Jaime
Monday: Chocolate factory and arrival of family
Monday was a day for waking up a bit earlier than we had been for most of spring break because we got the opportunity to tour a chocolate factory in downtown Naples! The daylight savings time change was on Sunday night and Brad had forgotten to change the time on his cell phone (which he also uses as a watch).  Laurie and I were telling him to get out of bed, but he wasn't budging so we finally had to order him out of bed because he thought it was an hour earlier than it was and he was very baffled why we were waking him up so early. Once he realized that he had forgotten he got right out and was ready for the adventure.

We met up with a small group of other Navy wives that Laurie knows and then caravanned to the Gay Odin Chocolate Factory.  It was very impressive to watch their driving skills in the chaos of Neapolitan traffic and being able to stick with each other.  We parked in a parking garage and walked for about 10 minutes until we arrived to the factory.  As soon as we walked through the doors the aroma of chocolate took over our senses.  We met the current owner of the factory and he explained a little bit about the history. 

An abundance of chocolate Easter eggs!

Jaime and Brad with chocolate factory worker

 

Dad walking through a Cuma ruin archway

Mom and Laurie dolloping ravioli filling

Everybody watching mariella with the fried egglplant

The siblings eating the food everybody prepared!

Dad walking in front of the Royal Palace in Caserta

Walking along the 2 mile pond in the Royal Palace courtyard

Walking through Caserta Vecchia

Jaime and Kevin eating lunch on the coast

Bone church in Naples

Kevin in the underground Roman market in Naples

Inside Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri

The factory has been owned by his family since the 1960s however the factory was established in 1922.  There were a lot of the old machines and tools decorating the entrance to the factory and it was filled with chocolate Easter eggs ready to be sold.  We took about a 30 minute tour through the factory. It was actually a lot smaller than I had expected but still a decent size.  We got to see and learn about every process from the cocoa bean to the final product.  We of course got to try some of the fresh chocolate just made, watch workers decorate the Easter eggs, watch the ladies hand filling individual chocolates, gawk at the 1000's of chocolate eggs and other molds waiting to be decorated and wrapped, and see how much dedication and time is put into this quality chocolate.  The demand for chocolate eggs is high during this Easter season.  Their chocolate is only sold from the factory, at one of their 10 stores in Naples, or in a store each in Rome and Milan. 

When we were finished with the tour we bought some chocolate and waited for a phone call from our Mom because they had landed in Rome around 8 am but were going to take the train into Naples. We finally got the call around one of the rush hours, but Laurie's husband John beat us to the train station so we had to wait another hour to actually see them.  It was a great reunion, it had been a little over two months that we hadn't seen them but it seemed like longer, maybe because we are farther away. 

Brad and our younger brother Kevin naturally attached at the hip again and quickly engaged in their goofy games and philosophical discussions. After everyone got settled in we went for a nice long walk through the town of Monte di Procida through narrow streets passing locals, churches and children playing outside. We came to a lookout (John and Laurie call it ‘Mary Mary Belvedere' because of a statue of Mary here) over the water that had a view of the islands of Ischia and Procida, so we stayed for a while and enjoyed the weather and the view. When we walked back Brad and Kevin decided to play hacky sack in the drive way and then convinced my mom and me to join in.  That evening we had a nice and relaxing dinner, drank some wine and enjoyed being together again.

Tuesday: Cuma ruins
Tuesday we had a nice relaxing morning. Brad and Kevin slept in as teenage boys tend to do.  The rest of us drank coffee, read, and just hung out outside enjoying the sunshine.  Finally in the early afternoon we made it out the door and drove to Cuma which is about a 20-25 minute drive from John and Laurie's house.  We squeezed all six of us in Laurie's little Alfa Romeo (John was working) and arrived to the ancient ruins of Cuma. 

It was an ancient Greek settlement of about 8th century BC that is now a major archeological area as well as a touristic site.  There were many tunnels and views down to more tunnels underneath the ground upon which we stood.  There was a very interestingly shaped tunnel, more or less in the shape of a triangle with its tip cut off which led to and was part Sybl's sanctuary. Sybl was a priestess that ruled over the area and was considered a prophet. 

We walked around some ruins of old homes and walked up an original cobblestone Roman road where we could still see the divots left by their  chariots.  Everything was beautiful and green from all the previous rain but we got lucky and stood in sunshine except for one rainfall that lasted three minutes in which it was still sunny out. 

Brad
Wednesday: Pozzuoli Flavian Amphitheatre and Mariella's cooking class
In the morning, Laurie and my Dad rented a silver boxy eight passenger van and our family and crew drove a short distance from Monte di Procido to the Pozzuoli Flavian Amphitheatre, the third largest Roman amphitheatre in Italy.  It served as a reminder that gladiator culture existed all over Italy in Roman times and not just in Rome's Coliseum.  Likely, it was constructed by the same architects that erected the coliseum, and it had a very similar appearance.    

Unlike at the Coliseum in Rome, we were allowed to walk on the sunken center ground where the gladiators fought, which Kevin and I utilized not only to battle with a hacky sack, but also made it easier to put ourselves in ancient shoes.  I stood in the center under a light drizzle and looked up at the crumbling weathered stands and imagined a heavy helm matting a roaring crowd after a victory.  It seems to me that gladiator culture still exists today -- there is no way that the plethora of Americans watch NASCAR for any reason but the crashes. 

We drove back to Monte di Procido for a cooking class with Mariella at La Taverna dei Sapori, excited to learn from the chef of some of the best food we had eaten in Italy.  Pepe uncorked a jug of wine and poured glasses for us to sip on while we cooked.  We beat eggs in a volcano of flour on the counter and rolled out sheets of our homemade pasta then dotted half the sheet with dollops of ricotta, parmesan and basil filling.  We folded it over, sealed it, and clamped the raviolis with cookie cutter serrated shapes. 

Mariella also instructed us how to make eggplant parmesan, a white wine mushroom beef dish, and chocolate lava cake -- all of which we sat down to eat in a lovely dinner after preparing ourselves.  My stomach was on the brink of explosion only after the second of five courses, but thankfully Mariella let us taste her homemade limoncello as a post desert digestif.  It was fabulous to eat together with our family in Italy as it is such an important part of Italian culture. 

Thursday: Caserta & Caserta Vecchia
The next day we drove to the U.S. Navy hospital on the base in Naples so that Jaime could get some cold medicine.  Walk-ins were closed so she had a bracelet strapped to her wrist and was ushered into the emergency room.   It seemed unnecessary but a cold from late night London partying is nasty when it lasts for over a week.  On base we all met up with our parents' old friend from the Navy, Cheryl, and ate at Subway -- good ole American sandwiches. 

It was a golden clear sunny day and we slipped into our gargantuan van and motored to the city of Caserta.  Street vendors lined the fences guarding the maze of hedges in front of the 18th century Royal Palace.  We passed through the palace to a grassy courtyard two miles long with a slightly sloping road on either side of the stretch of fish laden pond that ran its entire length.    Marble statues secured the edge of the hedge of the gardens but were marked with mild graffiti that my dad thought particularly rude. 

My brother Kevin and I had a nice philosophical conversation while the fish followed us up the road towards the waterfall that fed the pond.  We elicited a beautiful rhythmic hacky sack session at the top that received onlooker applause so we agreed to perform for a living.  Travelling towards the palace, the fast pace walk of my Dad, brother and I dominated the girls' as we discussed Montana household projects and random science along the road. 

The inside of the Royal Palace was majestic.  Over a thousand rooms and we only had time to see a fraction of lavish gold and marble-heavy habitats.  There were couches like stretch limousines that several people could have slept on head to toe, marble fireplaces, ceiling paintings, gold pagan statues, and libraries of giant paged books. 

Following Caserta was Caserta Vecchia (Old Caserta) which was the thousand year old medieval town on top of the hill.  Everybody ordered cokes or cappuccinos at a café and we met up with John for the sunset.  I felt strange trying to capture such a magnificent sight on a camera, so I only took one picture.  Hungry dogs followed us all over town until we faded into stone cathedrals.  Kevin and I played a thirty second soccer game with some local Italian guys before moving toward a filling Italian dinner of wild boar sausage pasta with red wine and capped with strawberry liqueur. 

Jaime
Friday: Amalfi Coast
Friday we were pretty successful to get out of the house fairly early.  We all piled in the van, minus John the working man again, and drove to one of the naval bases to meet up with some good friends of our parents and Laurie and John from the Navy, Ben and Cheryl and their two kids Anna Claire and Andrew.  Then our two vans travelled together and drove to the Amalfi Coast!

Once we approached the coast line the road became very sinuous, constricted, and kept rising higher and higher above the water. It was a bit scary but Laurie conquered the roads despite the fact that she was driving a short bus.  She did fake everyone out once swerving into a wider part of the road which made my mom and Cheryl both nervous for a moment. The views were spectacular of the deep water that turned into turquoise and then rocky points and cliffs jutting into the sea. We could even see the Siren Islands which Homer referred to in the Odyssey!

Everyone started to get the grumble down in the stomach region so we stopped in the town of Positano for an excellent lunch.  We parked and then walked a little ways down closer to the water but we were still pretty high up and found a restaurant with a view of the water and we even got to sit outside to enjoy it.  We stayed there for a pretty long time and took in the sun and the wonderful food from Campania. Although we would've liked to have spent a couple days there and on the rest of the Amalfi coast, we did have to beat the rush hour traffic around Naples so we headed home on the long and windy road.

Brad
Saturday: Downtown Naples
Saturday held for us a busy day in bustling downtown Naples.  The streets were packed mostly with Italians our age wearing black fur lined jackets and large lens sunglasses.  Fresh fish, mussels, squid, and octopus were being sold on ice.  Crazy graffiti art was sprayed to alley walls. Tiny man doors were cut out of the enormous ancient double doors built for horse and chariot parking.  Stone skulls and bones decorated the Santa Maria Purgatorio Church that was a Catholic cult focused on death and the afterlife. 

Our party wandered the streets and entered an old chapel that served as the most underrated museum in Italy, Museo Cappella Sansevero.  Inside lay the most intricately carved marble statues that I would compare to the detailed work of Michaelangelo's Pieta in St. Peter's.  The nude woman of "Modesty" was covered with a thin layer of silk -- no easy feat on a sculpture. 

It was a delectable experience to eat pizza in the town where pizza margherita was invented.  I Decumani had a wide selection and we washed down our thin tomato topped flatbreads with a few bottles of Peroni beer.  An accordion player entered and played which prompted my life aspiration of paying an accordionist to follow me with personal theme music. 

Close to the pizza place was the Complesso Monumentale di San Lorenzo Maggiore -- an underground Roman market buried beneath a church buried beneath another church.  Neapolitans do not even bother with demolition, they seem to just bury and keep building on top of structures.  It was neat that, like the amphitheatre, we could walk into all the rooms that used to be ancient Roman shops.  Naples has a poor reputation, but it has become a favorite city of mine in Italy and the world. 

Jaime
Sunday: Back to Rome
After six wonderful days in Monte di Procida we decided to head back to Rome for one day before mom, dad, and Kevin were leaving to head to France for the week. Brad and I actually hadn't been to our apartment for 2 ½ weeks! So we got on a train at noon and arrived in Rome around 2:30 in the afternoon and then made the journey to the apartment.

The metro was of course crowded as ever when we had all our suitcases but we managed through the two stops and made it to the apartment just fine, hot, and sweaty.  Mom wasn't expecting our apartment to be so small, but it probably seemed that way because there were five of us in the small living room.  We then went on a family walk towards our school so they could see the building and the giant door from the outside. We continued on towards Piazza Republica where we made a stop for a light lunch.  Then we entered into the church Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, which is built into old Roman baths called the Baths of Diocletian.  It was one of my favorite churches that I have been in in Rome.  It was beautiful yet not overly decorated and gaudy as my mom put it.  It wasn't as overwhelming as many of the churches are. It was very big and open.  This was a very controversial church because it mixes Christianity and Science inside. 

One of the popes back in the day hired an astromoner, Francesco Bianchini, to construct the Meridian Line inside the church which is almost like a sundial, and at solar noon the sun will shine through this tiny hole on parts of the line showing what time of the year it is. It was very interesting to see and read about. 

At 6 o'clock mass started and we got to hear a man play the giant pipe organ inside for a while. It was an amazing sound to hear in church echoeing its notes around the area. We left the church and sat around the fountain for a few minutes in the piazza and then continued on towards our apartment but stopped and gazed at all the ancient ruins in our area (which are most of them) in the sunset. The lighting was magnificent and it was the perfect temperature out.  Brad and I took the family to the famous Il Boschetto restaraunt which we love so much.

We had an excellent dinner accompanied by the fabulous house wine.  Our usual waiter, Alessandro, loved the family and brought us limoncello on the house. Brad started the topic of our family history back in Germany which occupied our minds for quite sometime, however the family had to wake up early Monday morning so we ended the night around 11 pm and went back to the apartment. 

Once we all got in bed, Brad and Kevin decided to go out for the night and not sleep, but I was rudely awoken at 3:35 am to the loft, where our beds are, swaying and the metal stairs rattling. I was very confused and thought that maybe Brad and Kevin had come home and were swinging on the loft, but I decided that they had no reason to do it nor was it really possible.  I was very tired and dazed and couldn't figure out what it was, so after a few hours I finally fell back alseep once I convinced myself that someone had come in the house to shake the apartment.

When I woke up I thought it was all a dream until I talked to my dad about it and he had said that he noticed it as well.  Turns out, as many of you have seen and heard, that it was an earthquake that struck the next door region of Abruzzo.  The epicenter was about 60 miles from Rome so there doesn't seem to be any damage here but there was a lot in the small towns of Abruzzo.

It is so crazy to think that we are actually here, in this part of the world, during an international disaster. You usually see things that happen on TV in other countries, and  this time  we are here, and close, and experienced part of it. We are very fortunate to have been far enough away to be safe.  Luckily our family made it out of Rome safely with no problems as far as we know since they didn't show up at our door again after they left at 5:30 in themorning.

Well, it's time to get some Italian homework done and make some progress for the week. Until next time, arrivederci!