il dolce far niente
The sweetness of doing nothing.
The church bells toll once a day, at 6:28 exactly.
The bells, the sunrise and sunset are the only marks of time passing, here in Sant' Angelo.
I still wake up early as always, the morning is the best time of the day for me.
I watch the sun come up, perhaps wander the little walkways through town, or stand on the beach. I am awake, but I sure could use some caffeine. The early cafe doesn’t open until 7:00, those first couple hours I am just craving it.
It is only my third morning in town; when I walk into the cafe at seven the barista starts to pull my cappuccino before I can order it.
I see the lady who owns the mini-market. We stop there daily, bottle of wine today, sunscreen yesterday, a snack in between. So now in the street we warmly greet each other, look at the sunrise and comment on the beautiful day.
The sweets and rolls are being baked fresh; every morning I pass this little non-descript doorway with stairs leading underground. I can look down and see the bakers working, and the fresh smells pouring out are about enough to drive me crazy.
Down at the dock, the fisherman brings in his catch: big fish, some he needs help to put on the scale. No ice here, he just pulls his boat up, a few people are waiting, and they are sold instantly.
We probably ate one last night.
It is very quiet here. Even the sea is calm; the waves lap gently in, so that you are lulled to sleep at night, kept calm during the day. On the beach I spend a lot of time dozing off to the sound of the waves. There is no car noise, because there are no cars. No car alarms, no honking, no tires squealing. There seems to be one little construction project going on, so there is the occasional hammering or one saw going, but then it is quiet again.
Huge ocean going cargo ships pass silently way out at the edge of the world, and I wonder: how is it they can float along the edge without falling off? The occasional cruise ship floats by, miles offshore they blow their horn, just once, and it echoes across the water.
Where is the Island of Ischia? It is in the Bay of Napoli, about a half hour by ferry off the coast. We are staying on the "far end" of the island from the Port of Ischia, in a little village called Sant' Angelo. We can look across and see Capri at the other end of the bay; around the “corner” from there is Positano.
We are staying in this great little guest house, the Casa del Sole. We are in the center of the village, at the top, looking off our patio across at the rock. We have big French doors which we keep wide open all day and all night.
It doesn't seem to be on the American tourist track. In four days here we met and heard no one else from the US. There are many Germans and Italians, and a few French here. Several English people. Most often we were greeted as Germans, or English, and they were often surprised to hear we were from California.
The usual response was a pause, then a slow, questioning, yet longing-to-go, “…Califoooorrrn-ya?”
You never hear anyone say, "Oooh, Texas!" and you, dear readers, know why. Nobody wants to live in that conservative backwater hell-hole of a state, they live there because it is better than Pakistan.
But not by much.
We won’t have to do laundry for a while, because we are only wearing clothes for dinner, so I have been “wearing” the same clothes for like three days now. Flip-flops, swimsuit, t-shirt...
I am reading a huge book, a collection of stories called Explore. It is really hit and miss, some chapters are great, others are so dull they wouldn’t cut hot butter. And, it is a huge book to haul around.
I figured it would be good to bring along, but it has turned into a pain in the ass, so I have been tearing it up. I just tear out three chapters a day, carry them to the beach and read them one at a time. Then I throw them away. The book is now easier to carry, I can just toss what I don’t like, and in the end I have more space.
A chapter here, three today at the beach, I don't even read them in order.
You can come gather them all up if you wish.
There are thermal spas all over the island, and steam vents and hot springs dot the coast.
On the beach there are tiles, pieces of tile, little whole tiles, all washed and smoothed by the water and pebbles, colorful still, adding character to the sand. Most of the floors here are tiles, there are decorative tiles outside the houses, and broken tiles used to make the patios and decks. There are even tiles topping the low walls along the walkways. I am guessing a house or two fell into the ocean, perhaps a cliff crumbled, and these are the remnants washing up.
It is called the Fumarole Beach, part of the famous Maronti Beach. The sand is naturally hot and dry underneath because it is on part of the volcanic basin. People dig holes by the water and sit in the warm sand, letting the ocean wash over them, to “…cure arthritis, sciatica and rheumatism…” Always curing that rheumatism. Probably drives away the devil himself, as well.
Some sections are fenced off because the sand there is over 100°C and some of the locals bring their food to cook in these hottest sections of beach.
Anyway, I am not trying to cure anything except perhaps the stress from work, and this beach is great for that.
Right off the beach there is a huge steam vent, which was an actual geyser not too long ago, and is still referred to as such by the locals. It is the place where the mythological giant Typhon, whose tears mix with his hot breath, “lets off steam” so to speak.
I am not making this up.
So, we like to worship Sol, god of the sun, at this beach, and honor Peroni, the god of Italian beer, while bathing in Neptune. Then I fall asleep next to Aphrodite.
Laying on the beach, the Pakistani salesmen come up selling cashmere scarves, (Yes, cashmere. On a beach. It is like 85 degrees here!) sunglasses, crap, and gaudy jewelry…
Gail tries to ignore them, reading, and this one time she pretended to be asleep but JUMPED! when the guy leaned over and whispered, right in her ear, “Prego?”
I just rolled off my lounger, laughing.
This long beach is connected to our town by another paved sidewalk, lined by lights for night time strolling. The views walking along the coast are spectacular, looking at the curve of beach backed by houses and hotels tumbling down the hillside, bougainvillea like a violet blanket softening the corners, dark purple morning glories hanging down.
One day, late in the afternoon, we took the water taxi over around the corner to the next cove over. This place is called Sorgeto, and very very hot, volcanic water is coming out of the base of the cliffs and mixing right in with the ocean water. So you sit in a little basin in the rocks, and let the hot and cold water mix and run over you.
This is one of the coolest things I have ever done. It is really an amazing feeling to have your body swirled by different temperature water at the same time. Maybe your front and right arm and left foot are in colder ocean water, and at the same time your back and legs are in warm water and your left arm is OUCH! in really hot water; it all swirls around you in a kind of unpredictable way, warming and cooling you at the same time. We sat there for a few hours, just enjoying it.
It is so hot that steam rises out of the water closest to the cliff, and it is kind of funny (in a sick, cruel way) to watch people step up and dip their toe in that part of the water, then yell. Even the rocks are hot, so when you strip down to get in the water, it is almost too hot to stand still.
Another day we spent the entire time at the Aphrodite Apollon Thermal Baths. They have a set of pools, going up, up these terraces. The water ranges from 16°C to over 42°C. There are loungers and umbrellas, a bar (of course) and wonderful views out and over the coast. You can get a massage, a facial, you name it. So I told Gail this would be a "spa" day.
We hung out by the pools, Gail staying in the hottest one and me staying right next to it, in the cold plunge. The largest pool was a medium temperature, and the water was so full of minerals that I could actually float! And I always sink.
It was a treat.
We eat breakfast every day out on our patio, looking down over the rock and causeway.The three local seagulls swoop in, trying to intimidate us, but soon they are busy fighting each other for the dominant high perch and seem to forget about our food. We are warm in the sun, cooled by a gentle breeze, under the blue blue sky. I wish for a second coffee. I watch as one gull leaps off the patio, flaps once and glides across to the rock, then disappears behind it.
The small mountain looks a lot like Morro Rock, but with shrubs covering it. The remains of a fortress are on top, if I get motivated to do something, I think to myself, I will hike up there to take a look.
So we spend our days walking around, soaking in the scent of the flowers and ocean, deciding whether to go try something, or just hang out some more on the beach. My biggest decision yesterday was whether I should cool off with a beer, or by jumping in the ocean.
I decided to do both, and it was a good choice.
I am proud to have made it.
The blue of the water shifts as the day goes on, and as we change position relative to it. It shifts, from dark azure blue to that turquoise that you want to bottle up and keep. When it is calm, as it is now, the sea is a clear, glassy blue, like the sky, and the white clouds reflect off the surface making bright spots across the water.
If we feel like lunch, we get maybe a bruschetta or two, or a small plate of anchovies in oil (which are not like the salty, bone filled anchovies-in-a-can you buy in the US).
Dinner, however…
Our first dinner was at a place on the edge of the cliff, right below our room. We split la millefoglie di melanzane, which was a breaded sort of aubergine (they are not called “eggplant” anywhere in Europe). Then I had the most wonderful, simple pasta: oli stangozzi scampi e limone, which is strangozzi pasta with shrimps, oil and lemon. Boy, was that a great pasta.
Note about pasta: spaghetti looking stuff has maybe twenty names, depending where you are. Little “penne” type tubes can be called a million different things, and so on. Basically you just look at what is going to be ON the pasta, and order that, figuring that basically pasta is pasta: engineered to hold sauce.
Back to dinner: Gail had il filetto di pesce al limone, which was exactly as advertised, nothing more. Fresh fish filet in lemon. It was so soft and melted in your mouth… so I got one as well.
We have four gelato places to choose from, and great benches along the waterfront to sit and eat if we don’t feel like strolling along. Guess what is for dessert every night?
The second night we ate at a place out at the base of the rock, called da Peppino. It is the cucine tipica, ie: the typical cooking of the region.
This was a lie.
It may have been typical food; we ended up choosing one huge fish from a selection of four, hauled off the fisherman’s boat that morning, but it was not at all a "typical restaurant" in the presentation of that food.
They “specialità di Mare” with “pesce fresco tutti i giorni” which means they serve specialties from the sea, fish fresh every day. So we chose the one that looked like a big sort of salmon, and he fired up the grill.
While we were waiting, we ordered wine. The vino locale from the island comes in little .375L bottles, so I got red and Gail got white. The waiter joked with me as he poured it, “Ett iss the vine zero kilometer!”
They brought us a “welcome gift:" a rabbit croquet in some kind of carrot and wine reduction, served in a little bottle, presumably so it couldn’t hop away.
Then we had a salad, something we don’t often get here in the south, made of leaf lettuce, so fresh it reminded me of my friend George, who gives us lettuce from his garden. There were two types of oil, balsamic vinegar or champagne vinegar, and three types of salt to choose from.
The fish was brought to the table, still on fire, and then he served it to us, making sure to save the head for me (for the cheeks). We had three types of sauces to try on it, an orange citrusy mayonnaise, a lemon pepper and herb reduction, and some other lemony thing.
Well, the evening view was beautiful, it was a quiet night and we were eating outside… I really don’t know if the food really is better here, or if it just tastes that way because of the surroundings. We ask ourselves that question a lot.
We were about done after that fish, but were thinking we wanted to try the tiramisu. The waitress would have non of it, however, insisting we try the chocolate specialty of the house. Well… we were doubtful, but she was very insistent, so we relented.
First, however, was our “goodbye gift” of chocolates with pistachios, ice cream in mini-cones and berries. It was wonderful, but had we known about this, we would have never ordered that chocolate specialty, because soon after a huge, layered “egg” of milk and dark chocolate appeared in a big bowl. The chef proudly poured hot chocolate sauce over it, which caused it to “crack” open, revealing ice cream inside.
OK. that was pretty damn cool, and fun to watch, but we both can take only so much chocolate, so we gobbled up the ice cream but ended up wasting most of the chocolate. That was a damn shame, because it was good chocolate.
In the end, the owner came out to sit with us. An old lady, she cuddled right up to Gail, and snapped her fingers and soon the waitress appeared with three glasses of grappa, a photo book of Sant’ Angelo through the years, and the owner’s personal notebook. With my broken Italian, the waitress trying to do some interpreting, and the owner gesturing like crazy, we ended up writing down our name and phone number, “…for eff she veezit California…” and drinking some excellent grappa which I never knew I liked until this exact moment.
Gail has been looking for a daiquiri. You know, the drink. We call it a “dac-kah-ree.” So, she has been asking, everywhere we go, for a dac-kah-ree, but none of the bar tenders seem to know how to make one.
That is, until today.
We stopped along the walkway, halfway back from the beach, at this little resort, and went in. I got a wine and bruschetta for us to split, and Gail did her usual: “Vorrei una dac-kah-ree.”
The bar tender looks at her funny.
Cocks his head.
Gail repeats it, “I would like a dac-kah-ree.”
The tender scratches his head, then a light in his eye, a smile.
“Una day-kee-ree, signora?”
You just gotta laugh.
The third night we needed to tone things down a bit. Well, actually, we wanted to tone it down a lot. We ended up at the little pizza joint tucked in the alley right down from us, and had two really excellent individual pizzas with a litre of the house red and una litre d’acqua minerale, frizzante. Simple, filling, good… the crust burned just right in the oven.
I think that the question of the food being better really, or just because we are in Italy was finally answered.
Because, you see, we had no view, and while it was quaint and filled with locals, this disgusting pig of a five year old kept screaming throughout the entire meal, making the noise level LOUD and certainly not romantic at all, and it was somewhat hot and we were crammed at a table with four other people who all were looking annoyed at the piggish kid and his parents… and yet, the food was great.
And we might even return!
OK. So we did return, because I had to try the gnocchi, and Gail wanted the caprese salad.
Yes.
It was good. In fact, that gnocchi was damn perfect.
And so, in the end, Sant' Angelo joins that list of the perfect beach towns that we would go back to:
Collioure France, Salema Portugal, Marmaris Turkey, Hydra, Greece, Olympos Turkey, Cayucos California, Travemünde Germany, and Positano Italy.
And guess where we are going to next?