Namesake Restaurant (Melissa)

After Joe and I found our house in Italy, we realized there was a sign for “Il Casale Ristorante” pointing to our street. Obviously we found this amusing; to get to our house, just follow the “Il Casale” sign. Eventually our curiosity got the best of us and we decided to venture out and find this restaurant that was located on our street (sounds pretty simple to find a restaurant on the street you live on, but you don’t live here so you’ll just have to TRUST ME when I tell you that it was an adventure to locate this place). We find the restaurant tucked away a mile up the road, but we are not dressed for dinner and the place is busy so we don’t go in.

Soon enough we start hearing from other people that Il Casale is their favorite restaurant in Naples. People gush about how much they love it there. We decide we must go. The neighbors tell me that I have to make the reservation (duh). I find the number and call…I immediately ask if they speak English because I’ve never actually made reservations speaking Italian and I don’t know how well that will go. No luck, they say they don’t speak English.

So here’s how it all goes down (feel free to read with an Italian accent since the rest of this story actually occurred in Italian). I do my best to tell them I want to make a reservation. They must understand because they ask me something that sounds like a request for a date or time or something. Great! I tell them what day, and then what time. They were clearly asking for how many people because they then ask me WHEN I want to come in. Oops. Luckily the time and number of people are the same word, so it all works out. I now have a reservation for 8 people at 8:00 on next Tuesday. Whew!

Then they ask me for my name… I say “Casale, Melissa Casale”. There is a pause, and then they say a bunch of Italian words…I think informing me that they know that I want a reservation at Il Casale, I just called Il Casale, so what is the name for the reservation? Again, I say “Casale. (speaking slowly with emphasis) MY NAME IS Melissa Casale”.

Bingo! They get it. They immediately sound joyful and excited. I get a bunch of thank you’s and they confirm my complete reservation and then I hear “Grazie, ciao Signora Casale. -kissing noises- Ciao, ciao! -more kissing noises-“. Hmm. I’ve never had kissing noises before. I hope we get a good table.

So we’ll bring the camera (and maybe the family tree) and follow up after dinner next week. Ciao! –kiss-- --kiss—

The follow-up:

Allora, as you have already reviewed in Joe's comments the Casale name had no tie to the restaurant name...but we did still get a major discount off the bill and the food was great. Overall, I would say it was a success.

Amalfi Coast Photo Montage (Melissa)

Last weekend we drove from Naples down to Sorrento, and then along the Amalfi Coast. We stayed at a B&B in Ravello, which reminded me of the movie The Sound of Music for some reason, maybe because they have a huge music festival there in the summer. Overall, absolutely loved it, completely breathtaking, and these photos simply CANNOT do it justice!

Coffee on the patio of our B&B


The piazza in Ravello


Exploring Atrani



Villa Cimbrone with our neighbors and their kids



We only stayed Friday and Saturday night, leaving early on Sunday. Who knew such perfect paradise could be just a little over an hour from the house? Next time we'll hike The Path of The Gods. Based on what we've seen so far, I'm guessing there's a good reason for the name. Stay tuned!

Is it Thanksgiving? (Melissa)

I cannot believe the Italian meal. I’ve been completely puzzled by it. Almost every time we go into a restaurant, they attempt to provide us with as much food (if not more) than Thanksgiving Dinner. And I’m not exaggerating.

From my experience so far, restaurants typically do not offer a menu. And from watching Italians, they typically do not use a menu. It seems like everyone just knows what they want, asks for it, and the restaurant provides something along those lines. So, since there is no menu, the way has been working is the waiter comes over and gets a drink order and ask if you want antipasti. Sometimes there is a choice of antipasti, sometimes not. So not knowing what to expect, you say “yes” to the antipasti…and then the parade of food begins.

One by one (or sometimes on a separate rolling cart brought over and left beside the table) they bring out 7, 8, 9 plates with various snacks on them. The food is delicious and they are only small portions, so of course you are going to eat it all. But after a half-dozen little snacks, one tends to start feeling full. But this is only the beginning.

After you polish off all the antipasti, the waiter appears again and now asks what primi piatti you would like. Well, you are kind of full, but the pastas they are offering sound wonderful (even though you are still wondering if you are ever going to see a menu during this meal) so you decide to try a primi piatti. They bring you the most delicious pasta you have ever eaten and surely you assume the meal is over.

But no, the waiter is back asking what your choice is for the secondo piatto. You are confused and looking around to see what other diners in the restaurant are doing. Not sure what else to do, you take the secondo piatto. Of course it is also the most delicious thing you have ever eaten (meat/fish/whatever). They ask if you want any contorni (side dishes) – luckily you say no and give a sigh of relief that you can now roll yourself out of the restaurant.

Not so fast – there is still dessert, caffe, fruit plate, cheese plate, digestivo. It goes on for about 12 rounds of fun. And the food is all heavenly, but you are so stuffed that you feel sick. So how on earth do the Italians have Thanksgiving dinner every single night?

Fortunately, I met Pierpaolo and had the good sense to ask him about this, because I was getting concerned about my waistline. Naturally he laughs and tells me “no one eats every course of the meal (unless maybe you are at a special event and plan on having a huge meal), you just pick and choose the ones you want”. Thank God! Now I know.

Commentary on Joe’s Blogs (Melissa)

Since I’ve been such a slacker and have not contributed to this blog until now, I have read through Joe’s postings and here is my input:

Being named Casale – Just two things to add here.
1. Every time I have written my name, there has been an Italian that has excitedly asked me if the name/my husband/the family is ITALIANO (picture me saying that word in a strong, heavy accent with big hand gestures). We then have a fantastic discussion about where Joe’s great-grandparents are from…and then wonderful things happen. The person asking me about my name is now my friend. They will buy me coffee or take me next in line, offer something better than what I currently have in some way, shape or form. And they are so happy to do it, all because my name is Casale.
2. Also, one note on the Casal d’Principa area that is off limits – there was also a story about how one or two Navy people that were renting homes in that area had their doors busted in during the middle of the night by the police. The reason had something to do with the “landlord”. It was shortly after that when the housing area relocated those military families to homes outside of the Casal d’Principa area - homes that had landlords outside of the Casale family.

Destroying my Knee Snowboarding – The most amazing part of this entire “torn knee” experience was taking a trip to the Italian hospital. I have heard some wonderful stories about socialized medicine – and I now think those people that told me those wonderful stories are CRAZY. Joe’s ambulance ride – seriously? No medical attention, just a “ride” in the back of a truck on a gurney that wasn’t even strapped down. So he was rolling around creating more trauma to his knee, which wasn’t even looked at. Not that when he got to the hospital it was looked at, not until he was there hanging out for hours. And don’t even think about picturing our bright, cheery, aseptic hospitals. Move your mind to a darker place, with dimly lit bulbs hanging from the ceiling, walls that have not been painted in 10 years, buckets of open bio-hazardous waste laying around with blood dripping out of them onto the floor (no, not kidding, not exaggerating). The “hospital” was awful and scary. So, um, yeah, I’m gonna to vote “NO” on socialized medicine.

Getting Caught Up! (Melissa)

Getting Caught Up!
Wow! I have been GROSSLY NEGLIGENT in maintaining this blog. We have been here for 3 months now and although I had managed to find the time to set-up this blog within the first two weeks, I obviously haven’t touched it since! At least Joe has been keeping everyone up to date and entertained. So, I’m going to quickly get caught up with an abbreviated version of the past 3 months, and will then be able to stay a bit more current as things progress.

FLYING INTO NAPLES
Flying into Naples on the morning of December 30th was a quick reality check. I had been told that Naples is the most densely populated city in Europe but I didn’t actually think that was true. I would no longer question that information. The city is ENORMOUS! From the airplane you get a view of buildings as far as you can see. The buildings spill out from the city center and spread out everywhere, all on top of each other, each one a different color. If you get a chance to fly into Naples, make sure you get a window seat!

Of course we really didn’t know what to expect once we landed, but lots of people have told us that Italy is “law-less” in the sense that they do have laws but nobody follows them. I thought of this as we walked into and out of the airport without any customs inspection at all. Nothing. No one questioned our visit, no one looked at our bags. We just wandered through. And it seems that most things here follow that same sort of careless attitude. It’s not necessarily bad, just different.

NEW YEARS EVE
New Years Eve was quite a site – apparently Italians LOVE fireworks. Who knew?! I certainly do now. We were very jet-lagged and pretty beat up from our travels so we didn’t stay up to ring in the New Year. I think we went to bed around 11:00ish but the deafening noise from the millions of fireworks woke us up. I was so tired I didn’t want to get out of bed, but after over 30 minutes had gone by and the noise was still going strong, I just had to get up and look out the window. The entire sky was filled with sparks and smoke. If all of the fireworks I have ever seen in my entire life were put together and shot off at one time, that still wouldn’t compare to what I was looking at outside my window. And the fireworks went on for about an hour. It was ridiculous. I’ll be prepared for next year.

JANUARY – ORIENTATION & REHAB
We spent our first month on the military base (which I call “Little America”). We did not like being there since we were very isolated from all the fantastic treasures Italy has to offer (eating at Applebee’s instead of una trattoria – yuk!). We spent the first few weeks in orientation, learning our way around and house hunting. Immediately after orientation Joe tore up his knee and then we started the medical rehab phase of this adventure. Fortunately he has not needed surgery and is doing fine.

FEBRUARY – MOVING & INSTALLING UTILITIES
This was a major pain – absolutely unbelievable. It amazes me that Italians just accept the fact that things will take weeks to get done and things will just randomly stop working with no explanation. It was a big and important lesson to learn up front. I also started Italian language immersion classes in February - that is going to have to be a separate blog.

MARCH – PICKING UP THE DOG & FINALLY GETTING SETTLED
That about sums it up. The dog is finally adjusted and happy – back to her normal spoiled self. I finished school and have been finding lots of random things to occupy my time – again those items will have to be a separate blog. And we are loving Italy and ready for visitors – so come visit!

Driving in Italy

Driving in Italy

It’s about 4PM and I’m back on the entrance ramp to the Tange. It’s a typical entrance ramp that you would see in the US, except that traffic is getting heavy, and I am only moving about 15 mph onto the highway. The difference is that I am the center car three abreast as we enter traffic. I’m almost rubbing rear view mirrors with the cars on either side, and I’m thinking to myself, I really enjoy driving in Italy.

Driving in Italy is very different than it is back in the states. It is very selfish… driving is all about me. That’s right, there is no concept of courtesy toward other drivers. I mention that I am getting back on the highway, well that is because I already got on once, at one of the scariest entrance ramps that I have ever seen. The entrance ramp that I use to enter the Tangenziale every day coming home from work is only about 20 meters long, is on a blind bend to the right, and abruptly ends in a stone wall. So, after I enter the highway, pass under the overpass that is the reason for the stone wall, if traffic is heavy, I will get back off the highway, pass through the gas station on/off ramp and parking lot, and then back onto the highway (on the ramp where I was three abreast.) Now in the US, that is certainly illegal. It is probably also illegal in Italy, but it isn’t enforced.

For that matter, very few of the traffic laws are enforced in Italy. Unless of course, you get into an accident, then the Caribanarie will start writing tickets. But until you crash you don’t have anything to worry about.

Here are some of my highlights thus far while driving in Italy. Of course, like New Jersey, the Italians love the traffic circle. The key to the traffic circle is to not stop. Sometimes you are forced, but momentum through the traffic circle is your friend. Don’t worry if the car entering the circle has the right of way, all you have to do is get the front third of your car out front, and you are good to go. People expect you to cut them off, so they are always prepared to stop. Also, say traffic is light on the circle, and you want to proceed ¾ of the way around…. If you think that you can make it to the left by cutting across the circle in the wrong direction… go for it.

That takes me to my next topic, the lines on the road. They are mere suggestions. You can drive on either side of the road, you can pass across double yellow lines, you can drive the wrong way down a one-way street. And, if you are riding a scooter, then you can basically do anything that you think won’t result in death or dismemberment. Here’s an example. I’m sitting at a light on a 4-lane (two lanes in each direction) road with a jersey barrier down the middle. There are 4 cars abreast waiting for the light and some scooters in the gaps. I’m the 3rd car in line, against the jersey barrier, in the left lane. The light turn green and the two cars in front go left, the guy infront of me turns left, and then me and the guy to my right also turn left. So now we have 5 cars barreling up a two lane road with oncoming traffic. The guy that was directly infront of me wants to pass everyone, so he accelerates and we end up with 3 cars abreast ahead of me (on the two lane road), and then me with a guy to my right, and it all just gets sorted out.

You can really do whatever you want. Red lights are optional. Seriously, sometimes they just shut them off because no one uses the red light anyway. Personally, at some intersections I don’t even look at what color the light is, I just look to make sure I’m not going to get hit by a cement mixer as I cross traffic.

Really the only law that is enforced are the automatic traffic cameras that control speed on the highway, those send you tickets automatically, so you can’t really speed on the highway.

I’ll keep you posted. I have already hit my side mirror on two occasions, once into a ceramic drain pipe, and the second time into a parked car. I may just start driving around with my mirrors folded in. You really need to see it to believe it, so I suggest that you all come out for a visit, and we’ll go for a drive.

Until next time…. Ciao. Joe

February 2009

February 2009

9 March 2009

Keeping the blog updated lately has been a challenge. Since we moved into our house in beautiful Pozzuoli, our Internet connection has been spotty at best. This blog entry will be more like a journal entry just to let you know what we have been doing over the last month. Again I apologize for not updating the blog sooner.

Internet in Italy – Everything is done slowly in Italy. We moved into our place on Feb 2nd, and didn’t get anyone over to the house to hook up Internet service until Feb 13th. That is considered pretty good. Some friends have told us that they waited up to a month for an appointment to get Internet, and even some have had the technicians show up and tell them that they can’t get service. Excuses include, “There are too many customers in the connection box on the street, you have to wait until someone cancels their service.” You can bet that the landlord didn’t mention that. So, after the techs left on the 13th, the internet works for maybe 2 days and goes out. And it takes four more days of troubleshooting over the phone to get it working. Italy doesn’t have customer service personnel that speak any language besides Italian, so while my Italian is good enough to order food, shop, or find the bathroom, it is not yet sufficient to trouble shoot a spotty Internet signal over the phone. So, no, Italy is not like America where you call and you can press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, 3 for Japanese, 4 for Italian…. etc, nope, you get only Italian.

So, that takes us all the way to around Feb 20th, after my Italian realtor hooks us up with some customer service assistance, to when we finally have internet working again. That lasts for exactly 6 days, and I should have gotten a blog entry (with photos) posted in that time about Italian Markets. In fact, if you have my facebook address, you can look at my photos and comments from the market, but I never had time to publish a similar story on the blog page, BECAUSE THE INTERNET STOPPED WORKING AGAIN. I don’t know why. So another six days of troubleshooting over the phone and finally it is working again, we think, we’re not sure for how long. So, we are back online, who cares, right?… you guys want to know what we are doing in Italy.

February was a pretty fun month. We moved into our place and have really been enjoying it. We have a very nice Italian villa in a great little town called Pozzuoli, which is right next to Naples. It takes me about 20 minutes to get to work from Pozzuoli. The Villa is very nice, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bath, with an office, living room, kitchen, fireplace, and a very big basement/garage. It also has a great yard for Clare to play in. The yard has 6 fruit trees, we know one is lemon and one is an orange tree, we’ll find out about the rest in the fall. It is also very secure, located in a gated community (called a Parco) off the main street, but situated in such a way that you can’t even see any of the homes from the street. So, we spent about a week settling into the house, and took our first trip (since the skiing incident) out of the Naples area.

For my birthday (Feb 7th), Melissa took us out to the Island of Ishica for the weekend. Ishica is a small resort island located to the south of the bay of Pozzuoli. It took about an hour and a half on the ferry to get out there. Ishica is mostly a summer tourist resort, but it also boasts resorts with thermal spas and naturally heated pools. If you didn’t know, the whole Naples area is located next to the very active volcano Vesuvius and the areas surrounding the area are still very volcanically active. Pozzuoli is located over a very thin crust of the earth’s surface over a large magma bubble. There is a thermal vent on the other side of town called sulfatara that is a vent for the volcano, and as you can imagine by the name, it stinks of rotten eggs. I haven’t been there yet, I’ll save that for when we have guests in the area. We can’t smell it from our house… most of the time. Ishica is over the same magma bubble, and the thermally heated pools were very nice. Overall the island is cute, and Melissa and I will plan to go back there in the summer.

The following week, I was finally able to finish up my last portion of the check in process for the Navy here in Naples. It was the staff action officer course, and it completed a full three weeks of checking into a command here at Naples. The process included a week of Area Orientation, followed by a week of Inter-Cultural Relations, and cumulated with the Staff Action Officer course. Also that week, we lost water for 2 days in Pozzuoli due to what I think was a water main break. Not to fear, we have a 600-gallon emergency tank in the basement… yea, that was empty. So, I filled it up once the water came back on, and we should be OK next time. Yet another Italian lesson learned.

Melissa has been taking an intensive Italian course in downtown Naples every day. So, for the last 4 weeks she goes to school at “Centro Italiano” and spends 4 hours of intensive immersion Italian training. She is getting pretty good. She is also now a master of public transportation in Naples, as she takes the trains and busses from our house to down town every day for class, while I go to work. I think that she is starting to look Italian. We spent the last three weekends in Naples enjoying the area. We’ve done some great dinners either in local restaurants, or with friends. Melissa took an Italian cooking class one weekend, I played in a poker tournament… it’s been pretty good.

This weekend Melissa and I are in Rome. As a matter of fact, I am sitting in our very small hotel room in Rome writing this blog right now. Rome is very nice, and pretty amazing. As you turn any corner there are different ruins. Buildings that are only 500 years old look new next to the Parthenon (which is over 2000 years old.) This is truly the beginning of civilization. My favorite site so far has been the Trevi fountain. It is an amazing piece of architecture, with “the Ocean” central figure, riding a chariot.

That’s all for now, I promise more stories soon, pictures from my trip to the market, and the stories about how everyone’s brother has a pizza place in NJ, and all about the food.

Ciao until next time,
Joe