Visiting the Isle of Capri (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Isle of Capri (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

We started the next day out by going to Naples.  We found our way down to the port and caught the ferry to the Isle of Capri.

I turned my head around and thought the Bay of Naples look pretty in the distance with Mount Vesuvius behind us.

I never understood why people ranted and raved (literally) in Tiberius’s case so much about Capri until we arrived at the harbor of the Isle of Capri.  The crystal blue water around us glistened.  We could see down to rocks in the bottom of the water.

There were yachts all around us with white-haired men and blonds in bikinis.  The area all around the harbor was full of designer clothing stores and accessories firms. 

Once you started walking along mountain paths through all the hotels and villas, the Isle of Capri became very quiet.

Every place on the Isle of Capri was immaculately clean.  No cars or Vespas were allowed on the streets or mountain paths; it was very quiet. 

Bright pink and red flowers streamed down the side of whitewashed walls.  I wished we were staying in a hotel with a swimming pool.  The sunbathers at these hotels with swimming pools seemed to ignore their swimming pools, though.

We paid money to go to a private beach.  Groups of Neapolitan young people gathered at this beach. We swam through grottos and dove down to touch rocks that you can see at the bottom of the shallow water in the sun. 

We took the last ferry back to the Bay of Naples and admired the sun setting behind Mount Vesuvius in the background.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Visiting Naples (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Naples (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Our train for Naples arrived early in the station, but would not depart.  I was anxious to get to the “Land of the Mid-Day Sun” or the “Mezzogiorno” in Italian.  I took the time to write a few notes in my journal:

On the way to Assisi, we passed Lake Trasimeno.  Haze and blue sky hovered above us.  It looked just like the background in most of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings.  I always thought his landscapes were contrived, but there are parts of Italy that have misty sfumato atmosphere on a clear day.

Around Florence, Sienna, and Pisa while we were on the train, we could see from our windows that Italian farmers practice what is called “slash-and-burn” farming techniques. I thought only African countries practiced this fertilization technique.  (North Africa was part of the Ancient Roman Empire when they finally defeated Carthage.  Flaubert’s novel Salammbo has Carthage and Hannibal and his elephant tanks as a subject.)

I learned about this farming technique of slash-and-burn in an East Asian Geography class at the University of Chicago and my AP Biology Classes in high school.  Slash-and-burn fertilization is good for the soil for only about 3 years before harming it.

The train finally started moving, and I spent the morning staring out the window.  Blood-red tomatoes ripened in the sun and made me want to cut them in half, slather some Dijon mustard on the bread, and add the slices of tomato to make a sandwich.  I liked my version of tomato sandwich.  Mayonnaise can easily spoil in the heat.

On the way to Naples, I thought of how dirty Rome was.  Rome, however, seemed downright clean when we saw the garbage strewn on the streets of Naples when we arrived at the train station.

We walked to the hotel.  All along the way, people with sidewalk displays sold cigarettes, razors, and soap.  People tried to sell us watches in several languages until they arrived at French.

Communist graffiti covered the walls.  Inequitable housing codes and standards and lack of enforcement might have caused that form of protest.

Two girls zoomed by on a Vespa and cut off a car.  The car honked at them and the girls shook their fists at the car driver.  The girls were not wearing helmets.

When we arrived at the hotel, I showered and sat in bed while Laurent went out exploring and buying groceries.  Going to the grocery store overseas is a fun marketing research exercise.  You can ask yourself questions such as, “What do they make in a microwave or instant here?”

I picked up my journal and wrote some impressions:

The dirt in Naples unsettles me.  I wrote that both Rome and Naples were dirty and made me think that no one valued the architecture in these places.  It seemed like these cities had no civic pride.  Had corruption taken over everything?

The dark grime probably came from pollution.  Since our visit in 1988, many of the buildings we saw have been cleaned to prevent the grime from eating away at the monuments.

Everywhere in Italy, I noted that people wore fashionable clothes with creases ironed into sleeves, even if they did not have them.  I knew from helping with this chore that we also did this in Detroit and in the South, so insects would not lay eggs in the “burned and smooth” fibers of cotton.

The Appenine Mountain Range runs down most of Italy from North to South.  The mountains keep regional foods distinct as well as accents.  Italian television helped make Tuscan Italian, the language of Dante, the national language.

I watched television and listened to how words were pronounced the rest of the evening as I ate bread, water, and chocolate muffins.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Lunching at Little Napoli in Carmel (CA) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Lunching at Little Napoli in Carmel (CA) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

When my husband was getting his third master’s degree (this one in the teaching of foreign languages), I would take my daughter Florence to Little Napoli in Carmel, California for an early dinner once a week as “Hollywood Etiquette” after picking her up from her Waldorf Charter School in Pacific Grove.

When I arrived at Little Napoli with my small child, I told them Florence was going to practice her “nice manners” for lunch.  We always got to sit at a table by a window in the round room in back that looked out over the garden.  The host would give us the standard menu and the day’s specials orally.

I know children do not initially like all foods, but our deal was that she could get one appetizer she liked all to herself, and I would order maybe one or two more appetizer plates.  I would order a pasta dish to share and desserts for each of us after that.  I would let the waiter know this is what I wanted to do before ordering.

I would get two or three appetizers like the following:

-slices of cheese focaccia bread made with Parmesan cheese

-deep-fried calamari – Florence would eat one and the rest were for me.  She did not like deep-fried calamari

-three-pepper salad in olive oil – Florence liked this salad.  I make it at home, but it is a pain to do, because you have to remove the pepper skins from roasted peppers by hand.  Claudia Roden has a very good technique for doing this in her cookbook for the BBC Series Mediterranean Cookery

-fennel-casserole made with Cabrales blue cheese from Spain. (The Kingdom of Naples and Sicily was one empire under the Bourbons at one time.  Many food products are still exchanged between Spain and Sicily on maritime routes.)

-fresh peas with pancetta (pork belly meat) sautéed in onion, butter, and olive oil with a little black pepper on top

-Capri Salad (insalata Caprese – you can take ferry boats from Naples to the islands of Capri and Ischia) made with basil leaves, tomatoes, and slices of fresh Buffalo milk mozzarella cheese and olive oil and turns of freshly ground pepper

Recipes for all of these items can be found in the following cookbooks:

-Giuliano Bugialli’s Foods of Naples and Campania

-How to Eataly: A Guide to Buying, Cooking, and Eating Italian Food by Oscar Farinetti

-Italia: The Recipes and Customs of the Regions by Antono Carluccio

-The Good Food of Italy by Claudia Roden

-Lidia’s Mastering the Art of Italian Cuisine: Everything you Need to Know to be a Great Italian Cook by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and Tanya Bastianich Manali

-Italy in Small Bites by Carol Field

-Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

After our selection of appetizers, I would order one dish of pasta to share as a main dish.  These pasta dishes were usually on the menu as specials:

-pasta with peas

-pasta with squash

-pasta with cabbage

-pasta with fava beans

-spaghetti with clams

Those vegetables are “traditional” Italian vegetables as well in addition to tomatoes.  Before tomatoes were brought from the New World to Europe, all Europeans almost exclusively ate cabbage.

Clifford A. Wright begins his award-winning book A Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Celebrated Cuisines of the Mediterranean, from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs (with more than 500 recipes) with a recipe for cabbage soup eaten since the Middle Ages all throughout Europe.

For dessert, there was usually something on the menu like the following:

-crème brulee (not Italian, but Little Napoli knows how to make money)

-cannoli

-almond-chocolate torte

Florence asked once, “Why do I have to be on ‘nice manners’ here especially?”

I quickly responded:

1 - Clint Eastwood eats here along with other Monterey celebrities.  Stars, directors, and producers hate ill-behaved children when they are trying to get business done. 

2 - If you are filmed eating, I do not want you to look like a pig. 

3 - Everyone in Hollywood eats Italian, because it’s good for you and not always hideously expensive to prepare.  There are also many vegetarian and vegan dishes in Italian cuisine that help actors stay thin and lithe as well.

When we were done eating, we would go for a walk in downtown Carmel.  Conway of Asia was right across the street and still had Tibetan art as well as Buddhist art from Thailand and Persian carpets. 

After our trip there, we would go to the Phillips Gallery and look at sculpture by the Zimbabwean artist Gedion Nyanhongo.  (I wrote reviews of his work for the Monterey County Weekly – Circulation: 200,00 and Art and Antiques Magazine.)

Then, we would go home and sing to Gwen Stefani songs. 

That was enough for the day!

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie