Rainbow Over Ravello

Dear Charlie and Polly,

Friday was a very rainy day in Ravello. In fact, it rained nonstop from morning until night. But that didn't stop your Doc and Sweetie from getting out and doing some things around Ravello. We put on our raincoats and walked into town for lunch. This is the view from our table while we were eating. Do you think Ravello was crying because it knew we were leaving soon?

Guess what we had for lunch?

After we finished eating, we each had a cup of coffee. When I looked at my cup, this is what it saw. The coffee, the cups, and the sugar were all from Guatemala. Do you suppose the sugar came from the Matzetenango area we visited in Guatemala last February.

The dishes at this restaurant were beautiful. That's because the restaurant is owned by the same people who own our favorite ceramics shop. They make a sell all sorts of beautiful ceramic tiles and dishes. Do you remember my Italian dishes? Last time we were here, we got eight sets of dishes at this same shop. Eight was plenty then because there were only six people in our family. Since then we have added you two and Uncle Greg, so we needed more dishes!

Our dishes don't look like any of these, but I can't show you what ours look like because I couldn't take pictures inside the shop. They are going to mail them to me, so we will have a big Italian dinner and use the new dishes when they arrive.

 

There are ceramic tiles everywhere! This tile os over the fireplace in the living room of the villa.

 After we got home from lunch the owners of the villa, John and Paola, stopped by for a visit. Polly, her name is just like yours in Italian.

They were very nice, and we were so happy to meet them and tell them how much we enjoyed staying in the Villa Ravello. We found out that Paola's parents built this house about 50 years ago. They built it in stages starting with the top level and working down. 

 As we were visiting with John and Paola, this is what we saw outside. Ravello truly is somewhere over the rainbow…

 I wish I could say that the rainbow was the end of the rain, but that was not the case. It continued to rain, so we called Stefano, our friendly driver who picked us up in Sorrento, and asked if he would take us to a seafood restaurant in Scala, a neighboring village.

 We had a wonderful meal at Trattoria de Lorenzo. There were only three tables of people there while we ate, and at one of the tables was a couple who were at Mamma Agata's cooking school with us. Small world!

Trattoria de Lorenzo is a small, family operated restaurant. This is Lorenzo and his son. Lorenzo's wife is the chef.

Our entire meal was made from these fish!

Octopus salad… Yum!

Marinated anchovies.

 And delicious Caprese salad with fresh olives.

 Our main fish dish.

It was a  wonderfully fishy meal. So even though it rained all day on our last day in Ravello, we had a great time meeting nice people and eating great food.

 Arrivederci Ravello!

Love and miss you both very much,

Sweetie and Doc

 

Sorrento

Dear Charlie and Polly,

When we were in Italy in 2005 we stayed in Sorrento for a week, and we found a restaurant there we loved so much we ate there twice. The problem was we couldn't remember the name of it or where it was. So Thursday we decided to take a trip to Sorrento and see if we could find the restaurant. We decided the best way to get there was by boat. First we had to climb the steps into Ravello to find a cab to take us to Amalfi, a small town on the coast below Ravello. Since Ravello is high on a cliff, we had to get to the ocean to get on the boat. We met a very nice cab driver, Stefano, who drove us to the harbor in Amalfi. That is the short orange line on the map. The boat ride is the red line.

This is a view of Amalfi. The skies were dark and stormy, but we didn't care!

Our boat was huge!

The inside of the boat was nicer than the inside of our plane flying from Chicago to Rome!

This is another view of Amalfi as we sailed away. I bet it was hard to build those buildings into the sides of cliffs!

The water got very choppy at some points on the trip. It was almost like a roller coaster ride!

We saw this cave as we sailed down the coast. Do you think it is man-made or naturally made? What do you think is in there?

Then we passed by this yacht anchored in a bay. I wonder who is on it!

We stopped at Positano to let some people off the boat and take some more people on the boat. It's a beautiful little seaside town. Can you find it on the map?

We saw this fortress built on top of the hilltop. I wonder who built it and why?

This is the point when we turned back to the north to get to Sorrento. Can you find the big turn on the map? I think this must be a very old lighthouse.

After about an hour and a half on the boat we arrived in Sorrento. Look, the sun is shining!

We were very hungry. I hadn't had anything to eat since Mamma Agata's house the day before! We climbed straight up from the harbor into Sorrento and found this little restaurant at the top of the stairs.

Ristorante L'Abate

First course, bruschetta on warm focaccia bread.

More prosciutto with melons, this time honeydew. Yum!

Our first pizza of the trip!

One of the fun things about Sorrento is wandering through all the little winding cobblestone streets. There are shops and merchants everywhere!

We even found the cobbler who made me a pair of shoes when we were here eight years ago. Guess what, I got some more shoes!

New flip flops!

Salvatore Dali is one of Aunt Neenie's favorite artists. I thought she might like this bronze sculpture.

We looked and looked for our favorite restaurant, but we couldn't find it. We found vegetable markets…

... and stores that sold anything you could possibly make with lemons.

And old Italian men playing cards in the Dominova Seat.

After all that searching, it was definitely time for gelato. How many flavors do you think this gelato store sold?

I had chocolate and Nutella! My favorite.

After our gelato break, we walked and walked and walked some more. Then, guess what? We found it!

I remembered that it was up some stairs and had a beautiful outside eating area.

And there it was.

We made reservations for dinner and continued to walk around Sorrento some more. We finally had to find an outside café and sit down and have a cup of coffee. We were exhausted!
First course for dinner - zucchini flower with ricotta cheese, ham, fried in tempura, served with a sweet vinegar sauce,

Second course - spaghetti with goat cheese, pepper, served with beef ragout Neapolitan style.

Main course - fillet of pork in mustard, savoy cabbage, apple, blueberry sauce and rosemary potatoes.

Unfortunately, there's no picture of the dessert. That's because we ate our desserts before we remembered to take a picture! But here is the empty plate- it was delicious!

L'Antica Trattoria was every bit as great as we remembered!

Stefano, our wonderful driver from the morning came to pick us up and deliver us safely back to Ravello. What a great day!
We love and miss you both very much!
Sweetie and Doc
PS After I posted this, Doc noticed there ARE pictures of our desserts. The waiter took the picture of the two of us before we ate them!

Mamma Agata's Cooking School

Dear Charlie and Polly,

Wednesday was a very fun day for us in Ravello. We went to Mamma Agata's cooking school! Mamma Agata's is a famous Italian chef, and she and her daughter, Chiara, have a cooking school in their home. Their family has lived in the same house for 250 years! It is just down the street from where we are staying, so their view is much the same as ours.

As you can see, we were very excited to get started. We had our own aprons and everything!

This is Chiara in her kitchen.

The first thing we learned to make was eggplant parmesan, So for breakfast we each had some eggplant, pumpkin, and bread. It may sound funny, but it was delicious!

Here Mamma Agata is making the batter for some fritters that we're going to have with our lunch. She doesn't speak any English, so her daughter does all the talking for her.

Chiara is showing us the eggplant parmesan ready to go in the oven.

Mamma and Chiara at discuss cooking tips well the church bells ring in the background.

Mamma Agata doesn't like any American food except Heinz catsup. Chiara said she likes it so much, she will even eat it out of a bowl by itself.

Here, Mamma Agata is cooking Italian sausage with peppers and tomatoes. Yum!

Pasta sauce with two kinds of olives and capers on the left and sausage and peppers on the right.

Doc is getting ready to sample some of the sauce.

This is the view from their terrace. There were just 12 of us in the cooking school so we had fun getting to know each other.

 

This is part of their garden. They only use the food they grow in their garden for their cooking school.

Doc and I were very happy to be there!

Chicken, sausage and peppers, pasta sauce.

Now Mamma is cooking the fritters.

Very tasty!

Eggplant parmesan cool and ready to slice.

First bite was delicious!

Delicious pasta sauce - I can't wait to try this at home!

Looks as good as it tastes!

The chicken was wonderful too.

No wonder Chiara told us not to eat breakfast and to make no dinner plans on this day. We were so full after six hours at Mamma Agata's, we went home and collapsed for a while. Then we decided we better get some exercise to burn off all the calories we consumed at the cooking school. :-)

So we climbed back up to Ravello and wandered around for a while. On our way home, we took a different path than we ever had before. We saw some beautiful umbrella pines.

And then we saw this…

It is the same place where all the pictures of the famous view from Ravello are made. But, it's from the opposite side!

Love you and miss you both very much!

Sweetie and Doc