Cilento

04/15/11

     Our entire group had to be up and ready and at the Trastevere Train Station at 8:30 the following morning. We got on the bus and prepared for our four-hour journey down the coast. Somehow, me and three other of my roommates each wound up snagging our own row making it much easier to fall asleep! It’s safe to say that I slept the entire ride there other than at our pit stop half way for a bathroom break. 

     When we got there, we had a tour of Improsta Agricultural Farm that followed lunch. For lunch, we were served pasta with Parmesan cheese, as well as several different types of cheese from this area on bread, in particular, Mozzarella di Bufala. After lunch concluded, it was time to tour the farm. This was really difficult for me because it smelled worse than any farm I’ve even been to and it was a long tour. I used my scarf to cover up the horrid smell and it made it quite a bit better! 

Bufala- major zooming since I wouldn't get too close

     From the farm, we had an hour bus ride over to a seaport. As we quickly learned, with how jam packed our days were, we had to take advantage of every minute on the bus to nap. Not being a napper, I was worried about this. However, because I was so tired, I was out within a matter of minutes every time we got on the bus. When we arrived at the seaport, we had a bit of free time. Had the weather been sunny, it would have been even more beautiful than it was with the weather as is. We hung out along the coast on the rocks just taking in the sight until the boats we were meeting with came into shore. When they got in, we got to see all the fish they had caught that day. They explained that the men had been on the seas since 3 am and it was 5 at night. I can’t imagine spending that much time out fishing! 

Hanging out at the seaport

The port itself

Some freshly caught fish

Onboard the fishing boat!

Biggest fish ever

Rome Food & Culture 2011 group shot at the seaport

     When we finished seeing all the fish that they brought in, we loaded back onto the bus and headed to our hotel in Eboli. We had about 10 minutes to freshen up before heading to dinner. We were able to walk to the restaurant, which was called Ristorante Pizzeria Sorriso. When we got there, we were served our antipasta, a massive Mozzarella di Bufala ball. I couldn’t even eat half of it! After this, we were served pasta with sauce, followed by a tasting of their pizza. The whole time, the owner was serving us red wine. In the meantime, our program was taking turns doing karaoke with the owner both in English and in Italian. By the time dinner was over, our table had been served 5 bottles of wine and there were 6 of us sitting there. This was one of the most fun nights I’ve had abroad just hanging out with everyone in our program all together in one place! From dinner, some people were going to try to go out, but my roommates and I came home, changed, and were asleep before you could have said goodnight!

Big Mozzarella di Bufala ball

The table with our Mozzarella balls

04/16/11

     Saturday morning we had to be ready by 8, but breakfast was being served from 7-8 am. We got down there at about 7:30 after having quite the experience with the shower. Our shower had no shower curtain so it was impossible to take a standing shower. Therefore, in order to successfully bathe ourselves without freezing, I had to block the drain and take a half bath half shower. From breakfast, our first stop was the Vannulo Production of Mozzarella di Bufala. If possible, this place smelled even worse than the place the day before. However, while the smell wasn't the most flattering, the experience was really cool! We started out by seeing where the Bufala are kept, fed, milked and eat. One fact we found out that I was surprised by was that when they produce leather from the Bufala, the male ones are killed by the age of 40 days. Females are rarely killed as they are important for reproduction. From the place where the Bufala are kept, we traveled to the small stand where the actual Mozzarella di Bufala is made. Here we got a chance to try extremely fresh mozzarella. I also learned something I found fascinating. Vannulo Peoductions doesn't ship their Mozzarella di Bufala to any restaurants, but rather, all clients are required to put in an order at least two weeks in advance and then are required to travel to their facilities to pick it up. It seems to me that a place like this wouldn't succeed in America as there are clearly faster, more efficient, and cheaper ways to achieve the end product. However, in Italy where there is a culture of obtaining the best of everything, it is a little different and many restaurants are willing to do whatever the necessary means are to get the very best ingredients!

Vannulo Production

Bufala waiting in line to be milked

     After this tour, we went to the Mediterranean Diet Museum & Museum of the Sea in Pioppi. This was a quick tour where we just saw some of the most used fish in the Mediterranean diet. Luckily, this was a quick stop because we were all hungry. We were on our own for lunch, the only meal of the trip. Most of us went to a Panini place where we got to pick the ingredients to put on it. I’m pretty sure this was the most customers the place had had in a long time. After we finished eating, we had some free time before we had to meet at the bus and we hung out along the coast.

One of the fish

View of the Mediterranean Sea from the museum

Group shot along the coast

A couple friends and I hanging out

     From lunch, we headed out to Paestum to have a guided tour of the archeological sites here. While this was very interesting, our tour guide was very hard to understand and it was a two and a half hour tour of both the site and the museum. After this, we traveled to Fabbrica dei Sapori for dinner. Upon arrival, there is nothing more our group wanted to do than eat, but first we took a tour of their factory. They make glutton free pizza so we got to see how that differed and then also watched a pizza being made. It was fascinating that once the dough is made, it takes less than five minutes for the pizza to be made and cooked with how hot their oven is. Finally, we were seated for dinner. We got a chance to try a slice of every type of pizza they offered. I had a little of each in order to save room to try everything. My favorite was the dessert pizza, which was a pizza with Nutella and nuts.

One of the temples at Paestum

Second Temple

Third temple

Top of a column, really puts into perspective how large the columns truly are

Slice of pizza from Fabbrica dei Sapori

     After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and got ready to go out as a program with our program director and her friend who is from Cilento. She took us to her friend’s bar. Because the town is small in general, the bars were tiny so we couldn’t all fit in them. Luckily it was nice outside so we hung out at the tables outside for the night.

Two of my guy friends and I before heading out

04/17/11

     After having gone out, it made it a little more difficult to be up and ready again at 8 am again. We were headed to Salerno for the day, one of the towns on the Amalfi Coast. We only had one stop in Salerno and that was at Giardino di Minerva, a botanical garden. It was cool to see all the plants here. After this, we had two hours of free time in Salerno so a group of us headed down to the beach where we relaxed and walked along the water line.

View from the Botanical Gardens

Hanging out on the beach

Study Abroad 2011

     After this, we met back up together and went to lunch at a pizzeria. Here I had some of my favorite pizza I’ve ever had. I ordered a pizza that had tomato sauce, cheese, and spicy salami. It was extra spicy and hit the spot! After a long weekend, from the restaurant, we boarded onto the bus and headed back to Rome. When we got back to Rome that night around 7, our guys friends were back to so we went out to karaoke night at Scholars. There were a ton of visitors in town so it was really fun and we actually wound up staying there until 3 in the morning when we were under the impression it closed at 2!

The final month countdown...

04/11/11, 04/12/11, 04/13/11, 04/14/11

     Monday morning, I was startled when I woke up to my phone vibrating under my head at about 5:45 a.m. Usually I don’t wake up to my phone vibrating in the middle of a night’s sleep, but looking back, it seems as though it was meant to be that I woke up. When I saw the screen, I saw it was a text from my mom saying, “CHELSEA CHELSEA, I have YOUR passport, do you have mine?” Immediately my heart started racing and I leaped out of bed and when running to where I keep my passport. As it turned out, our passports had been switched at the hotel when the manager took them when we checked in. Knowing I had to make it to the airport at lightening speed, as the flight took off around 8:15ish, I threw a pair of shoes on and went to hail down a cab. Of course, given the time of morning it was, there were no cabs to be found by my apartment so I literally had to sprint as fast as I could all the way down the main street until I hit the Tiber River. I finally found a cab and was incredibly winded. I told him I needed to get to Fiumicino Airport and I think he could sense my urgency and reassured me that we would be there in twenty minutes. Thank goodness he was right and I arrived at Terminal 3, international departures, by a little after 6:20. I walked really fast through the terminal until I found my mom waiting for me at the gate. As it turned out, she didn’t notice until she walked up to check in and the guy told her it wasn’t her! I can’t believe how lucky we are that I woke up and was able to get to the airport in time to still make the flight. Once again, we said our goodbyes and she was on her way back to the U.S. 

     Unfortunately, I didn’t have class until 1 pm that day and was unable to fall back asleep so I just laid in my bed watching some TV until it was time to head to class. Tuesday, for Layers of Rome, we focused on the Jesuits and Piazzas. We started by talking about Piazza Navona, which I found very fascinating as it is one of my favorite spots to hang out in Rome. Originally, this area served as a racetrack built by Domitian. Yet, in the Middle Ages, Rome shrunk because there was limited water supply, making this area uninhabitable. Several years later, water is brought back via aqueducts (currently Rome has 6-8 of them—surprising in my opinion that that few aqueducts are able to supply the water for a city with so many fountains). With the area able to be inhabited again, the Doria Pamphilj family moves in to a house on the piazza and show off their wealth. They built a chapel specifically for themselves that takes up a quarter of the Piazza Navona circuit in itself. In addition to decorating the house, Pope Innocent X (one of the family members) wanted to make sure his family was never forgotten and decorates the space in front of his house. When deciding who to give commission to design the fountain, he throws a competition. While Bernini was the best of the time, the previous Pope had used him and this Pope didn’t want to use the same one. However, Bernini is sneaky and gives Pope Innocent X’s sister a model of what he would build that she leaves lying around the house. Pope Innocent X sees this and employs Bernini without even knowing it! He designed the revolutionary Fountain of Four Rivers, which still stands as the central point of Piazza Navona today. Bernini gets commission for the rest of the fountains in the piazza as well, and designed one that I find funny. Our teacher showed us that if you stand at the right angle, you can see that Bernini purposefully designed it so that it looks as though the figure is peeing in the fountain. 

Old Picture, but the Fountain of Four Rivers in Piazza Navona is in the background

     When Wednesday came around, it was time for our second cooking class. This week’s focus was meats and fish, and we started the class out at a fresh market called Campo de Fiori. We shopped around and the chef Christina showed us what was in season and how she picks and chooses what to buy each week. We purchased some form of greenery to go alongside our fish plate, as well as a type of beans to go with our meat platter. Then, we went to a fish shop and picked up anchovies. I was a little disappointed because I was looking very forward to cooking fish and learning about it, but anchovies are the one fish I’ve had a bad experience with, but I decided to be open minded about it. Then for the meat, we got veal, another meat that I’ve had bad experiences with. Either way, I figured I could learn about the way she prepared the fish and meat and substitute it with a type I like so I was still very excited. 

     When we returned to the kitchen, we were starting with the fish. We were making an anchovy sandwich with mozzarella and sun dried tomatoes. We first had to pull the heads of the anchovies, cut it open, and pull the spine out. At first I didn’t think I would be able to do it, and then I thought, when else will I get the chance to do this so I tried it. While it wasn’t the most pleasant experience, I’m still very glad I at least did it. After doing this, we had to slice the bread and mozzarella, cook the fish in olive oil, and hydrate the sun dried tomatoes. None of this took very long and before I knew it, my sandwich was ready! I started eating it and to my surprise, I loved every bite of it! It was actually delicious and she even mentioned you can use many different types of fish. This is definitely a recipe I want to try again. After eating our sandwiches, we started in on the meat. For this, one partner was in charge of cooking the meat, while the other cooked the vegetables. I chose to do the vegetables because veal is very unappealing to me. I still watched what they were doing though so I would know how to replicate it in the future. Something all of our roommates have picked up since this is adding a little wine to the olive oil after the meat has cooked for a bit to give it more flavor. 

Gutting the anchovies... disgusting

Finalized Anchovy Sandwich

My cooking partner, Alex, and I with our sandwiches

Veal & Beans

     Wednesday night we went out to Coyote with all the guests from Vienna. It was really fun, except it was the first time we’ve had real problems with the security staff at our apartments. They wouldn’t let anyone through without IDs so our friends were all stuck outside until 5 am when security leaves. Thursday, our guy friends from Barcelona were in Rome for the day before heading to the Amalfi Coast for the weekend. They were coming back to Rome for a couple of days on Sunday night, but we took advantage of the full day we had. We met them after Italian class and skipped our Italian Culture & Society class to show them around. We showed them Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, and got gelato, but left the rest of the sight seeing for next week when they returned. After this, we stopped in a pub called Abbey Theater for a couple drinks before going to dinner. For dinner, we tried to go to Casetta di Trastevere, but it was too long a wait for them to still catch their bus on time. Instead, we grabbed kebabs and went back to our apartment. When we got back, I packed up my stuff for our entire class trip to Cilento the following day and then went to bed.  

Some of my roommates & I before Coyote

Amalfi Coast

04/08/11

     Friday marked another early start for a weekend of traveling. I was meeting my mom at Termini Train Station at 8:45 to meet her on her way back from Florence.  Our train to Naples left at about 9:30. We got into Naples around 11:30 and I had been dying to go to this pizza place called Da Michele. It’s supposed to be really good and recommended in several guide books, not to mention, it’s the pizza place that Elizabeth Gilbert eats at in her book Eat, Pray, Love. So our first stop was there. It was about a ten-minute walk from the train station, but with all the luggage it felt like an hour! Gratefully, there wasn’t much of a wait to be seated so we put our luggage in the storage compartment and ordered. They only offer two types of pizza at this restaurant, marinara and margherita. I wanted to try a little of each so we ordered a little of both. In the end, I liked the margherita pizza better, although both were fantastic. The dough was definitely the best part. It was very light underneath and thick around the outside. 

Margherita Pizza at Da Michele

Marinara Pizza at Da Michele

     From lunch, we headed back to the train station where we caught the Circumvesuviana, which took us to Sorrento, the first city in the Amalfi Coast. From here, we were going to try to take a fairy alongside the coast that would take us to our final destination, Ravello. However, we were a slight bit confused as to where to catch this fairy and wound up walking all the way down a bunch of hills and stairs to the port. As it turned out, at this time of year, there was no fairy that traveled to the Amalfi/Ravello area and we had to turn around and get back to where we started from. There was no way we were hiking all the way back up hill to get to the train station so we caught a bus. While it wasn’t the most convenient trip around Sorrento, it did allow us to get a feel for the city since we weren’t going to be spending much time there. 

View of Sorrento

     We finally got on the bus and it was about an hour and a half trip to the city of Amalfi. The time seemed to fly by though because the view from the coastline was unbelievable. While I’ve seen pictures, they definitely don’t do it justice! The whole ride consisted of hairpin turns on a road that looked as though it was a one-way street, but instead, cars drove both directions. This includes very large coach size buses. Needless to say, I thought it was pretty cool, but my mom couldn’t bear to sit on the side nearest the water out of fear. Every corner we turned I tried to take a picture, but it was often hard to do for every time I would get lined up for a shot, we would take another hairpin turn and my shot would be out of focus. There was a point in time that we got into a minor traffic jam with another bus and our bus driver had to literally get out of the bus to direct traffic. He had cars and buses backing up along the side of the road so that we could squeeze by them with less than an inch between our cars. 

View of Positano

Traffic Jam

Image you see while driving along the coast when looking down from out the window!

Mom's thrilled!

     When we finally got to Amalfi, we got there just in time to catch the bus up to Ravello. It was about a twenty-minute ride up the hill. This sounds like a lot of traveling in one day, but I thought it was totally worth it because using the route we took, we were able to see/drive through every city along the coast. Ravello is located further up than Amalfi so the bus took us upward towards the sky and it seemed as though the clouds followed us. I had never really thought about the fact that clouds aren’t always as high as they appear. As it turns out, many of the clouds that looked far away from Amalfi actually looked like fog from the heights of Ravello. Luckily, the clouds cleared up by the time we made it all the way up to our hotel. 

Amalfi

     The view from our hotel was unbelievable. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a beautiful view and it remained just as pretty as the sun began to set. Not really having much of a game plan as we wanted this to be a relaxing trip, we opened up a bottle of wine before heading to dinner.

View from our room

As the sun begins to set

At sunset

My mom and I before dinner!

     For dinner, we went to a little family run restaurant called Cumpa Cosima. A woman named Netta runs it and the restaurant has been in her family for nearly 65 years. We walked in and couldn’t decide on an appetizer when her son, who was our waiter that evening, suggested we order Netta’s homemade pasta with meatballs, so we did! It was delicious. For my main course, I ordered seafood pasta as I had really been looking forward to trying the seafood here given it’s located right alongside the Mediterranean Sea. The dish was even better than I’d imagined and I quickly finished it. For dessert, Netta brought out one of her famous lemon cakes that we split. At one point during the meal, her son, after having told us he runs the deli next door, came up to me and covered my eyes and said try this. He had cut some fresh salami for us. This was a very sweet gesture and it tasted great, I was just caught very off guard! After a long day, we headed back to the hotel after dinner and went to bed at a very reasonable hour!

Homemade pasta & meatballs

Seafood Pasta from Cumpa Cosima

Lemon Cake & Cappuccino

04/09/11

     When we woke up on Saturday morning, we first went to breakfast at the hotel. They didn’t serve a whole lot, but just a typical Italian breakfast. We had our options of croissants, bread with jam, and coffee. We were thrilled about the coffee, had them bring us out two pots, and finished them easily. After breakfast, we decided to lay in the sun for awhile overlooking the sea. As the day went on, the sun was coming in and out so rather than sitting around all afternoon, we went exploring. After showering, we headed out.

On our way to the center of Ravello

Pretty view

     On our way into the town, we planned on going to lunch. However, we got stopped just before reaching the central square by two men outside of a store called Wine & Drugs who offered us a wine tasting and we obliged. We had the opportunity to try about 8-9 different wines including some dessert wines. The drugs were the dark chocolate they let us try! By the time the wine tasting wrapped up, just about all the restaurants were closed because it was after lunch, but not yet dinner time! We weren’t really sure what to do so we wandered around until we found a place that was still serving. It was located right on the main piazza.

Wine Tasting at Wine & Drugs

Lunch on the Piazza

     I really enjoyed the town of Ravello because you could tell it wasn’t nearly as touristic as many of the other towns I’ve had the chance to travel to. As we were sitting around for lunch, we were able to watch little kids playing soccer as well as see the elderly just hang out. At one point, we saw an older man who looked very similar to my great grandpa Rhodenbaugh. When we finished lunch, we shopped around a little and I got my souvenirs. From here, we headed back up to the hotel where we relaxed and even made freshly squeezed lemonade! The Amalfi Coast is known for their lemon production and lemon trees are everywhere in this area, including directly connected to our hotel. Therefore, I walked over and grabbed a couple and my mom mixed the squeezed lemon with some sugar and I’m not sure what else and made some good tasting lemonade!

Off the Piazza

Lemon trees outside our hotel

     After lying around for a bit, we decided we would try dinner at the hotel restaurant because it looked good, plus it had a great view. Here, I tried fusilli pasta with tomato and mozzarella. For some reason, we were super exhausted and after dinner we headed back to our room and were able to fall asleep around 9:30!

Me & the wonderful view!

Fusilli Pasta w/Mozzarella & Tomatoes

04/10/11

     Sunday morning came and it was time for another day of traveling after a very relaxing past couple of days. We showered and got ready before checking out. By the time we got to the bus stop, we realized we had just missed a bus and because it was a Sunday, they left way less frequently and we were going to have to wait another hour and a half until the next one came. When we got down to Amalfi, we had a similar problem and the next bus wasn’t coming for an hour. However, we were hungry so it worked out well. We got some Panini and gelato to tide us over! When the bus came, it was time to return to the white knuckle drive! I loved every minute of it and this time, my mom even ventured over to the sea side of the bus to capture a couple photos. Because the buses run so few and far between on Sundays, we were lucky to get a seat because the aisles were jam packed. I can’t imagine being stuck standing on that ride!

Just some more pretty views

Yet another close call on the roads

Last glimpse of Sorrento

     We got back to Sorrento, hopped back on the train towards Naples, where we got on the train back to Rome. Once again, the train back to Rome was jam-packed and many people didn’t have anywhere to sit. The train ride felt like a long one and my stomach wasn’t feeling that great. However, I didn’t really mind that it was taking that long because I know it was the last couple hours I would get to spend with my mom until I return to the U.S. in a month. She had decided it would be easiest to just got straight from the train station to the airport and hang out there for the night rather than go back to my apartment and have to wake up at 4 to catch a cab. When we got into Termini, I walked to show the way to the train to the airport to say goodbye. 

     As I turned away, I couldn’t help but to start crying given that as great of a time I am having abroad, you can’t help but be homesick. It’s easier to battle when you aren’t exposed to home, but after having my mom around for over a week, it made it that much harder to say goodbye. I couldn’t get too down though because I know I have to make the best of my last month in Rome and I’ll be home before I know it! After saying my goodbyes, I headed back home to catch up with my roommates and hear about their trip to Ireland. They showed me lots of pictures and it just made me more sure that I definitely need to make it back to Europe to go both there and London at some point in the near future.