Visiting Salerno (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Salerno (Italy) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

We went to Salerno (South of Naples) to look for a more bucolic place to stay than Naples on our vacation.

When the train came in to the station, we found out that as in France, August the 1^st is the beginning of a month-long vacation exodus to the South of a country.  The train resembled a sardine can, because there were so many people in it.

We hopped in and held on around the curves going to Salerno.  I lost balance a few times along with some other people standing on the train.  I just laughed knowing the tickets were oversold.

Absolutely no one in Salerno spoke English.  I was able to get directions in Italian.  At the tourism bureau, Laurent spoke in German to find out the names of some hotels. 

Everything was full except for a place about 2 miles outside of town.  I was willing to go there after lunch in an air-conditioned restaurant.  We found a fast-food place called Golden Burger and ate there.

I knew all my walking would burn off the fat in those fries in no time and ate every last one of them.

After eating, we walked to the hotel, which was about two miles away from the train station.  We made our reservations and looked around our neighborhood.  There were many apartments and markets in this area.  Salerno’s streets were also very clean.  (When I was growing up in Highland Park (an enclave inside Detroit) Michigan, the streets were cleaned every two weeks for public health measures. 

There was a famous Medieval medical school in Salerno that focused on nutrition and commissioned tucinae paintings showing the Mediterranean Diet of their day.  Clean streets for walking to the market must have come down from this period.

The next day, we changed hotels from Naples to Salerno, which required taking a full train again and bus out to our hotel.  We stood with our suitcases and swayed around the curvy mountains down to Salerno.

We unloaded our bags, took cold showers to deal with the heat, and went out to buy some yogurt.  We ate and slept until 4:30 p.m.  Laurent went out and bought roll-up, reed mats for the beach.

After swimming, we rested on our mats and watched the sun go down.

As we were going out for dinner, the hotel managers invited us in for a glass of sweet, white wine and slices of watermelon.  They were happy that a couple on their honeymoon had come to stay in their hotel – The Hotel Suisse.  Laurent and our hotel managers chatted away in German.

We went to the restaurant next door where Laurent ordered spaghetti all carbonara with proscuiutto or pig’s cheek as the ingredient depending on the supply in the local region. 

This Italian version of this dish is good, but I like my American better.  I fry up a ton of bacon until crispy, drain it, and chop it up. (Pancetta is bacon without salt added or pork bellies.)

I add grated parmesan or gruyere and cream to the bacon and serve this over spaghetti or whatever cooked pasta I have on hand.  (I know the value of the commissary.)

I ate large cannelloni filled with ricotta cheese while Laurent regaled himself with deluxe pork.

Then, we ate a light summer entrée of seafood salad with octopus, shrimp, scallops, and mussels in a lemon-and-oil dressing.

I went to sleep on a full stomach all happy with a real Italian seafood meal. 

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

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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

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Visiting the Villa Borghese Museum in Rome (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Villa Borghese Museum in Rome (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

We walked around Ancient Rome’s Forum and admired the columns we could see on roofless buildings.  We ended up at Rome’s current city hall and sat on the terrace on the backside of the building and watched a golden sunset set over the Forum.

A concert was going on in the front of the Town Hall, so we listened to that as Laurent started picking out the various buildings in the Forum that we had passed in front of on our walk with a guide.

I felt like this evening was the first time that I was able to relax in public in Rome; roving bands of gypsy children tried to steal purses in Rome in the 1980s.

We walked back along Via Cavour, which is a bit of a red light prostitute district.  Prostitutes stood on corners and openly solicited people.  The Roland Garros Tennis Courts and the Bois de Boulogne had a serious prostitution problem in Paris during the 1980s, too, with transgender prostitutes from Brazil.

The next day we took the subway to the Villa Borghese Museum.  We bought a Museum guide outside in the park.

The second floor of the museum with paintings was closed when we visited making the Museum free to see the sculpture collection.  Frankly, the sculpture collection in this Museum is so magnificent that I hardly missed the painting. 

My favorite sculpture was Bernini’s rendering of Daphne as she runs away from Apollo.  The Gods turn her into a tree to escape her attackers.  Bernini captured her just as the strands of her hair were turning into leaves. 

I was thankful that I was able to see so much of the art that I had studied in high school and college while I was young and very healthy.

We exited the gardens onto the symmetrical Piazza del Popolo.  From there, we walked to the Spanish Steps.  Everyone gets photos taken in front of the Spanish Steps despite its being “touristy.”

We rushed to the Pantheon before it closed.   The Pantheon is an Ancient Roman Place of worship that the Catholic Church recycled for its use.  There is a huge dome over it.  It made me dizzy just to look up at it.

I had fun walking back to the hotel, looking at all the ancient villas with papal nuncios in them. 

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

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Visiting St. Peter's Square in Rome (Italy) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting St. Peter’s Square in Rome (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After visiting the Vatican Museum, we went outside to St. Peter’s Basilica and Square. 

The interior of St. Peter’s Basilica overwhelms with its twisting Baroque columns in gold designed by the architect and interior designer Bernini. 

Michelangelo’s Pièta of Mary holding her dead son glimmers from the sheer white marble it is made of.  The beauty of the stone almost makes you forget the sad subject matter, and the fact that Mary is absolutely huge; the sculptor’s trick to accommodate the sprawling Christ.

Bernini'a Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini seems to be suspended on nothing as she experiences religious transcendence.

Laurent came back from the crypt where he had been inspecting tombs of popes.  We walked from the cool marble interior of St. Peter’s Basilica outside to the blazing hot St. Peter’s Square.

I liked watching the Pope give his Christmas message from his window looking out over St. Peter’s Square on television every Christmas as a kid in Detroit. 

I even went to Christmas mass at St. Aloysius da Gonzaga Church down the street from my apartment building in downtown Detroit much to the amusement of the priests who presided there.  (They knew I was Protestant at the time.  I was told I could go up to be blessed only with my arms crossed on my chest, because I was a Protestant with a Valois grandma.)

I wanted to stop for a cup of coffee, but Laurent said that would be a waste of money.  I wanted to stand at a Roman espresso bar and read Repubblica newspaper headlines, too.

I could not read Italian very well when we went on our honeymoon.  I can read Italian now thanks to a lot of work at home.  My first books were Rushdie’s La Sonrisa del Jaguar about Nicaragua and L’Isla en Terraforma by Ugo Pirro.  I read Corriere della Sera newspaper if I can now for arts and culture coverage in Italian.

After our big walk around Rome, we took cold showers at home after walking around and passed out for our siesta.  We sat in the air-conditioned lobby of the hotel and wrote “thank-you” postcards to the family.

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


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