Exploring Amalfi 2004

 [28 February 2004]

Torre Zirro overlooking Amalfi

A serious storm Friday night, wind, rain, hail. In fact  since we have arrived here it is been one long crescendo of wind and rain and of course the crashing waves on the rocks right beneath our window adds to the overall atmosphere.

Woke at 8:45am Saturday morning – decided we have to start setting an alarm –and the day begins (or continues) very stormy with occasional breaks.

The sun finally comes out in the early afternoon and we head off to explore Amalfi. Susie and I spent the next couple of hours just walking around – the town goes back up inland quite a ways in fact – and we see a couple of shops we want to check out later when we go out for dinner. We have decided that although the food and wine and service at the hotel is very good we want to experience some of the other local flavors. We find a restaurant we plan to come back to, Ristorante Il Tari.

One shop is open and tasting a number of interesting locally produced liqueurs. We try the one called Finochiette – served out of the freezer like limoncello – and end up buying two bottles. We also tasted a “green” limoncello they had as well – from young fruit apparently – but found the flavor not quite up to what we prefer. We also see way too many of the crème flavored liquors with fructose syrup added. No thank you very much.

Amalfi was once quite well known for its paper production and we find some locally manufactured watercolor paper for me to try out in my printer back home.

It’s then it’s back to the hotel to relax. Which appears to be our major occupation right now. Relaxing. It’s even gotten to the point where we have to relax between relaxation sessions.

So it’s back out in the evening. We head back to the liqueur shop for two more bottles of Finochiette and then to dinner at Il Tari. We have another bottle of Greco di Tufo, which is quite good. We’re having a hard time finding mediocre wine.

 Since the restaurant seems to specialize in fish we have the fried fish appetizer: shrimps, anchovy-like fish eaten whole. Susan has grilled swordfish and I have stuffed whole squids (stuffing was chopped squid, cheese and breadcrumbs), along with roasted eggplant slices, sliced buttered potatoes and buttered thinly sliced squash maybe? The food was quite delicious and the service was very good.

 Back to the room and read for a bit before lights out.