Our host at our Amalfi hotel really wanted to serve us breakfast, even taking our order for the following morning when we checked in. Breakfast is not an Italian thing. I’ve mentioned it before: the Italians have coffee and maybe a pastry, then move on with their mornings. Whatever we would be served as breakfast is a pure invention, the Italian understanding of what North Americans want for breakfast.
Our “bacon and eggs” breakfast featured fresh fruit, yogurt, prosciutto, smoked provolone, and slices of country bread. The fresh fruits, a quartered peach, two slices of melon, and some grapes, would have featured in an American breakfast chain without raising too many issues. We vehemently requested the fruit-flavoured yogourt. What is called white yogurt? Plain yogourt tastes acidic and of whatever the cow ate the week before. It isn’t that good unless you’re willing to develop a taste for it. The rest is there to replicate the egg (cheese), bacon (prosciutto), and toasts, using ingredients that can be sourced locally. And while not close to North American, it offers a decent breakfast.
My heart went out to the poor coffee machine when it let out horrible, distressed noises as our host tried and failed to foam milk. Most Italians know how to make good espresso; the same cannot be said about handling a steaming wand.
The Hotel’s manager has a dog. A cute French bulldog named something that sounds like “Stitch”. The dog loved Karine, and Karine loved the dog too. While I was grabbing our bags from our room, Karine played with her new friend for a good five minutes. She would have played more, but the dog grew too tired and stopped to rest (I don’t know if it speaks more to the dog's age or to the fact that it has a very relaxed lifestyle in Amalfi). We couldn’t stay and wait for Karine’s new friend to be ready for another round of tug of war and fetch, and got on our way.
We’ve seen Pompeii and Herculaneum, but never the ruins at Paestum. Initially Greek, then Roman, it has architecture, foundations really, from both cultures and temples built by both. It’s about an hour to walk through the ruins and read the few interpretive signs around the site. They do have an app, but it’s a pain to use and requires far too many taps to get to any useful information. The museum attached to the ruins, however, was worth the 20-minute walk through—very few pots and pottery fragments, and many tomb fragments with impressively well-preserved paintings. One of them depicts a savage gladiatorial fight marked by painful wounds, and it captures the brutality of that time vividly. Duly instructed in the history of the site, we stopped at the museum’s cafe that offered surprisingly good Pinsa with Mozarella Bufala DOP (Denominazione d'Origine Protetta or Protected Designation of Origin). Pinsa, unlike Pizza, has its crust cooked first, then the topping is applied. So the cheese and half grape tomatoes on ours were slightly cooler than room temperature, while the crust was warm. Good meal concluded with two cafè and we were off.
Our apartment for the next three nights is in Agropoli. It’s an unknown town. The fact that the Routard had not a word to say about it should tell you we didn’t choose it for its culinary or archeological pedigree. To tell the truth, it was just conveniently located between the Paestum ruins and the Parco Nazionale Del Cilento. Its only bonus is that it has beach amenities that we plan to use tomorrow. It has a Castello Angioino Aragonese, built in the 6th century on Byzantine foundations, that stands atop the promontory, overlooking an unremarkable city and the sea. We tried a visit and found the free entry fee about the right price, though maybe slightly too expensive.
Finding our dinner tonight turned out to be more of an adventure than we expected. In Agropoli, restaurants are closed on one day of the week, and they proudly proclaim it in large letters on their front doors. They don’t, however, include it in their Google Maps listing, making the “open now” or “opening soon” indicator in Google Maps less than trustworthy. Meandering the streets of downtown Agropoli led us to three of the top-rated restaurants (according to Google Maps): one closed on Tuesdays, one on Wednesdays, and one on Mondays. Since it was Tuesday, we went to Il Vecchio Bottaio, as it would be closed tomorrow and was the only option open a little before 20:00 today. The wine was excellent, the ingredients good, but the food preparation lacked skills; we definitely got the B team. Our waitress had to be coached on how to open a wine bottle with a corkscrew. Nevertheless, it was good, we had a good time, and the wine was a saving grace. We went home and hope to sleep until we’re done.