Month: April 2016

Jennifer, thinking ahead about finding places to visit in Naples, found the Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest opera house in Europe. It was built in 1737 for King Charles III.

We came up to the building at night and I didn’t take a picture, but later I noticed that had restoration work was going on outside and not much showed. But do look what it is like inside! Stunning. After the ground floor, the theater is arranged by boxes, including one for the royal family (on the far right).

The Royal Box, with a close up.

 

We had a private box because although there were four chairs in our box, no one else came. We felt a bit 18th or 19th century-privileged. (With a second photo showing some of the detail above our box.)

 

The concert featured the Orchestra at the Theater of San Carlo wit hYevgeny Sudbin playing the Piano Concerto in A Minor by Edvard Grieg. The second half featured Symphony No. 1 in E Minor by Jean Sibelius .

Jennifer picked excellent seats for us since there was a pianist for the first half and we had a clear view of his hands. I couldn’t quite see the left hand, but from our view, it reflected in the keyboard cover. (Sorry no pictures of the performance…how could I?)

Each box had a mirror which reflected the royal box (you can see Jennifer in the mirror taking a picture of the concert hall). Was it used in the past to tell concert attendees when to stand as royalty came and went? It did occur to me it was so that the royalty could check on their subjects. Ha.

For music-interested people, Naples has the oldest continuously-run music conservatory, which began in 1537. We walked by a portion of the Conservatory one day and I heard people practicing (and that was before I knew what it was). Nearby was a street with music books, scores, and recordings to buy (and another full alleyway of used books, for those who loved such things, most of them for one euro).

It was a lovely evening in Napoli.

 

 

 

 

Of course, you should expect another post on finding food I can eat. Jennifer, being a good home teacher, had found several places with gluten-free pizza, so we set out on Friday night to find one. It seemed quite a few blocks away, but we were there almost before we knew it. The menu showed they did have gluten-free pizza, and what is more they had one I could eat.

Jennifer got her pizza and I got mine, with buffalo (bufala) mozzarella, a specialty of this part of Italy. Delicious!

While there, I discovered that they had bufalo gelato! The next night, before the concert (which I will tell you about in the next post), we went back to the same restaurant and had ice cream, made with buffalo milk. Magnificent! If only you could taste how wonderful it was.

Of course, having pizza only once when I can actually order it at a restaurant is certainly not enough, so the first pizza was followed another one on Monday at the same restaurant, but sigh, they were out of buffalo ice cream.

And! another one today (Tuesday) from a suggestion for restaurant for our host, Francesca. The pizza I had today is the famous margherita of Naples.

Since the pizzeria suggested by our host was in the part of the city we wanted to explore today, we went there for lunch. As we were looking for the restaurant, we thought we had found it, but it was the dedicated kitchen for the gluten-free food (picture on the left)! We had to walk a bit further to find the courtyard with the tables.

After I ordered and the pizza was ready, I noticed the cook would come out the door of the kitchen and yell, and a waiter would run up with a special container and come running back down the road with the pizza!  (Jennifer got her pizza faster from the regular kitchen.)

Later in the day, as we were walking home, we passed the dedicated kitchen again and I noticed the multicolored tiles inside, which I had missed the first time. (Sorry bit blurry)

 

 

 

 

 

Julie and I safely survived the drive to the airport in Naples to turn in our car; it was quite painless, in fact, but we were  certainly happy not to be driving once we got off the autostrada and into a taxi taking us to the hotel. As we arrived, the hotel seemed fully in the noise of the city for two women who had spent almost 3 weeks in the lovely southern Italian countryside, but the hotel was nice and had a lovely atrium.

The atrium was full of flowers, fruit, and trees to attract my camera. (You would think I had enough flowers and plants by now, but I did love smelling the orange blossoms.)

Julie departed Friday morning early and  a taxi dropped me off at the apartment I had rented for the week–at the end of the street (pathway?). Cars were not allowed to go on that street (although scooters were everywhere). I had to drag my bags on cobblestone through a group of parents waiting for their children getting out of school for the day; that was the easy part. The hard part was carrying them up two flights of stairs. (The view from the balcony below looking left and then right.)

Later on Friday, Jennifer arrived (a bit delayed because her flight from LA to New York was diverted to Dulles for refueling), but we set out to explore our neighborhood soon after she arrived. I’ve included a picture of another street in our neighborhood (near the Spanish Quarter) in Naples. Although colorful, it has been a convenient place to stay near several things to see (old and not so old–the not so old building with the large piazza in front of it was built after the unification of Italy in 1861).

I did get a few pictures of Vesuvius (part of the purpose for coming to Naples), so I’ll post one now and more later.

Our best delights are saved for the next post or two (if the Internet cooperates).

 

The Slow Food movement started in Italy a few decades ago and since I had read an ESL Reader on the topic (published by Cengage/National Geographic), I was delighted to discover that our host in Benevento is the leader of the Slow Food in his area of Italy. He is a professor, but said his passion was the Slow Food movement. On the day we arrived he told us he and his wife were going to an event that evening on making traditional Italian bread. He invited us to attend and we drove to the event with his wife.

It was held in a Caritas lot next to a hospital. They told me that the space is used for indigent families to garden and have community meetings (or that is at least what I understood in our mix of basic English and Italian).

In the small building they were making what someone said to be “biscuits.” These small donut-shaped items were made with yeast dough, so it took some time. But those eating them said they were flaky and delicious.

We seemed to have come in the middle of this part of the event (I don’t know how many total hours some of the people had been there but I estimate we were there 3-4 hours and we missed the first part).

Then we moved outside–which is where I saw the traditional ovens. By that time, they were baking breads.

Outside, we met three refugees that had been sponsored by the church of our hosts.Two were from Pakistan (one missing from the photo) and one from Mali. They were training for work in pizzerias. They had all been in Italy less than six months. The woman on the right is our host for our rented flat.

The one young man in the plaid shirt (from Pakistan) had a good command of basic English and so we got most of our information from him. He seemed to also be able to communicate in basic Italian. He said he had finished his first course in Italian and was starting his second.

The young men (and the others participating in the event) had made bread, which finally came out of the ovens.)

They seem proud of their products, don’t they? It had been a couple of hours and I thought the event was over, ma no (but no), they had to yet make the pizza.

Finally, we were asked to go back inside the small building to eat and we were served piazza (which, of course I couldn’t eat), some traditionally made cheese (also not eaten by me), and the finally some traditional sausage, which, I will say I ate with gusto (after 4 hours of no dinner) and which I enjoyed very much.

What a fun evening.

Perhaps because Spring has come to Italy, I’ve enjoyed the flowers and taking pictures of flowers. You saw a few in the pictures with the Alberobello post, but here are a few more. If I can remember, I’ll tell you where they are, but you might just have to enjoy their beauty without commentary.

Most of the flowers are at the farm (agritourismo) in Riccia, Molise. We had to book the farm, which is about 20 kilometers from Celenza, because it was the closest lodging we could find. Celenza has one hotel but it doesn’t open until May.

Flowers (and cats) mixed in with trees in bloom….

I’m a little partial to some of the trees, too. This tree was in the yard of our rented place in Benevento.

We shouldn’t slight the dog, chickens, geese, or cats (7 of them) on the farm for all the nice flowers, though.The picture of the buildings is our accommodation on the farm. We ate in the orange colored room and slept in the yellow portion. Excellent stay.

 

Lovely sights, a feast for the eyes.

As Italy is a land full of archaeological sites (in addition to the several hill-top towns we have enjoyed so far), I have to include some great Roman ruins from the town of Benevento.  A town settled more than a couple of thousands of years ago has left some amazing things to see for visitors today.

First is the Arch of Trajan (Roman Emperor from 98-117 AD), quite well preserved for us to enjoy. A nearby church, built in the 700 AD century, had a program to explain the figures on the arch in a DVD program (in English).

 

 

Then we went hunting for the Roman theater, but on the way found the Roman Arches. (Note the one arch with the name of a modern supermarket, Conad, showing through.)

[Update: The pictures of the mix of old and new got lost somehow. I’ve put them in again.]

We then went looking for the Roman Theater, but found a few views in the historic part of Benevento on the way.

After a bit of a hunt, we found the Roman theater. What a find! The fact that you could walk over most of it was wonderful.

And some pictures of the main part of the theater.

If I understand the Italian/English of our host, in the summer they hold concerts in the theater.

 

 

In some places you can see the reconstructed stones against the ancient stones. Wonderful place.

To continue the story of doing family history work in Italy…

When we left on Monday, we had an appointment to come back to Celenza Valfatore on Tuesday morning at 11:00 am to meet with Marie and her brother. We got there on time, parked in the piazza (if you saw how steep and narrow the streets in Celenza are you would park your stick-shift vehicle in the one place that is large enough for 10 cars and is moderately flat) and started walking toward the meeting place (the useful bar from Monday).

(The large picture is of Salla Piazza where we usually park with two narrow streets that cars really do go both directions on and where people park beside their houses on the left!)

As we rounded a curve up the hill by the castle towards the bar, I heard a woman yelling and then saw her leaning out of her balcony saying something like “i toui Americani amici sono qui!” (your American friends are here), repeating it loudly several times. We were then surrounded by a group of people, all talking at the same time, including Marie, the woman we had met the first day and her brother. Some of whom turned out to be Julie’s  cousins (not first cousins, but still in the family). We had a mini-family reunion on the street.

The woman that started the reunion, Maria, is in the purple coat in the middle and her brother is the last one on the right side. Next to the brother is Michele (Michael) with his wife on the far left, and second left, a cousin Maria and a sister-in-law Antonietta.

As the people gathered, they looked and exclaimed over at the pictures Julie had in her notebook of her grandfather’s visit to Celenza in 1973. Michele saw a picture of his stepfather, a first cousin to Juile’s grandfather. I noticed that Michele dropped a tear right there on the street when he saw the picture. He said he didn’t have one of his father from that time. Here is Michele and his wife, Filamena, with the daughter Veronica and her children.

The young men who suggested the best way to see the village on Monday also pointed out the municipal offices and told us to come back on Tuesday (Monday was a holiday for Easter) to see if we could get more information. So on Tuesday morning, we were joined by one the newly found cousins to meet with the town official to check the municipal records. Success! We found the birth record for Julie’s grandfather. He was born in 1889 and emigrated to New York in 1891.

On the next day we also were able to meet with the Catholic priest in Celenza, Father Antonio, and get records from those archives. Julie found her great grandparents’ marriage record; it contained the the names of both sets of parents and the ages of the bride and groom.

With that information, Julie found that her great great grandmother came from the neighboring town, so yesterday we went to San Marco La Catola (on an neighboring hill…can you tell the towns apart?).

There we found the birth record for her great, great grandmother which had the names of her parents! These we found at the municipal office again. They informed us that they have no records before 1820.

Finally, Julie met another Michele, another cousin of her grandfather, who will soon celebrate his 90th birthday.

A rather successful journey for Julie in her search for family records!