Why, you ask, am I ear-worming Glenn Miller?

Strung out along a relatively short stretch of less than 50 km of Italy’s stunning Tyrrhenian Sea coast highway, there are no fewer than 13 towns that collectively are known as the “pearls” of Amalfi.

If you enter the drive from the north, they flow in this order: Vietri sul Mare (the ceramic centre we visited in my previous post); Maiori; Minori; Atrani; Ravello; Amalfi; Conca dei Marini; Furore; Praiano; Positano; Cetara; Tramnti; and Scala. In addition to Vietri, as you’ll soon note, our tour saw stops in Ravello, Positano and, of course, Amalfi, where our hotel was located for this part of the trip.

Among the upcoming highlights on the Amalfi part of our trip is one of the best views ever – from the Terrace of Infinity in Ravello, and the surprising location – another massive basilica – where, in an unbelievably elaborate crypt, lie several bits of the patron saint of Scotland!

= = =

In my trip diary's notes at this point, I have written, “Saturday, June 1… Happy Birthday to me! And in Amalfi, no less.”

Our hotels throughout the trip – and la Bussola was no different – all had in common some wonderful breakfasts. After fuelling up, we climbed aboard a small ferry for a trip to the Isle of Capri. (I’m really restraining myself here not to make a reference to “Spinal Tap”’s “Isle of Lucy”. You’re welcome.)

Leslie and I both agreed that the highlight of this part of the tour was the boat trip to and from the island. It was actually Leslie’s second try at getting to see the famed Blue Grotto but, as fate would have it, a windy day meant that some pretty brisk waves were pounding away at the entrance to the grotto and it was closed for the day. (There are, however, online videos shot at the attraction, including this one.) What they all show, frankly, are several reasons why we don’t really regret not having gotten in – a line-up of tourist-packed little doreys chugging in through the grotto’s minuscule opening one after the other like a long floating train and people – whether the hosts or the tourists is not made clear – who seem to feel the need to bellow “Volare” at the top of their lungs inside the echoing chamber.

Sadly, that same “over-touristing” (I just made that up) was also our experience when we landed on the Isle – with a sea of junky tourist shops at the sea level landing and, once up to the higher part, which we reached by funiculare, a sea of really high-end tourist shops fronted by names like Bulgari, Versace, Ferragamo, Fendi, Gucci, Prada and just about everyone who is anyone in the fashion world and possessed of a name ending in a vowel.

That said, the views from the island's heights are spectacular and we did take considerable pleasure in just wandering around some very narrow little streets framed by privacy walls and quite lovely, intimate little gardens. We also found a house where Chilean poet Pablo Neruda lived for a time – his unlikely friendship with an Italian mailman is the basis for a wonderful film called “Il Postino” (“The Postman”), a 1996 Best Picture Oscar nominee and well worth viewing. For God’s sake, do NOT confuse it with Kevin Costner’s execrable 1997 bomb, “The Postman”.

Hmmm… Wandered away from the trip diary there. Sorry.

Here are some shots to confirm the stunning scenery to and from Capri, as well as one from the heights at the upper end of its funiculare:

A typical scene along the coast between Amalfi and Capri includes a seriously fortified Martello style of tower down close to the water, aimed at discouraging pirates from landing, and countless hillside structures clinging to the cliff face at each of the “pearls”.

Positano from the water, the one stop on the Amalfi to Capri ferry run.

Approaching Capri. I tried to count how many shades of blue there are in this photo and gave up after 97.

From the lookout at the top of the funiculare. Imagine drifting out onto your patio and sipping a day-starting cappuccino with a view like this in front of you. Every morning.

PS1... It turns out that one of the most spectacular public restrooms you will encounter in Italy is the one right at the top of the Capri funiculare. Decorated in a tasteful, spotless combination of chrome, glass and ceramic tile, it is well worth the modest fee you have to pay to enter. (Leslie confirmed that the women’s side was every bit as much an oasis as I told her the men’s side was.) In fact, so impressed was our guide, Sharon, she said she was going to add it to the list of tour highlights and encourage all her future group tours aboard the Amalfi-to-Capri ferry to “hold it” until they reached the top end of the funiculare after docking in Capri. (I’m pretty sure she was kidding, but it was an amazing comfort station!)

PS2... Getting on the ferry is one thing, DIS-embarking is positively an adventure when the boat is pitching among the waves at dockside. It is accomplished by means of a drawbridge-like ramp that is lowered from the boat’s stern and rests on the pier with nothing to hold it in place but the ferry captain’s goodwill and about ten guys arrayed along its full length as we were bodily (and very competently!) passed along the ramp to time our last leaping step from its end onto the pier, hopefully at a moment when the underside of the ramp was actually resting on concrete.

This still photo doesn’t do full justice to the experience of trying to get off an alarmingly pitching “Positano Jet”, but it does show the set-up quite well. Everyone on the ramp is a company employee and passengers are passed from hand to hand from the back of the boat along the entire length of the ramp to the pier – much like the suitcase you can see in the hands of the two guys at the pier-end of the precariously rock-and-rolling footpath. Incidentally, what looks like a snowpile by the people's feet at the extreme right edge of this photo is the very start of an eruption of water as another wave breaks against the face of the pier. Three quarters of a second later, the splash is as tall as the people themselves!

Rather than return directly to Amalfi, we did our Flying Wallenda Brothers tightrope disembark routine at Positano where an afternoon limoncello tasting was on the agenda. The experience was classic Italian, but in terms of organization, the polar opposite of our earlier wine tasting at the Mustilli Winery.

For one thing, it was held in a jammed delicatessen where the product was freely offered in wave after wave of cup-filled trays. And the product wasn’t just the classic lemon liqueur; it also showcased two really incredible variations: Cremoncello, a creamy version (think Bailey’s Irish Cream vs. Irish Mist) and a startling taste-bud-eruptor called Meloncino, made with – you guessed it – a melon (cantaloupe) base rather than the lemon base used for the other two.

For another thing, the deli (whose shelves were boggling and would give Ontario’s liquor sales authorities fits – I saw a bottle of Talisker single malt scotch offered on a shelf immediately underneath a box of Rice Krispies) was in full operation during the full time of our tasting, which happened to be set up along the same counter where customers brought whatever they wished to buy to the cash, which was at one end of the counter.

Back-Roads of Britain had arranged – and paid for – platters of traditional Italian antipasto hors d’oeuvres for us along with the unlimited flow of the potent liqueurs, but the message didn’t quite get to a group of young, boisterous US Marines on leave and clearly in town for a good time judging by (a) the quantity of beer and wine they were running through the cash and (b) the quantity of lovely young women with whom they were sharing their shopping. Later, Leslie framed it perfectly when she said they “kind of filled the place”. Our poor guide, Sharon, was left to tackle head-on a group of party-minded American soldiers who were merrily helping themselves to the hors d’oeuvres and tasting cups as they made their way along the cash line.

Which apparently she did very effectively, because to the credit of the US military, these guys – to a man – were (apparently) mortified when it was pointed out just whose food and “free” liqueur samples it was to which they were helping themselves; and as soon as Sharon pointed it out, they pretty much tripped over themselves to apologize to her and anyone in the tour group they saw. They also immediately collected a pretty generous handful of US cash among themselves and tried to push it into Sharon’s hands by way of reimbursing Back-Roads. Sharon, however, refused the cash and said the apologies were more than enough and thus was US – UK détente preserved to fight together another day. (Syria, if current headlines are anything to go by, but I digress.)

Limoncello is a deceptive liqueur. Weighing in at a hefty 30 – 35 percent ABV (Alcohol By Volume), more than twice a typical bottle of wine or about four times the potency of a strong ale, its strength is masked by a wonderful lemon sweetness that makes it seem more like a liquid dessert than a liqueur.

This online description is a tad over-the-top… oh hell, no it isn’t. The writer nails it: “Limoncello is a lemon liqueur. And it's delicious. But it's not a quiet, contemplative drink to savor on a solitary evening at home. Limoncello's flavor is big and bold and bright -- as brash and provocative as a scantily clad Elizabeth Hurley bursting from a pool. It's like swallowing tart sunshine; it carries with it the flavors of the fresh outdoors and the Southern Italian lemons known worldwide for their potency. It's a taste that demands to be shared with someone special, particularly since its simultaneous sweet-and-sour flavors will leave your kisser puckered up.” (From a website called Bar None Drinks – barnonedrinks.com)

Rossi D’Asiago is the brand you’ll find most typically in Ontario’s liquor stores (where, sadly, Rice Krispies are nowhere in sight), but occasionally one or more alternates will show up. So far, Leslie and I both will enthusiastically vouch for any of them as fine examples of the product. Oh, and it's best when served ice cold. Some people even keep both it and the intended serving glasses in their freezers.

For day’s end, Leslie had reserved a table for two at what is not merely Amalfi’s best restaurant, it might well be one of the best restaurants in all of southern Italy – la Caravella. The dinner was just a delight and merits this recitation (just in case you’re ever in the neighbourhood): Appetizers were a shredded fish with butter and fennel sauce sandwiched between crisped lemon tree leaves (me) and a toasted potato mash with anchovies (Leslie). For the main, we both had sea bass in a (surprise!) sauce made from Amalfi lemons with a rich creamy potato mash on the side. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. In a restaurant on the seaside – any seaside – you’re almost always going to find that their kitchen does fish well; because they won’t be in business long if they don’t. And in a really nice restaurant, they do it incredibly well! (It’s the same principle that assures you of an inevitably excellent wine when you order the “vin maison” in a restaurant located in the middle of a wine-producing region.)

Later, we both tried – and failed – to recall when we’ve enjoyed a dessert more. We shared a house specialty – profiteroles filled with the lushest cream filling ever and topped with a drizzle of (surprise!) Amalfi lemon curd.

And being in Campania, we scored an especially tasty locally produced wine – yet another Falanghina. (Hey, don’t mess with success!)

Fortunately, la Caravella was a scant five-minute walk from our hotel – because with the accumulated effects of the evening’s wine and the afternoon’s limoncello, I’m not sure we could have managed much more. (So Les… what are we going to do for my next birthday?)

Here’s their website – and check out the history tab to see (near the bottom of the brief summary of their 50-plus years in business) just who else has been served in their dining room. Talk about some amazing company to be counted among.

Oh, to return to the question I asked in this post's title, here's a brief interlude for the Miller fans in the room to conclude this update.

Pompeii's ashes and Amalfi's lemons

When last we left our intrepid Italy travellers, they were rolling home after a truly memorable tour and tasting at the Mustilli Winery. We pick things up the next day.

The day began with a departure from our Naples hotel and a road trip to Amalfi by way of Pompeii – one of those places that has been on my personal bucket list since first I became aware of the tragedy that annihilated both it and the nearby town of Herculaneum in 79 A.D.

I won’t go into the history here in detail, since its essential facts likely are quite well known, but I’ll add a bunch of tidbits by way of several photos I took during what we were told was actually a light day in terms of crowds. (Apparently, the site is typically way more packed than it was the day we got there, which certainly seemed busy to us.)

Once again, the benefits of being in the company of a graduate in archaeology made themselves quite clear and we came away with a whole lot more than we would have had we visited simply as a clutch of self-guided travellers. So here we go:

Pompeii, you will recall, suffered its suffocating cloud of Mt Vesuvius’s volcanic ash so swiftly and so thoroughly that, eventually, archaeologists were able to learn in astonishing detail what life typically was like in the early morning of an ordinary day in 79 A.D. in a Roman seaport town. There are two main reasons for this: 1. Everything that was buried was incredibly well preserved, and 2. After the hot suffocating ash buried thousands of Pompeiians and their pets, it eventually vapourized their bodies as it cooled and left hollows that, when filled with plaster, yielded casts so detailed that even the victims’ facial expressions could be read.

The results are truly eerie and the effect is like being in the presence of an unwrapped mummy.

This photo is of one of the countless dogs freely roaming the excavation site and I’m sharing it here because when we turned the corner and almost tripped over the leisurely lounging canine, I was sure it had been trained to do this by a present-day Pompeiian with a macabre sense of humour.

Why?

Because perhaps the most famous of the city’s non-human casts is the Dog of Pompeii, and this countless-generations-later descendant appears to have recaptured the panicked 1stC A.D. death of his distant ancestor with a pretty remarkable contemporary tribute. (The actual Pompeiian dog cast was on tour during our visit to the ruins, part of a London exhibit entitled “Life and Death in Pompeii”, so this grab is from Mr Del Ferraro’s English 8 Class blog, http://ddelferraro.blogspot.ca/). But you see what I mean about the living tribute.

Earlier, I talked about Pompeii’s phallic phascination when we toured the Archaeological Museum in Naples. In the ruins of Pompeii proper, meanwhile, it seems that one of the most popular visits is to see what’s left of one of its brothels. (It was the only place in the whole town where we had to wait in line to get in – no pun intended.)

Consorting with prostitutes was pretty much just another form of commerce in the 1stC A.D. in southern Italy. In Pompeii, as you entered the place where the business was carried on, you didn’t even have to be literate because, overhead, like the illuminated panel behind the cash registers at today’s McDonald’s counters, was a painted “menu” of options that the business offered for what was roughly the price of a bottle of wine. You just had to point and say, “I’d like one of those, please”, after which you were escorted to one of the adjacent service bays whose furniture and décor, clearly, were not designed to encourage lingering. (Hey, business is business and even among prostitutes the aim was a fast turnover. Make of that what you will.)

Stone floor; stone bed; stone pillow. The client “suites” in Pompeii’s brothel clearly were not designed for anything but functionality.

This is a close-up of a pedestrian crosswalk at one of the many street corners in Pompeii. The elevated stones show how much care the citizens took to avoid dirtying their feet crossing the roads whose endless horse-drawn traffic would eventually leave a murky mess in the street. But this shot also shows something else. When a visitor to Pompeii wanted to move about in a carriage or cart for whatever reason, he or she had to use one provided by the town. The spacing of the wheels on the city-provided carts, you see, was precisely measured so as to travel between the massive flagstones. In fact, so successful was the practice that the Pompeiian rent-a-carts eventually wore ruts in the narrow gaps between the stones, which you can see quite clearly here. (It’s a reminder that Pompeii had a centuries-long thriving history before the eruption and what you see here is the result of an estimated 700 years of wear and tear before it was wiped out.)

If a Pompeiian household displayed a phallus anywhere near its front door, it meant that visitors were welcomed. If, on the other hand, the visitor encountered a representation of a dog (whether sculpture, painting or, as you see here, a gorgeous mosaic) it was the equivalent of the ubiquitous “No Soliciting” signs that homeowners display on their mailboxes today. The fact that this particular image depicts a dog that is big, black and chained would tend to make the message from this homeowner a most emphatic one.

Despite the fact the city is in ruins, it abounds with shapes and patterns that make for some wonderful photos.

Pompeii’s thermal baths have astounded water engineers ever since they were first uncovered. Built beneath the floors of the baths’ many pools was a system of plumbing and piping so well constructed that a constant flow of well-heated water was circulated throughout the baths. The Romans loved bathing and Pompeii’s baths ensured a constant flow of fresh, hot water, a sanitary plumbing technology that ultimately would be all but forgotten during the centuries of the Dark Ages, a loss that would provide a welcoming environment for the spread of disease and pandemics like the Black Death.

Like every other Roman city of the time, Pompeii had a large and bustling public forum that served as a market centre and location for several of the city’s temples. In this photo, Vesuvius looms in the background. The clouds that obscure what’s left of its eruption-blown summit are simply a meteorological coincidence. Apparently, there are still vents that spit out small amounts of steam, but nothing of the density that these clouds might mistakenly suggest. Officially, however, Vesuvius is still active so maybe one day… who knows?

Pompeii will be a continuing archaeological dig for centuries. Despite the extent of the city that has already been uncovered, even today more still lies buried than has been exposed. Whether it retains its importance in the list of Italian government spending priorities remains to be seen as Italy, like so many other countries in Europe, continues to weather a deepening economic crisis.

It all comes down to just how important people feel it is to know how we got to where we are today. (And speaking as someone whose Italian heritage inevitably means that two millennia ago I probably lost several distant ancestors in the Vesuvius blast, put me down for “Very Important”.)

One of Pompeii’s ironies is that, amid its growing sea of exposed ruins, signs like this one, warning of freshly excavated ruins, will be a part of its landscape for a long time to come.

= = =

The Roman god of weather (that’d be Jupiter, who assumed that portfolio in addition to being the overall head of the entire Roman panoply of deities) was clearly with us on this day because it was only after we left Pompeii and resumed our trip south to Amalfi that the skies opened up and we were pelted with rain for a good part of the journey.

Even on a rainy day, the towns along the Amalfi coast road offer views that are simply gorgeous. The cheerful ceramic face at this overlook marks the town of Vietri sul Mare, the first of the Amalfi “pearls” along the coast road (or the last if you’re travelling north) where it seems that every single business that isn’t offering food or drink is related to ceramics.

Vietri’s history in the production of ceramics is estimated to be at least 600 years old and its output ranges from an endless variety of jewellery through beautiful vases, decorative tiles, table place settings and wall art, to more functional applications like this roughly five-foot diameter round tabletop, whose central design is nicely echoed in a rectangular version visible inside the shop in the background.

And just in case you missed the hint in the principal decorative motif on that tabletop, the Amalfi coast is also home to some of the most amazing treatment of lemons in just about any configuration you can imagine, including a fantastic (and potent!) liqueur called limoncello (pronounced lee-mun-CHELL-o).

Before we left Vietri, Leslie and I made a point of popping into a gelateria and enjoying a lemon gelato cone that simply would leave North American lemon gelato servings weeping with envy! Like so much else I’ve tried to describe throughout this trip log, I can only recommend you add Amalfi lemon gelato to your own personal bucket list.

You don’t have to go as far to enjoy limoncello. In several parts of the province of Ontario, there are sizeable communities of Italians who, I suspect, have demanded that the LCBO import that particular bit of the “old country”. Here in Ottawa, you typically can find two or three different labels in the local liquor stores, and several friends have told me the internet is loaded with recipes for making it at home. (But unless you have an Amalfi lemon bootlegger, all you’ll be making, I’m afraid, is lemon-flavoured liqueur. A Sunkist lemon is a pale imitation of its gigantic, more robust Italian relative, a single one of which can tip the scale at over a kilo in weight.)

I found this comparative photo on a food blog called going-with-my-gut.com and it made me laugh because the author chose to caption it, “Luuuuke… I am your faaaaa…therrrrr.” He also notes that he bought it at a stand where they were priced at 5 Euros per kilo and this giant cost him 7 Euros. As he concluded, if the Amalfi mafia ever throws you lemons, DUCK!

A couple notes about driving the Amalfi Coast road. I have considerable respect now for those who are able to do it, especially our own intrepid Luigi who not only was able to manage driving it, but was able to do so at the wheel of a small bus!

That road is a classic cliffside clinger with turns so sharp there are several large post-mounted convex mirrors along the way so you can see if anything is approaching from the other direction as you head into the turn.

Now that said, drivers also tend to be quite cautious about driving it and when I went looking for a factoid about accident data (Hey, I aim to be thorough in my reporting), I found only comment after comment about how few there really are. One recommendation I do have for the queasy who might have a bit of resident acrophobia… you want to be on the driver’s side of the car travelling south, and the passenger side travelling north. (That’s for North American cars, of course. If you’re English, then naturally it’s the other way around.) Because the plummet is on the right when you’re travelling south.

At day’s end, we checked into a beautifully sited waterfront hotel right in Amalfi – the Bussola. It’s the Italian word for compass and the lobby had a couple of beautiful examples of early ship-borne versions of the navigation aid that I suspect would give palpitations to the guys who host “The Antiques Roadshow”.

I snapped this photo that was on display in the lobby. It shows the hotel under construction (lower right) in 1910. Aside from the fact that many more of the vessels in the harbour today are running with high-powered motors, the overall view hasn’t changed much.

I mean really, how can you beat vistas like these for balcony views?

Caserta PS… If you recall my photo of that gorgeous Caserta staircase that was the first image I used at the start of the last update, you may or may not be interested to know that I’m not the only one who found it a worthy addition to one’s production. And it seems I’m in some major artistic company.

Stretching the truth to an extreme of artistic licence, the producers of the movie based on the Dan Brown book, Angels and Demons, would have us believe that the staircase was the path to the front door of the Sistine Chapel.

Here is a still from a scene in that movie where the cardinals are on their way into conclave in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new Pope. (I doubt they actually walked the 177 or so kilometres between Caserta and the Vatican.) (Photo source: tokyofox.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/italy-filming-locations-angels-demons-2009/)

The same staircase and the massive foyer outside the entrance to the family chapel was used by George Lucas in Star Wars Episode II (“Attack of the Clones”) and III (“Revenge of the Sith”) to represent a part of Queen Jamilla’s palace. (Photo source: en.paperblog.com/a-trip-to-the-south-and-back-in-time-caserta-192482/)

And in a wholly appropriate employment, considering the palace served as the US Supreme Headquarters / Italy later in WWII, the WWII movie “Anzio”, starring Robert Mitchum, included a brief sequence shot on the same staircase.

Not surprisingly, several Italian directors have used the site as well.

We will shortly return you to our regularly scheduled blogging. Thank you for your patience (on both my and our recovering cat’s behalf).

The Days of Wine and Bourbon

One of the disadvantages of caring about the welfare of the rest of your group is that occasionally it can lead to mistakes, however well-intentioned.

On the second morning after coming together with the group, we trickled into the breakfast dining room and struck up a bit of a conversation among those of us who were already there about an older couple in the group whose wake-up call had failed to come through on day 1 and, given their absence here on day 2, probably failed to do so again, or so we concluded.

So two of the ladies among those of us who did get down to breakfast decided to get onto the front desk to rouse the tardy couple who, we assumed, had still not received their wake-up call.

A quick phone call to the front desk returned a commitment that someone would immediately be dispatched to the room in question and rouse the couple with a firm door-knocking. Not five minutes later, the older couple in question came cheerfully into the breakfast dining room and told us they had indeed received their wake-up call as requested. Then, in response to a couple follow-up questions, it turned out they were not, in fact, in the room to which our two well-intentioned group members had dispatched the someone from the front desk.

Later, we discovered that the room to which the front desk person had been sent had been occupied by a Back-Roads employee who was also in our company by way of familiarizing herself with that particular tour and she, to put it bluntly, had not intended to wake quite that early on that particular day.

(Someone was banging on your door early this morning, Nellie? Really? Woke you up? Nope… I have no idea at all who that might have been. Or why. *Cough*)

= = =

Our first visit on this day was to one of the most incredible summer homes one is ever likely to see.

In the late 1700s, it seems that Charles VII, one of the Bourbon Kings of Naples, was suffering from Versailles envy and decided to recreate a passable version of the renowned French palace in southern Italy, as a refuge to which the Bourbons, their relatives and friends could retire to escape the scorching summer heat of Naples. The Bourbon palace at Caserta is the result.

It counts an astonishing 1200 rooms within its considerable walls and its layout, which captures four huge courtyards, makes it the single largest royal palace in the world. Not bad for a building constructed to serve as what most of us call a “cottage”.

It is, in a word, stunning. Pick your highlight: architecture, furniture, artworks, ceiling frescoes, patterned marble floors. All of them draw your jaw farther and farther downward with each succeeding room you enter.

Outside, the gardens are no less gorgeous and go on forever when you step out the back door (an entrance no less imposing than the front, incidentally).

Here are several photos, which will give you a feel for this spectacular architectural statement that hammers home the message, “Yes, we are royals, and let us remind you of several ways that makes us different from you.”

On the landing halfway up just one Caserta staircase that takes you from the first to the second floor.

The ceiling in one of the 1200 rooms. This is typical of the overhead work in pretty much every single room in the palace!

This is the dome over the altar in Caserta’s family chapel. Clearly, it would not be out of place in most of the country’s cathedrals.

I’m trying to imagine whether sleep would come easily or only with great difficulty when one has a griffon staring with an eternally unblinking gaze back at you from each of your bed’s four corners, not to mention the human figures looking over your shoulder from the top corners of your headboard.

I don’t ever want to encounter any of the descendants of the guard who wore this Etruscan helmet, located just outside the entrance to the family chapel.

Always the artists, Italians have been known to stray some distance from the facts, or even commonly accepted fiction, when it comes to portraying history, whether theirs or other people’s. This is just one portion of Caserta’s massive representation of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem as this particular diorama’s builders saw it. Italian nativity representations are known as “cribs” and the country’s most elaborate are found in the Naples area. Caserta’s presentation of the newborn Christ and his parents places the Holy Family almost incidentally into a scene that includes literally thousands of people engaged in what amounts to one big party.

The Holy Family is framed by the arch of the grotto just left of centre. (You can see Joseph’s halo.) Around behind this view of the crib is at least the same number of people. And even at that, the thousands of figures in this crib are just a portion of the original work, which several years ago suffered the obviously very well-planned theft of many thousands of the figures. Apparently the crib room has only recently been re-opened for public view, despite being somewhat under-populated in comparison to its glory days when Christ’s birth was represented as having occurred – based on the mob of attending party-goers – in a medium to large city.

The palace’s back yard, and this is less than a quarter of the way along the path that bisects Caserta’s gardens from the palace’s back door – visible in the centre of the photo – to a distant waterfall that was the source of its water supply. In Caserta’s Bourbon heyday, the huge fountains and pools supported a generous supply of fish that frequently found their way to the evening dinner tables.

The waterfall, visible as a cascade on the distant hill, is still about a kilometre from this spot, and this spot is about the same distance from the palace’s back door. (The lawn-mowing contract alone must keep more than one local landscaping company busy full-time!) Meanwhile, the gardens splay out a considerable distant to the left and right on either side of this central path.

One final, slightly more modern Caserta note. As the inexorable march of the Allied armies north through Italy late in WWII recaptured more and more of the country from the retreating Germans, Allied high command adopted the Bourbon palace as its Supreme Headquarters / Italy. (No faulting them for their taste!) It was there, in late April and early May, 1945 – after Hitler’s suicide in Berlin sapped the last feelings among the German high command of needing to maintain any “personal loyalty” oath to their Fuhrer – that the pretty straightforward terms (Sign or else!) of the unconditional surrender of all German forces in Italy were finally accepted.

= = =

Back aboard the bus, we were told we were on our way to a tour and tasting at a nearby winery.

OK, now throw out whatever pops into your head when you hear “a tour and tasting at a nearby winery”. (I can say that because I’m pretty sure that just about everyone on my reading list here is a New World resident where winery tour tastings are fairly similar across the continent. With maybe some minor variations, “wine” and “winery” likely mean something whose age is expressed in two digits, maybe even just one, and “tasting” likely means an ounce-and-a-bit in a glass, which, if you’re lucky, is also an appropriate match for the style of wine you’re tasting.)

No, in this case, the winery was located in the ancient town of Sant’ Agata dei Goti, whose history goes back well over 2,000 years where it began life as a town known as Saticula founded by the Samnites, in approximately 350 B.C.

Meanwhile, the winery itself is an outstanding ambassador for several wines that characterize the Campania region of Italy, where it is located. The Mustilli family has been producing wine for an astonishing 700 years, and the winery today is presently run by two daughters of the family line, Paola and Anna Chiara (Paola was our hostess on this day).

About 50 years ago, then patriarch Leonardo Mustilli made the decision to re-introduce grapes that had been native to Campania for centuries but were abandoned in favour of more “international” varietals. Now, Italian connoisseurs – and a small group of incredibly fortunate Back-Roads of Britain tourers – can once more savour some truly unique wines with a pedigree dating back hundreds of years. The region even has its own appellation now: DOC Sant’Agata dei Gota, created especially for its native grape varieties: Falanghina, Greco, Aglianico, Piedirosso, Rosato, Rosso and Passito.

Quick sidebar note: As you might already have inferred, “DOC” is an honourably acquired designation established in the 1960s for Italian wines, “Vino a Denominazione di Origine Controllata”, that places them in a specific region, produced under very specific traditional rules and wine-making practices.

And you know how most North American winery tastings will graciously lay out some complimentary flavour-neutral snacks aimed at keeping your palate somewhat clean? Maybe some cheese and crackers, cubes of bread…? Well, brace yourself; this was what we were served at a sit-down luncheon in a lavishly appointed dining room:

1. Antipasto Casa Rainone, a sea of platters placed on each table containing Mozzarella di bufala (which you will recall from the previous update), ricottina di pecora, sopressata (a wonderfully seasoned salami), arancini al limone, arancini al salame, calzoncini golosi, focaccia della nonna, ‘nfrennule.

(Just for fun, I ran that array through the Bing virtual translator, and here’s what came back – punctuation obviously is irrelevant: “Buffalo Mozzarella, sheep, sopressata ricottina, lemon arancini, balls to salami, sweet bloomers, Grandma's cake, 'nfrennule”.) I assure you our anti-pasto platters were waaaaay more appetizing than “sheep” or “balls to salami” would suggest.

Wines were served for each course in as many repeating bottles as were required until being replaced by the subsequent course. For the antipasto, it was Falanghina del sannio doc.

2. Minestra di stagione, Pacche e fagiole. Here’s Bing again: “Seasonal soup, Pats and fagiole”. Pats? “Pacche” may be a typo if they started with the English word, “pasta”, because even an official translation renders it as “slaps”. And there is a universally popular Italian soup known as “pasta e fagiole” (with pasta and beans). But I digress.

The wines were Fiano doc sannio and Piedirosso doc sannio.

3. The “dulce” ("sweets")course: Macedonia di frutta, Delizia di crema e amarene, Biscotti di nocciole. And Bing actually seems to grab it this time: “Fruit, cream and cherry delight, hazelnut cookies”. The wine? Phileno passito.

And here’s the experience in photos.

First of all, because I was badly positioned on the bus as we rolled into the town to grab this shot myself, here’s someone else’s photo of why it’s considered so picturesque, and why, if you live in one of the cliff-edge homes, you do NOT want to be diagnosed as a somnambulist. (Photo source: bandierearancioni.it/comune/28)

The Mustilli’s dining room during our exclusive luncheon. I almost felt a little guilty treading on those wonderful Persian carpets.

Sadly, our driver, Luigi (left) was unable to share the many glasses of wine we were served with lunch – note the bottle of mineral water beside him – but we were delighted that company policy at least allowed for staff to share in the magnificent lunch. By trip’s end, Luigi seemed as much a part of our merry band as any (more so, in fact, given the number of women in our group who swore they were going to find a way to take him home with them!) In the centre is our hostess, Paola and on the right, Back-Roads employee Nellie (she of the pounded-awake-way-too-early episode reported at the start of this update). Nellie, we were told, was solely responsible for finding the Mustilli winery and recommending its permanent inclusion on the tour. Not a whisper of dissent was heard from any of us.

Optimum cellaring conditions for wine include a constant, cool temperature, low light and minimal disturbance. About 50 feet underground in a cavern hollowed out of the region’s tufa rock has filled the bill nicely for Mustilli for hundreds of years.

Though no longer used for most of its production, Mustilli’s old cellar still stores several bottles of each year’s production of all of their wines for uncorking on those occasions when they hold a specialized tasting called a “vertical” tasting – sampling several different years of the same wine to enable one to understand why some years are considered so-so, and some are considered vintage. (As opposed to a “horizontal” tasting – no, not swilling the stuff in bed, but rather tasting the same style made in the same year from several different regional wineries.) Every day’s a school day on the Internet!

Mustilli’s products are available in North America, if a narrow distribution in downtown San Francisco, as we were told, can be called “available in North America”. Their amazing Falanghina is the rightmost bottle in this shot. A locally produced tasting guide characterizes it as “intense, fruity, long and rich with overtones of red-skin fruit or Annurca apples…” Yep.

And finally for the Mustilli photos in this update, this is our charming and thoroughly knowledgeable hostess Paola back at street level in the old cellar’s tasting bar where we concluded our tour with a glass of whichever of their products we wanted to try. I opted for the Aglianico (pronounced al-YAN-ee-co), which hadn’t been among the wines we were served with our luncheon. A light, friendly and delicious red, it would be perfectly at home at any table with the pasta course.

It was somewhere around this point close to the end of our tour that Mustilli’s unofficial mascot, a purebred and rock-solid Wiemaraner named Nana decided to bolt out the cellar’s front door while one of our tour group members was leaving.

Asked casually if Nana were allowed to roam about the streets of Sant ‘Agata-di-Goti, Paola yelled, “Aieee! No!”, which promptly sent the rest of us flying out the door in hot pursuit. Fortunately, two of our tour members have a sheep farm in Australia and whether it was through their direction or the simple expedient of having eight to ten people all loudly trying to steer Nana with obviously unfamiliar English commands (my memory – you might understand – was someone wine-hazed by this point), she decided that familiar turf was preferable to the streets and after a quick whirl around the block, bolted back in the door as quickly as she had left, leaving us all in Paola’s good books for our Wiemaraner recovery efforts.

Not Nana, but darned close. If an adult version of one of these ever were to smack into you at anything faster than a slow walk, you’d be flat on your butt and wondering when they started making dogs out of brick. (Photo: wiemaranerdog.org. What a surprise!)