scary looking dudes and dudettes but they were actually very nice.  That ferry was full.

The ferry to Palermo was also full.  But full of adolescents and teenagers.  Raucous adolescents and teenagers who ran up and down the hall outside our door all night long. We couldn't tell if they were coming or returning to Palermo - but it being a Monday we guessed they may have been on some weekend school thing.  There were no parents keeping them in line, that’s for sure.

We were just glad to get the hell off that ship. 

And into the arms of quiet, tasteful, tasty Villa Igiea.

I splurged on a room not only with a sea view but with a veranda. 

That whole terrace was ours. We could've had a party!

First: breakfast.

We arrived in the restaurant just as the maître d' came 'round his podium and greeted us as though we were long lost friends. "Hello again! it's so good of you to return!" I remembered him very well, but I do have the feeling the front desk called down to forewarn him we were return guests. The buffet was just as luscious as we remembered: huge strawberries, blackberries, raspberries. Perfectly ripe slices of melon.  Mimosas.

The best thing ever, though, was from the menu:  scrambled eggs a la carbonara. Scott pronounced it the best scrambled eggs he’s ever had. I agreed.

We wandered around the grounds, looking out on the small private harbour, where a three-master was in port readying itself to set sail (it did the next morning just after dawn).

The flowers were blooming all over and the weather was mild and warm in the sun.

Too bad for us, the rain began in the night and didn’t stop for the rest of our time on the island.  Good for us: the bar and restaurant were cozy and inviting and we got to know the staff, and they us!

All in all, a very nice way to end our Italian vacanza.  It was fun to pretend we were rich!

New Neighbourhoods

 Scott was on a mission to find some espadrilles for the summer, and so he researched the best area for shopping in Naples.

At first we decided on Via Toledo, down near the Spanish Quarters because there were lots of shops and familiar brands. 

But then he looked a little more and found a new neighbourhood up one of the many funiculars that transport people up the many hills in town. We could take our fave 140 bus down to the bandstand in the Villa Comunale then walk up the hill to the funicular to a street called Via Scarlatti. 

The Bandshell at the Villa Comunale, where
we alight from the No. 140 bus to catch the
funicular up the hill

Our advisor, Anna Maria at Bar Posillipo agreed that Via Scarlatti is infinitely better than trying to navigate Via Toledo because the former is not a place where tourists gather.

Walking up the skinny streets perpendicular to the main roads going into town is a bit tricky: we have to share the road with cars and motorbikes and other people. The good news is that everyone drives pretty slowly so as not to run anyone down.

Interesting little shops and cafes.  Shops selling Pope Francis bobbleheads (!). Fabric shops, antiques and fripperies. 

Walking toward Via Scarlatti on Via Bernini, we stopped into a shop that was clearly for the upper class where Scott found a very nice pair of suede espadrilles. We also found a Zara where he was pleased to find two pairs of linen trousers.  Now he’s set for Palermo and Rome!

Me - not so much.  Italian fashion is pretty much for slim women.  BUT, there was a Marina Rinaldi shop on the same street, where I was able to find my size. I love MR because mine is often the smallest size they carry.  For instance: I bought this nifty outfit at a Marina Rinaldi in Turin last year. 

My first Marina Rinaldi outfit

When the ladies in the shop asked if I’d been to other MR shops I was able to boast that yes, Turin, Paris, even London!

Scott also found a couple of restaurants in the area.  We chose Senora Bettola for lunch one afternoon.  Jackpot! No menus in English, no English speakers eating.  One long table for 20 elderly friends enjoying a reunion. We were there early and by the time we left, the place was jam-packed with tables full of multi generational families.  I was happy that Scott could speak easily to the waiters - they appreciated it too.

Near the end of our time in Naples, Scott discovered another way to get to the top of our neighbourhood of Posillipo and Via Scarlatti.  We could take our 140 bus the other way then transfer to the C31 that took another set of switchbacks along the back of the hill.  We saw the Diego Armando Maradona Football Stadium - quite an arena.  It took about the same time as going down then walking up to the funicular, but more fun.  And we didn’t get rained on like we would have on this rainy day.

On our last day in Naples we took a taxi down to the Grand Hotel Vesuvio, where we spent about six hours before boarding the ferry. The taxi driver didn’t like the queues of cars descending down Via Posillipo.  When we came to a dead stop, he decided to take a different route and made a U Turn back up about half a kilometre and turned onto one of those skinny little, one-way streets.  It was a series of perhaps a dozen switchbacks, up up up until we were at the top of the hill again, with a faster way down to where the traffic was just coming out at the bottom.  

We may not have gotten to the hotel any quicker, but the ride was really fun. There’s a reason almost all the cars one sees in Naples have some dents!

Our last meal in Naples was fantastic.  The restaurant at the top of Hotel Vesuvio is called Caruso, after the famous Italian tenor who loved to stay at this hotel. Our meal was exquisite.  I started with a beef tartare that matched what I saw looking out the window:

The sun over Vesuvius - beef tartare

It was as much fun to eat as it was to look at it.  The next course was a veal cheek on a bed of mash potato with a red wine sauce.  My god.

What a way to end our stay in our favourite city in Italy. We’ll be back to celebrate my 75th next year.  For an entire month.

Neapolitan Clouds

 Because the view from my window every morning was this,

I had the opportunity to get to know the clouds.  It wasn’t until the end of our two week stay that they really became interesting.  

So I took a few photos, some from the window, many on our walks and from the restaurants: 

I know, heavy on the clouds, light on the narrative.  Hey, gimme a break: sometimes the picture is worth ...  you know.

That is all

Pompeii and a deeper perspective

  This was not a physical trip back to the ruined cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. We had mixed feelings about the first time around.

One thing we didn’t have mixed feelings about was our guide, Elisa Ingoni.

In spite of that first horrid tour - a too-short runabout with 20 other English-speaking tourists - our intrepid guide kept our interest and gave us plenty to see and think about. 

She was so good we asked her to give us a private tour of Herculaneum later in the month. I had wanted to visit Herculaneum since I was nine years old, having just visited Pompeii for the first time. Sixty-three years later, there we were, getting a more educated tour of Pompeii and being introduced very nicely to Herculaneum.

I’ve kept in touch with Elisa over the past 18 months, wanting to make sure she could make time for us in her busy guiding schedule to introduce us to more of Naples.

We ended up taking a very good look at the Archaeological Museum of Naples, which houses much of what was unearthed in Pompeii. (Not including the vast treasures lost from looters down the ages since the ruins Pompeii were rediscovered in the mid-18th century)

The museum visit with Elisa was an eye-opener. The Romans really rated Greek art. Roman artists copied the great Greek bronze statuary, only in marble and plaster. 

They liked to idealise the heads of the famous (statesmen, generals, emperors, philosophers). It was interesting to note one exception to the rule of idealisation: Seneca. That old stoic insisted that he be portrayed just as he looked. Elisa pointed out the long rows of heads, with Seneca’s being the only one with old, unkempt features.

We visited the Erotica room (I call it ‘The Naughty Room’ tee hee) and learned the difference between pornography and erotica. Porn was used to describe the male who acted as female in the frescoes and mosaics.  Erotica was heterosexual encounters. Neither had a negative connotation.  There were lots and lots of penises.  Large ones hanging over doors, small ones used as candleholders, miniature ones used as earrings (!) and other jewellery.  The point is: the penis was a sign of prosperity and not proscribed by puritan or indeed Christian religious taboos.

It was rather fun to see all this with Elisa who educated us away from today’s moral codes.

The mosaics (marble and glass) here are astonishing.  The older ones were made of marble and limited in colours; the later ones added coloured glass. Here's a Googled page of mosaics from the Museum. https://tinyurl.com/ykbc83b9

Some of the tiles are as small as two millimetres square.  The details are intricate and detailed.  The centrepiece of all the mosaics found in Pompeii is the Alexander Mosaic, originally a floor decoration, and an astounding nine feet tall and almost 16 feet wide using over four million tiles. It is being restored, so it’s not currently on exhibit. We hope to see it next time we’re in town.

Statuary from the House of the Faun (named for the statue originally found in the ruins of the villa) and many of the other considerable number of life-sized statuary are featured in their own room.  The boys look like ordinary, rather good looking young men with the exception of their little tails, little horns.  House of the Faun is considered one of the most luxurious aristocratic houses dating from before Julius Caesar, in the Roman Republic. Having read up ages ago about this place and not having been able to see it in person, it was especially gratifying to see the little Dancing Faun in the (bronze) flesh.

I wept.

The next thing Elisa taught us, and used the frescoes as examples, is that the Romans were using perspective and vanishing points over one thousand years before the Renaissance, when they were reintroduced into the arts. Some of these wall-sized frescoes even included bas-reliefs. Tools used to create dead-straight vertical and horizontal lines were found among the ruins: compasses and straight edges, L-squares. As a passionate but ignorant student of Renaissance art history, I was dumbstruck to learn vanishing points and perspectives were that old.

The last rooms we visited at the Museum housed small, everyday household items: silver dinnerware, goblets and flatware, cooking pots and pans.  There was even a bronze speculum on display. Major vuvva twinge.

The afternoon was exhausting but fulfilling and it was wonderful to spend time with Elisa again.  We’ve promised her one more visit in 2026. And this time she’s taking us back to Pompeii to see all the new stuff that’s been uncovered.