Highlights - Naples, Pompeii, Capri and more

The view from the balcony at our apartment in Centro Storico in Naples.

Nativity scenes are huge in Naples. This one depicts Jesus being born in a dilapidated Roman temple to show Christ's victory of it. It also shows everyday Neapolitan life. This was in the museum of the monastery. The lighting slowly shifted from day to night. These are everywhere in Naples and have slightly different settings and characters. The only thing that stays the same are the core Nativity characters of Jesus, Mary, Joseph etc.

Looking out over the Bay of Naples from Castel St Elmo.  You can see for miles from here and have a 360 degree view of Naples.

Napoli underground. There have been underground works here since the Ancient Greeks.

An amphora was sent down a well to collect the water.

The cloisters of Complesso Monumentale Santa Chiara.

The vast and intricate interior of Chiesa del Gesu Nuova.

The Doll Hospital, where they repair old dolls, many of which the customers had as children. They collect old broken dolls so they have the correct parts for surgery.

The pizza making class was fun and we met people from all over the world.

Chef Marco remembered everyone's name even though he had only just met them - even my name, Sweden.

This is the Veiled Christ in the Saint Sansevero Chapel. The body looks almost like it is covered with a wet bin bag yet it was carved in a single piece of marble by Giuseppe Sanmartino in 1753.

These are anatomical machines also in the Chapel- they were designed to better understand the human body.

We visited the Campi Flegrei area, to the west of Naples. It covers a large area that is the caldera of an active supervolcano. Despite this, several towns are built in the area. Earthquakes and the smell of sulphur are a way of life here. There was an earthquake last week at 4.4 on the Richter scale.

Pozzuoli amphitheatre - the third largest ever built by the Romans. Some scholars speculate it was built by the same team as designed the Colosseum.

This is a view from the Archaeological Museum of Campei Flegrei which is on top of one of the hills.

A Roman Villa in Baia. Before it was flattened in the eruption of 1538, it was the Monaco of Italy.

This dome was incredible- it has such intense echoes, it's like something you would see in a fantasy film  where it repeats back to you what you just said. I have never heard echoes like it.

Views from Posillipo- an upmarket district of Naples going back to ancient times. Mount Vesuvius is in the background and on the top left you can just see Castel St Elmo, the castle we showed views from on the first day.

The Marina. There were many couples and also families even though it was after 9:30pm. You often see families out late with young children running around.

The entertaining Alessandro who ran the Food Tour. Here we had: Buffalo mozzarella (the best we have had), sun dried tomatoes, olives, broccoli and a less jaw breaking taralli.

More fried pizza, this time with bacon at the bottom. This was developed after WW2 since all the pizza ovens were destroyed - Naples apparently was bombed around 280 times, more than any other.

Frittatina - this was a way to use leftover pasta. It is mixed with bechamel sauce, cheese and bacon then deep fried. The contrast of the crispy exterior and soft oozing interior is delicious. I suspect this would sell well in Scotland.

Classic margherita pizza with generous toppings. This has Buffalo mozzarella unlike fior de latte like on the food making class - fior de latte is cows' rather than a Buffalo cheese. The margherita was developed for the visit of Queen Margherita after unification - it symbolises the red, white and green of the Italian flag: tomatoes for red, cheese for white and basil for green. As an aside however, the Neapolitans view unification as being conquered by the North.

Rum Baba and Sfogliatelle.

The Catacombs of San Gaudioso. The most interesting part was the burial practices for some of the nobles in the 17th century - they drained the body of all the blood and separated the skull from the rest of the body then placed the skull above a skeleton painting like the photo below. Apparently this practice was much more widely practiced in Spain.

Herculaneum (called Ercolano in Italian), a town destroyed in the same eruption as Pompeii. Where the arches are is where the sea used to come up to but since the eruption in AD79 the sea starts much further out. 300 skeletons were found within these arches.

A shrine to a household god.

Despite looking like a toilet, these amphorae were filled with wine - it was a wine bar. There are quite a lot scattered around Herculaneum as it was an upmarket coastal resort.

These mosaics are the most vibrant I have ever seen.

300 skeletons were found within these arches - they were awaiting rescue by sea.

Our animated guide, Luciano Leone. He kept calling himself an idi-ott guide and an imbe-chill.

Then we took the Vesuvio Express coach on the winding roads to the top of Vesuvius - there were loads of harpin bends. This is what the mountain may have looked like before AD79- it was so tall it had snow on it.

Inside the crater.

Looking over Sorrento Bay. I have never been anywhere where you can see so far on the left and the right. It is like being in helicopter.

This ceiling at Caserta Palace is fantastic - it is the best I remember seeing. It is one continuous fresco designed to be viewed from at least four angles. The perspective is expertly executed and the viewer is made to feel small as the images look down upon you. It is also fabulously edge lit so you can see all the details.

We hired electric bikes to explore the massive gardens. They took a little getting used to but they were quick- on straights you got a lovely breeze as it was a very hot day - around 30 degrees celsius.

The cascade.

Inside a faux-Roman temple.

We enjoyed an evening pasta making class. This is the view from the balcony of the hosts in the Capodimonte area of Naples.

Rolling the pasta for the ravioli and the scialatelli pasta took ages. It goes through the first setting of the machine after which you massage on some semolina, then fold once. You do this another four times and then roll it once through on settings 2, 3 and 4 so it is thin enough.

Ravioli, gnocchi and scalatelli. The scaliatelli had to dry on something like a spindle for 10 mins but not more as it would be too dry.

The view from the apartment where we ate it.

We had an Israeli couple doing the pasta making with us. They were on honeymoon - his wife is from Yemen and he is half-Yemeni and half-Polish. The house prices in Tel-Aviv are more expensive than in London. They told us the average house price in Tel-Aviv was £750,000!

Scaliatelli with a tomato sauce.

At the Green Grotto on Capri.

We jumped in for a swim off the boat. It was quite cool but very refreshing. The Captain threw Peroni cans in for us to drink.

The Faraglioni Rocks again! They are huge up close.

The White Grotto.

Park Astaria had some amazing views. Looking out over to the Sorrento peninsula.

Breakfast at our hotel, Villa Patrizi, overlooking the Sorrento peninsula. 

There were no buses early enough for us so we took a taxi to Anacapri - the car was a Fiat saloon car with a lot of the top cut off to provide an open air experience for the tourists. We had lovely views on the way.

The chair lift at Monte Solaro. Unlike modern ones you still have the original single chair design open to the air. It runs continually so you have to get into position and the chair collects you from behind.

The view at the top is breathtaking. 

On the way back down the chair lift.

At the Lemon Grove tour which was more of an all round farm tour. It was like being in a child's story book set at a farm.

These ladders were specifically designed for the guide's father who owns the farm (it is a family farm). The idea is to stand on a rung and then to push your knee in the one above to lock yourself in place so you can harvest lemons using both hands (they still do it by hand).

Since the late 19th century lemon trees have been grafted onto orange trees as they grow better. Below the notch it is an orange tree but above it is a lemon tree. However, since it still has some of the original branches, it still grows a few oranges as well as lots of lemons. The orange tree roots are preferred, as they are more hardy and disease-resistant.

Aging cured meats.

Pompeii Forum

The Temple of Apollo 

A plaster cast of the victim of the eruption of AD79. The liquid was poured in with the body in situ so the bones are still inside. This was a young girl.

There were many preserved frescoes with lots of colour remaining (although the colours may have become more vivid due to Victorian preservation techniques). The Romans seem also to have developed a version of perspective.

The Roman Navy

Pompeii streets

At the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii- this is one of the most debated frescoes in the Roman world. The most common interpretation is that it depicts an initiation of a woman into the mystery cult of Dionysus, the Ancient Greek god of wine, fertility and theatre. This was illegal in the Roman Empire at certain times; at other times, it was tolerated.

We finished our Saturday evening with a concert of traditional Neapolitan song from the late 19th/early 20th century.

The musicians (pianist, accordion player, double bassist and singer) were excellent, especially the pianist who had a few solo performances.

The view from the Duomo rooftop tour.

Galleria Borbonica. More underground passages. Part of this was originally built as a secret escape tunnel for the Bourbon kings in the early to mid 19th century. The passages were used to shelter from the bombs in WW2. Naples was very heavily bombed due to its prime port location. There was almost no privacy except for this room for women giving birth. Some old beds from WW2. Adults who remember sheltering here hated it but people who were children at the time loved it as there were loads of children to play with and lots of places to explore. They had 7 toilets for 3000 people.

This part of the tunnel (this is the Bourbon part, it extended a preexisting network) was on the same level as the outside so cars could make it down, mostly to sell cigarettes on the black market.

One of our favourite things to do was to wandering the streets of the historic centre of Naples. Unlike many other cities, the poorest people still live in the centre. As you walk the cities you see lots of washing hanging out and even into people's kitchens plus lots of locals engaging in the Italy's favourite pastime - sitting. 

At a fishmonger.

Food and Drink

We had the special. It is a fried pizza with a sort of salted doughnut dough.

For dinner we visited Mamammi. They sold local Neapolitan beer. This is an excellent strong ale with a sweet malty body and clean finish.

Scarpariello - fresh tomato sauce with cheese, basil and pasta. Very tasty overall but what stood out was the pasta - it was just cooked through, no graininess at all, yet wonderfully dense.

Genovese beef - this is a classic Neapolitan dish despite its name. This was outstanding- the beef had the intensity of flavour of corned beef with the lovely soft texture of braised meat. The sweet, slow cooked onions complemented it perfectly. As a side, we had aubergine which was cold but worked really well alongside the beef.

I was feeling slightly unwell due to the heat and intense walking in Positano and Amalfi but a few hours later I fully recovered after eating a massive hot sandwich with burger patties, roast pork and cheese inside (Helen and I shared it because it was huge). Also the bread quality was really good - in England this could have been sold in a half-stale roll.

As we wandered through the Rione Sanita district (considered by a guide as the last authentic district of Naples)  we decided to make our own sandwich - a lovely white roll for 1 euro, 500g of amazing tomatoes for 1.50 euro, 200g of olives from the back of a van, freshly sliced incredibly moist truffled mortadella and fresh buffalo mozzarella. 

 

The Taurasini wine was fabulous. It had a jammy nose, a slightly sweet immediate hit followed by a strong body and a pleasant acidity finishing with soft tannins.

These were refined versions of deep fried street food. My favourite was the Crocche D'Autore and the L'Arancino Dei Visconti.

A nice zingy lemon tart.

We had to wait about 15mins for this sandwich at A’Marenna Sorrento Bakery & Bistrot but it was excellent. It had salami, mozzarella and sweet red onions. It had a strong meaty body with tangy cheese and lovely sweet onions. Occasionally the girls who work the shop sing karaoke which was a hit with some of the tourists.

This was the most viscose and sweet vinegar I have ever tasted- it complemented the olive oil perfectly.

Some more Frittatina and this time a potato croquette called Crocche- the croquette was bland but the Frittatina was very good, even the second time around (we had it from here on the food tour). It is kept in a warmer but still retains a really crisp exterior and an unctuous interior which is really well seasoned.

This was more a cold caramel sauce rather than gelato - it is what you would expect running through a vanilla ice-cream rather than being an entire flavour itself. Very rich with an intense flavour, in small amounts it is amazing.

This was really good and somewhat unusual. The only baked part was the base, the mozzarella and what tasted like a butter based sauce. Then fresh mortadella, pesto and pistachio nuts on top.

Ice-cream desserts.

This one was wonderful. Tiny French meringue pieces, on top of a fior de latte ice-cream over a robust coffee gelato. The sweetness of the meringue and the slight tanginess of the cheese based ice-cream complemented the coffee gelato really well.

The last night was so hot in the evening Helen bought a lemon fan to go with her final gelato. We found a lemon and biscuit gelato which was really good from Valenti (the seller of the salted caramel gelato).

Total step count - 240,487

Total distance -  98.7 miles