First, the facts…
… Over four billion pizzas are sold in America every year, 17% of all restaurants are pizzerias, including Italy at World Showcase at Disney World at EPCOT and around about three hundred and fifty pizza slices are eaten every second. Pepperoni is the most popular pizza at just over one-third of all pies ordered.
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Europe, Food, History, Italy, Postcards, Travel, USA, World Heritage
Tagged bouef bourguignon, Canada Poutine, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, Italy EPCOT, Naples, National Pizza Day, Norway Pizza, Pizza, Poutine Pizza, Queen Margherita of Savoy, Sorrento, The Scream, Vincent Van Gogh
Sant’ Agnello itself is a completely separate municipal commune from what is strictly speaking the town of Sorrento and walking the other way was another separate municipality of Piano di Sorrento, which was a working fishing village without the trappings of modern tourism.
The famous Victorian poet Robert Browning, who, it is said, adored Italy lived in this area and mentioned the countryside of Piano and other localities of the Sorrentine peninsula in his poem ‘The Englishman in Italy.’
Posted in Beaches, Europe, Food, History, Hotels, Italy, Literature, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Piano di Sorrento, Pompeii, Robert Browning, Sant' Agnello, Sorrento
Apologies but I am cheating again with the letter Q…
We walked past the Castel Sant’Angelo and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people snaked forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.
We joined the back of it and were pleased to find that it moved quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the widest and the tallest church in the World that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting. It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the information from the guide’s commentary as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of priceless religious artefacts.
After the tour was finished we paid for an optional extra and took the stairs to the top of the dome which involved an awful lot of stairs and a tight squeeze at the very top but we were rewarded with fantastic views across the city all the way back to the Colosseum.
After a final look around the outside of the Basilica we concluded that we were unlikely to see Pope Paul VI today, most likely because at seventy-nine years old he probably liked a lie down in the afternoon, so we left St Peter’s to return to the coach.
Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, History, Italy, Literature, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged a day in Rome, Gladiators and Cardinals, Italy, Rome Colosseum, Sorrento, Vatican, Victor Emmanuel Monument
Continuing the editing of the pictures of my visit to Naples I came across these images at an exhibition about the famous volcano…
I added one of my own…
Posted in Beaches, Europe, History, Italy, Natural Environment, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged bay of Naples, Camorra, Godfather, Italy, Mafia, Mediterranean Sea, Naples, Peter Sarstedt, Pizza, Pizza Margherita, Sant' Agnello, Sorrento
February 9th is National Pizza Day in the USA.
A National Pizza day in USA is not really surprising because over four billion pizzas are sold in America every year. 17% of all restaurants are pizzerias and it is estimated that around about three hundred and fifty pizza slices are eaten every second. Pepperoni is the most popular pizza at just over one-third of all pies ordered.
“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that’s Amore”
The USA makes the extravagant claim that it makes the best pizza in the World and specifically from New York but surely the finest pizza must come from come from Italy. Maybe New York has a claim to make because at 15% the Italians are the largest ethnic group in that city.
Back to Italy. Legend has it that Queen Margherita of Savoy gave her name to the most famous pizza of all on a visit to Naples in 1889.
Tired of French gourmet cooking (as you might well be) she summoned the city’s most famous pizza-maker, Raffaele Esposito, and asked him to bake her three pizzas and she would chose her favourite. Like a judge on a cookery TV programme she decided upon the patriotic version, prepared in the colours of the Italian flag – red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella) and this became the Pizza Margherita.
Everyone in Naples eats pizza, I have never seen so many pizza restaurants in one place, I tried to work out how many pizzas might be eaten here in a single day but I found the number to be so big it was incalculable and I feared that my head might possibly explode.
Interestingly I cannot see that Italy has a National Pizza Day. Maybe the reason why is this. In terms of pizza consumption per population Italy is only fifth in the World. Fourth is Germany, third is the UK, second is the USA but first is NORWAY!
Perhaps not so hard to understand when you discover that the National dish of Norway is something called fårikål – a dubious combination of boiled cabbage, sliced potato and sheep head meat. Norway doesn’t have a National Pizza Day or understandably a National Fårikål Day. It does have a National Day on 17th May each year which seems to cover just about everything including pizza and fårikål.
When I was a boy growing up I am certain that we had a version of lamb stew but we certainly didn’t have pizza!
We had never heard of moussaka, paella or lasagne and the week had a predictable routine. There was absolute certainty about the menu because we generally had the same thing at the same time on the same day every week, there were no foreign foods at all, no pasta or curries, rice was only ever used in puddings and olive oil for removing ear wax.
I can still remember my very first pizza and I consider myself fortunate that it was in Italy, in 1976, my first ever overseas holiday when I visited Sorrento with my dad.
I became an immediate fan of the Italian classic and all of its variants . Just so long as it doesn’t have pineapple on it because pineapple on a pizza is just plain wrong.
And, I am not the only one who thinks this way; in 2017, the President of Iceland, Guðni Jóhannesson said that he was ‘fundamentally opposed’ to pineapple on pizzas.
In his words…
“I like pineapples, just not on pizza. I do not (unfortunately) have the power to make laws which forbid people to put pineapples on their pizza.”
Authentic Neapolitan pizzas are made only with local produce and have been given the status of a ‘guaranteed traditional speciality’. This allows only three official variants: pizza Marinara, which is made with tomato, garlic, oregano and extra virgin olive oil, pizza Margherita, made with tomato, sliced mozzarella, basil and extra virgin olive oil, and pizza Margherita Extra made with tomato, buffalo mozzarella from Campania, basil and extra virgin olive oil.
Pizza should be kept simple but sadly it is not only pineapple that is used to spoil it.
Canada joins in on USA Pizza Day and I nominate this Poutine (chips, gravy and cheese curds) Pizza as probably the worst ever variation on the famous pie.
If we had ever had pizza at home and my mum served this up I can guarantee that I would be there twenty-four hours later listening to her repeat over and again – “you are not leaving the table until you have eaten all of your dinner” or, on rare occasions that I could wear her down…” one more mouthful and you can get down ”.
In Naples we stumbled upon an excellent pizzaria down a predictable untidy back street and went downstairs into the restaurant. Good job we were early because within half an hour it was heaving with customers. The food was cheap, the house wine was served in a jug and I would like to tell you that I had a classic Margherita but I can’t because I added ham, olives and artichokes to the topping.
We cannot go to Naples right now of course so have to settle for the next best thing. Last year I bought a pizza stone and Kim has become a bit of an expert at preparing the Italian classic, making the dough from Italian flour and preparing the toppings from ALDI. The stone works well in a regular oven by absorbing the heat and doubling the oven temperature. This process probably does enormous damage to the oven but it makes great pizza. Check out your house insurance policy before using it is my advice.
This is our favourite, thin crust tomato, mozzarella cheese, prosciutto ham and artichokes…
This may look like a pizza but it is in fact a jellyfish and it is important not to get them confused.
So, what is your favourite pizza?
No travel now for nine months so taking a look back at good times in Italy…
While the current travel restrictions are in place I have no new stories to post so what I thought that I would do is to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.
On 26th June 1976 I was in the city of Rome in Italy. I was 22 and this was the very first time that I had travelled abroad and due to a girlfriend/relationship breakdown I ended up going with my dad on a two week holiday to Sorrento.
Here he is at the Trevi Fountain…
By chance as I have been looking through my picture files I discovered that exactly thirty-five years later on 26th June 2011 that I was in Rome again, this time with a silly hat…
Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, History, Italy, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged a day in Rome, Gladiators and Cardinals, Italy, River Tiber, Rome Colosseum, Sorrento, Vatican, Victor Emmanuel Monument
While the current travel restrictions are in place I have no new stories to post so what I thought that I would do is to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.
On 21st April 2018 I was in Naples and took a train ride out to the archaeological site of Herculaneum.
Click on an image to scroll through the Gallery…
Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, History, Italy, Literature, Natural Environment, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Circumvesuviana, Ercolano, Herculaneum, Naples, Sorrento, Vesuvius, Vesuvius Postcards
In the spring of 1976 I made arrangements for my very first trip to continental Europe and booked a Cosmos holiday to Sorrento in Italy with my girlfriend Linda. We were due to go on the 12th June but at some point shortly before travel she fell for the charms of a reporter on the local newspaper and abruptly ended the relationship.
This created a problem because it was within the no refund period and so I was faced with the prospect of losing all my money. I could have begged I suppose but that would have been undignified so instead we had a family crisis meeting and the solution was found when dad enthusiastically stepped in and agreed to take her place. That’s what dads are for, I would do exactly the same!
or
Click on an image to scroll through the Gallery…
Posted in Europe, Food, History, Hotels, Italy, Natural Environment, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged bay of Naples, Capri, Circumvesuviana, Hotel Mediterraneo, Italy, Mount Vesuvius, Naples, Sorrento
This is a picture of my dad and two of his pals and I guess was taken in the summer of 1946 when he was fourteen year old.
I like the picture, it has a swagger and a jauntiness about it, it looks like three boys on holiday and off to the beach. My dad, in the middle, has spade and his friend on the right has a metal bucket, the tall boy on the left has a cricket bat which suggests beach cricket to me. I always wonder who took the picture, it isn’t posed but is a walking action picture.
These were surely days of optimism with a country led by a Labour Government that had been elected in the summer of 1945 with a landslide majority and a promise to make everything better and which had embarked on a radical programme of nationalisation including coal mining, electricity supply and railways.
These were the days of the new National Health Service and the Welfare State all based on the optimistic principles of socialism. And to add to all this good news the United States announced the Marshall Plan to pay for the reconstruction of Europe and that meant over three billion dollars was on the way to the United Kingdom to rebuild its bombed-out cities and its shattered economy.
So where were they? The picture isn’t dated accurately or gives any specific location, but it does give a couple of clues.
In 1945 my dad lived with his family in the town of Rushden in Northamptonshire where his parents ran a corner shop. The nearest seaside to Rushden was North Norfolk and I think that this picture was taken somewhere near the seaside resort of Hunstanon, about eighty miles away and easily reached by a Midlands Railway train to King’s Lynn and then a change to Hunstanton on the Great Eastern network.
The properties on the left of the picture certainly have a north Norfolk look about them. But then again they could be South Lincolnshire, I am open to being corrected.
Dad is wearing a sleeveless cricket sweater, his shirt sleeves are rolled up above his elbows as they always were and he is wearing socks with his plimsolls. Dad always wore socks with his plimsolls. This is him on holiday in Sorrento in Italy in 1976.
Have Bag, Will Travel 