Vesuvius Erupting!

 Our first day in the flat in Posillipo was unpacking and getting to know the neighbourhood again. 

Scott found a small grocery store a few steps toward town for some essentials, mostly breakfast and supper stuff:  we planned to eat lunch out and graze for dinner during our time in Naples.

The flat had a Nespresso machine, an improvement over the little moka we had in the last flat.

It worked for one cup of espresso and one cup only. We had one of those years ago in the flat in Venice. So analogue. And rather like a tiny little Vesuvius itself: water boiling up to percolate the coffee grounds.

Nespresso is infinitely superior.*

There was a large flat screen television on the wall in the living room.  

Wherever we travel, it’s rare that the television ever gets turned on. But we were in the midst of a fascinating Italian series on the reunification of Italy, as told from the point of view of a Sicilian Prince, The Leopard. We’d been watching it at home and wanted to finish it before setting sail for Sicily in two weeks’ time.

Another new discovery was Lacrima Christi, a local plonk from the very slopes of Vesuvius. Deliciously dry and white.

I’m going to do a little sidebar here about a book I’ve been reading (hard copy!) called Volcanic by John Brewer, a very readable history of how Mount Vesuvius influenced the great and good and the not so good, especially during the heyday of the Grand Tour.

Vesuvius was a favourite spectacle, visited by tourists from all the over the world in the late 18th - early 19th centuries, even North and South America and Japan.  The mountain was quite active at the time and guides would entice visitors up to the top for a look-see down into the roiling lake of lava.  

Today the old girl is pretty quiet.  The last eruption of note was in 1944 but there wasn’t even a little smoke rising while we were there.

Until that first night.

Yes, I’d really enjoyed that Lacrima Christi wine (Latin for tears of Christ), and as I toddled off to bed, I was about to close the curtains before looking out one last time at the mountain and behold!

Rising slowly out of the old crater was a bright golden blob! My God I thought, is Vesuvius really erupting?? Could I believe my eyes?

I ran into the living room to tell Scott, and then ran back. How exciting to be a part of history!

Well, no.

It was a very full moon rising just exactly above the crater. 

I was relieved.

And a little disappointed.

* I was not paid to say that.

A return to Partenopea (Napoli!)

          The name Partenopea is derived from a siren named Partenope, who was unable to lure Odysseus with her voice so she killed herself by drowning in the Bay near a very old town called Neapolis.  Today: Naples.

Yes! We’re back!

After a month in a flat in the Neapolitan neighbourhood of Posillipo, uphill from the chaotic centre of the city, we had such a good time, we vowed to return.

Our plans for an August ‘24 adventure were squelched because of a mishap of mine: actually a misstep when I fell on my ass and fractured my hip.

Six months later, with a new hip (for Scott) and a couple of hip screws (for me), we finally made it back to this ancient Italian city. (Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban areas in the world. And boy it’s seen its share of invaders: Spaniards, French, Normans, you name it.)

For two weeks, we revisited our favourite haunts and discovered new ones; reunited with old friends and met new ones; saw some familiar sights in a new light.

The next couple of posts will be about these new discoveries and rediscoveries.

First, I want to share the places we stayed this time, the hotels and the flat we rented.

Grand Hotel Parker’s - ‘a napoli dal 1870’

We secured our Airbnb flat for two weeks and bought our plane ticks. Then realised we were coming in a day before the flat would be available.

Well hell.

I went online to see what kind of nifty place I could find where we could spend one night and found Parker’s, up on one of Naples’ many hills.

We taxied into town in pissing down rain but found the hotel, overlooking the Bay of Naples, to be elegant and comfortable.

They boast a Two Michelin Star restaurant but we ate in the less fancy (and less expensive ergo ‘meh’) eatery one floor down.

Parker’s has an interesting history in that it was acquired by a noted British marine biologist, George Parker Bidder III, in 1870.  Bidder played a significant role in the Biological Station in Naples and stayed at the hotel when he was in town. He loved the hotel so much he bought it. 

We definitely had a room with a view:

Mt. Vesuvius in the background

Our room was tastefully appointed, but there was a curious item on the writing desk.

Yes, the message in a bottle

The message was a short history of Bidder, telling the story of what he did as part of an investigation of water currents, particularly in the North Sea.  He released over 1,000 bottles with a message inside promising a shilling to any and every one who found a bottle and returned it. Most of the bottles were found within months, but those that weren’t were presumed lost forever. In 2015, however, a bottle was found by a beach walker on the German island of Arum.  The Guinness Book of World Records certifies it as the ‘oldest ever message in a bottle.’

The hotel rewarded us for reading it, with complimentary tickets to the Naples Aquarium located in the Villa Comunale (formerly the Biological Station of the Royal Villa) where Bidder did much of his work.

The aquarium is small but interesting, with several tanks of exotic and colourful fish. A new discovery for us.

 

Our Posillipo flat

It’s in the same neighbourhood where we spent a month in 2023, but right on Via Posillipo and with a view that just didn’t quit. The flat was a little spare but very roomy and well lit.  We took an eccentric little lift to the second floor where the sunlit front bedroom and kitchen dining area opened onto generous balconies with an unobstructed view of the entire Bay, from Mt. Vesuvius to the Amalfi Coast to the Island of Capri. 

We got to look at that for two entire weeks.

Our favourite bus, No. 140 (with its extremely good looking drivers, men and women), stopped right in front of our building to take us down to the centre of town or up and over to some of our favourite restaurants.  (More on those later).

There was no climbing a hellish hill as last time, and the road works and pavement repairs were mostly completed so that walking was a little safer than last time. 

Grand Hotel Vesuvio

Another small glitch in our planning: the decision was made to take an overnight ferry to Sicily and stay at the Villa Igiea for a couple of nights before heading home to Shropshire. But the ferry didn’t leave until 8:00 at night, and we had to vacate the flat by Noon. We spent a bit of dough to spend six hours in a very fancy hotel down on the water, a much easier ride to the harbour. (about £83 an hour). 

Extremely elegant restaurant with a terrace bar up top and another unforgettable view of its namesake and Capri.

Castel Dell'Ovo with Capri in the distance

 

Villa Igiea, Palermo Sicily

It's really hard to find a more gloriously elegant joint than this Rocco Forte pile on a private harbour looking out on the Mediterranean Sea and the craggy hills surrounding the north shores of Sicily. I’ll talk more about this short respite in the last post of this trip.

More soon.

A Supper Club

This is a hairy bullock

    Not to be confused with Harry Bullock, chef extraordinaire, whose food we had the pleasure of dining on this past week.

Evatt & Bullock Co. is a private catering company headquartered at Dinham Weir House here in Ludlow. (https://www.evattbullock.co.uk/)

Our first encounter with this exceptional food guy and his team was last year at a weekend celebration for one of our departed friends. Gathering at the Dinham Weir House set on the River Teme, we were kind of blown away by the food and by the people who created it.

Of course, the food was fabulous, and Scott was particularly taken with a creative way to use egg yolk as a garnish: dry salt-cured, then grated so that it looks a little like cheese.

We enjoyed Harry's food so much that we asked if he might be interested in catering a small group of six.

           Well, yes!

Jen Collins & Harry Bullock of
Evatt & Bullock Co.

So, the six of us gathered for a memorable dining experience at the home of one of our friends.

We were not disappointed.

Harry and his colleague Jen created an imaginative menu just for us:

From some of his signature canapes to inventive ways to serve beets, beef cheeks and other delectables, we were wined and dined as if we were eating in a world-class restaurant. 

Harry brought springtime to the table with his scallop ceviche:

…and his clever take on beetroot

Such a good time was had by all, we have declared this a four-seasonal event.

THE PIG - near Bath

It could also be called THE PIG - near Bristol.

Bath is posher. Bath is cooler (although we never get into Bath, because you don’t want to leave THE PIG).

Let me ‘splain:

THE PIGs are a group of eleven farm-to-table establishments with rooms, across southern England. They are often housed in grand old estates, such as ours outside of Bath. The land includes huge kitchen gardens, chickens, pigs, bees, and a couple of ‘potting sheds’ for spa treatments; even a deer park. 

The main house isn't really the main mansion,
just one of the smaller gate houses, most likely

The Boy and I were supposed to return to Naples and Sicily late last summer, until I fractured my hip.  We had to postpone that trip until next month this year. In the meantime, we made a consolation visit to the southwest, and THE PIG-near Bath. 

On first inspection, the main building is a rambling great house that has been “rusticated” down to a very comfortable hotel.

In the restaurant, the menu has a map on the reverse side showing a 25-mile radius inside of which are all of their suppliers, including seafood purveyors, (yes are lobsters grown off the shores of England). 

The restaurant is situated in what is, essentially,
a hot house: there are live plants on all the tables
 and along all the windows. A gardener comes
every morning to water them all.

We spent four glorious nights here while I was graduating from two crutches to one. And because I was on crutches, Scott booked us a ‘gardener’s hut,’ situated about 100 steps from the main house in an imposingly large kitchen garden. No vast staircases to navigate. 

Our large king sized bed looks at a very pretty ‘Cheney’s’ wood burning stove. 

The weather has turned autumnal and there’s a nip in the air, so we’re glad to have the wood burning stove.

The garden staff is legion and the hotel and restaurant staff are legion in their attitude toward giving their best to their guests. (The management looks for a certain kind of employee - one who is not a Michelin-star wannabe, but a down-to-earth professional.)  

We enjoyed ourselves so much we decide to return after Scott’s hip replacement surgery.

Mid February is just plain crappy weather in England. 

We haven’t seen the sun for several weeks.  I mean, my weather app has said “0 hours of sunlight” every single day for weeks.  It can get pretty depressing.  But THE PIG was a wonderful antidote.  

Our favourite managers, Amy and Sam, were there and remembered us. This time, our room was in one of the many annexes to the main house, 30 steps outside the main entry and up a flight of stairs. 

A couple of prints mounted just outside our room

We looked out on the beehives, chickens and the part of the deer park where the animals gathered to eat the hay set out for them. 

Look at those antlers!

And THE PIG is just how we remembered it: cozy bar, sunny dining room.

After lunch, I took a stroll around the grounds, through the vast garden where empty stalks of brussels sprouts (all eaten of course) stood out like a denuded forest. It’s February so there’s not much growing that’s ready to harvest.  

Except a wonderful surprise:  several beds of French breakfast radishes!

This olive tree must have been here for
 some time. Look at the size of the trunk!

We spent three glorious days this time, mostly inside (too cold, too rainy) and fell into a mini routine of breakfast, then reading, writing, studying (for Scott, both Italian and backgammon) then lunch, an afternoon nap, a cocktail in the drawing room before dinner, dinner, a nightcap then off to bed.

Just what the doctor ordered. 

One of the many fireplaces in the 
public rooms, all lovingly lit by morning.

I should say something about the food & drink. Some of the best venison I ever had was here at THE PIG. Also some of the best smoked trout and excellent plaice fillets. Even my rump steak wasn't bad, but made all the better for a delicious peppercorn sauce. (I've been ordering steak with peppercorn sauce a lot lately, so I know whereof I speak.)

Not everything was Michelin calibre, but enough of it was that our memories are: we want to come back. There was a 'rosti' made of parsnip that was, frankly, awesome. I ordered it several times. They make their own bread fresh several times a day. There's always honey and homemade jams for breakfast, and a homemade apple cider vinegar they offer in the morning to get the gut going.

Eccentric décor in the drawing room

    

    Each evening we'd find ourselves in the drawing room enjoying a pre dinner cocktail. Our favourite place to sit was under two prints by Hogarth: Beer Street and Gin Lane.

    I sit under the evils of gin of course, although Scott's usual has been a gin and tonic. Mine a cosmo.

    We hope to return yet again later this year, perhaps in summer, to enjoy the outdoor dining and sunshine (we hope!)