Procession of the Mysteries

Last April, we had a special Good Friday on the island of Procida. All over Italy, Good Friday is marked with special processionals, usually involving robes, hoods, and elaborate displays that are hand carried. Here in the south, most villages have their own, but one of the ones I most wanted to visit was on Procida, the Procession of the Mysteries walked by the Confraternity dei Turchini. Based on bits and pieces of articles I'd read over the last few years, I had an idea of what went on, and it included a processional beginning at dawn as the sun rose and involving some haunting chanting and/or music with men in blue robes carrying some religious floats...or so I thought. I convinced Nathan to take Friday off of work and take the ferry over to Procida on Thursday night so we could spend the night and be ready to watch the procession by sunrise. Unfortunately, my Procida processional experience was colored by the prior evening.

Our hotel was located in a dark and completely dead part of the island with no staff on-site. When we asked the hotel driver who dropped us off if there was an open restaurant nearby (and for a map), we got no map and were told a pizzeria was around the corner. This was not true. We walked for an hour and a half and found not a pizzeria, restaurant, veggie stand, even a coffee bar! In a land with a coffee bar and pizzeria on every single corner, we walked miles in circles and ovals and lines, with me becoming more and more desperate. I was five months pregnant and ravenous ALL the time. We saw a Procession of Mysteries alright, but it was our own. Thank goodness we found a bakery open about 10pm and preparing Easter bread, so we were able to buy a box of cookies - the bread was massive, about as big as my upper body, so we took a pass and just ate cookies for dinner. Then tried to sleep on the Murphy Bed in our hotel room.

The next morning, we woke at 5am in order to give us time to find a good location for watching the processional...or just find any spot along the route given our troubles the previous night. We found a great viewing spot, enjoyed the rising sun as it illuminated the beautiful island, and watched as men and boys walked past in their white robes and blue hoods, making their way to the processional's beginning. We'd picked a place closer to the start but also a piazza with a ledge upon which we could sit. Good thing since we were in place by 6:30am...and about 9:30, saw the beginnings at last.

The floats are indeed amazing. Some of them are massive, and all are hand carried. They are made by various neighborhood groups and tell stories from the Bible. My favorites were ones including food - The Fishes & Loaves, The Last Supper, Water into Wine. Floats involving food used real food and the displays were so elaborate, fitting in a country where pride in food reigns. And the Noah's Ark floats included some real animals as well, little bunnies primarily. We most enjoyed the pre-processional hours in which we watched all the men and young boys converging. Procida's Procession of the Mysteries is quite an attraction, so the the streets were packed, we had to fiercely guard our ledge perches when we'd just stand up for a moment to stretch. The procession was so long that we finally decided it was time to head to the port for the next boat off the island. And there, we found that all the floats end up at the port, where they are set down for display. Given our horrendous evening and hours of waiting that morning, I really wished we'd just taken a morning boat over to view the floats, but that was my hungry, bad mood speaking. For a more positive report, take a look at this Naploli Unplugged post - it's much more informative about the actual Procession and why it's such a neat event.

Procida really is a beautiful, little gem

It's Apple Time!

While Ma was here, we heard about a festival said to be one of the most exciting in southern Italy. The apple festival in Valle Maddaloni. I was excited. I love festivals, craft shows, parades, all sorts of these things. We've wandered onto a few such festivals while living in Italy, and for the most part, they've been small and spectacularly unattended by the general public. The one exception was last year's trip to EuroChocolate in Perugia, which was so far in the other direction in size, scope, and attendance that it's in a class by itself. The chance to attend a well regarded festival only a short drive away was exciting. And we like apples. These apples are different, specific to this region, tiny and sweet and juicy. Here's a photo of the exciting festival:

Clearly, not the hotbed of festiveness we were expecting. Plus, I made a pretty major error that I just keep making over and over again (definition of insanity, right!). The festival was called Valle Maddaloni Apple Festival (translation). I know there's a town nearby called Maddaloni, so I thought...great, the festival is in Maddaloni on the main street, named Valle Maddaloni. This is where knowing Spanish is a huge detriment to living in Italy. Valle does not mean street in Italian. It means valley. You can see where this is going, right?

We dutifully put the town of Maddaloni into our "trusty" GPS, drove out into the beautiful countryside of the Campania region, found the town, and proceeded to spend almost an HOUR driving around tiny streets trying to find this festival. We stopped to ask for directions, and here again, an error we make on a regular basis...which is, having me be the person to go ask the question. For some reason, I have some sort of mental block against understanding the answer. I go ask, I think I understand the reply, I jump back in the car and confidently begin giving directions, only to get us even more lost. After a long time, usually only 20 minutes or so that feel like three hours, we stop for directions again and have a "discussion" that results in Nathan being the one to ask for the directions. At which point, he gets back into the car, begins confidently driving, and we reach our destination with very few wrong turns. So...as it turns out, Valle Maddaloni is it's own town, and is also in our trusty GPS. Once we figured that fact out, we were on our way - and the laughter of the gas station attendant in Maddaloni, upon my direction questioning, made a little more sense. Fortunately, I have become quite used to being the dumb American and am fairly immune to laughter in my face. Junior high school about 25 years ago was fantastic preparation to living in Italy.

We arrived in Valle Maddaloni, a gorgeous, old town clinging to a hillside and straight out of Tuscany rather than southern Italy. Excellent. We know Tuscan towns. They have piazzas, and that's where the festival is. For sure. Up, up, up we drive, streets growing more and more narrow with no main piazza in sight, and finally, we reach a point where going up seems to be narrower than our station wagon. So we go down, down, down, find a guy walking down the street, ask for more directions, and the festival was extremely easy to find, on a large, main street right off the large, main freeway. [Big sigh].

Despite the utter lack of activity - seriously, there were only two other couples shopping (both American, by the way) - we really enjoyed ourselves. The cheese guy set up in the first tent was generous with his samples and we scored a fantastic cheese for our dinner that evening. We bought a bag of apples for me to try my hand at making apple butter (my grandmother helped me), Nathan got a plant for his office, and Ma found several jewelry items for gifts. Also, we noticed some vendors were still setting up (at 1pm in the afternoon), and we noticed a stage going up, so my thinking is that the Valle Maddaloni Apple Festival really is a grand, well attended festival, Italian style - which means the crowds probably showed up about 11pm.

Jazz Among the Ruins

A couple of weeks ago, there was a jazz festival here, held in a few different tourist sites around Pozzuoli. Concerts were held every night, most in the Solfatara (which is that stinky place I wrote about back in September 2010). Since I vowed never to return to the Solfatara, those concerts were out for me. But one was allegedly held in the Baia Terme Archaeological Park, my favorite ruins in our immediate neighborhood. This is the place that is an old Roman spa complex and villa, and so lacking in visitors that most visits, I've had the complete complex to myself. There is an old swimming pool, a fabulous, domed spa, tunnels heading down into the ground, and a wonderful view of Baia and the Bay of Pozzuoli beyond. Naturally, I was very excited to attend a jazz concert there. I'd made arrangements to go with new friends, who know the festival organizers. They said the concerts always start late, so we didn't rush and eventually arrived to the venue about 30 minutes after the start time...and the venue was completely dark with a chained gate locking it up tight. Okay, this is Italy - maybe they're starting really late. We headed down the street to a popular bar for drinks and snacks. An hour went by and other friends showed up. As it turned out, the venue was printed wrong on the flyer. Possibly the concert was now over, but with good drinks and good company, the evening carried on anyway.

Saturday night was the final concert of the festival - my last chance. Nathan was out of town, but a co-worker couple of his had expressed an interest in going - this concert was at the Temple of Neptune, a ruin that is usually closed to visit, but does have a soccer field attached to it where the local kids play. I'd never even heard of this ruin, so I was quite excited to see something new. Once again, we arrived a little late in hopes we'd get there as the concert was starting. It seems that when my friend told me the concerts don't ever start on time, he was not exaggerating. The 8:00 concert started about 9:25. But what was even funnier is that the venue didn't even fill up until about 9:15 or so. I was wondering if this was a chicken and egg riddle - Did the concert start late, so no one showed up on time...or did no one show up on time, so the concert started late? Which came first? But, as my friend said, "It's Italy." And remember...now I sort of smile at that instead of doing internet searches for cheap flights back to the U.S. Regardless of the start time, the evening was absolutely lovely. A cool breeze had blown away the humidity, our "early" arrival landed us seats in the back where there were cushioned chairs around tables, the better to rest our glasses of a local wine, and when the concert eventually started, we were able to chat quietly with a background of live jazz filling our ears. The night ended perfectly with a visit to a neighborhood pizzeria, where I ordered some of the best pasta I've eaten in Naples. Unfortunately for my friends, they and the rest of the neighborhood had ordered pizza, which took about an hour to come out - highly unusual, here, but the pizzeria was hopping. At midnight, families were still pouring in - families, as in Mama, Papa, Nonna (grandmother), and at least two young children. At midnight. It really is different here.

EuroChocolate

"Evento PeriGoloso" is a fun play on the Italian language. Pericoloso (with a "c") means dangerous, while a Goloso or Golosa is a man or woman who really, really, really likes sweets - can't stop eating sweets.

(continued from Friday's post)...
We loaded back onto the tour bus Sunday morning for the short drive to Perugia, but then waited for over an hour while the tour guide tried to figure out the best way for us to get into the city. There must have been over 1000 people just in the parking lot where we were, all trying to buy tickets and then get on the shuttle buses and/or tram into Perugia's old city. After much plan changing, we got our bus tickets and were given freedom until 5pm that night. After missing two buses due to crowding, my group of six ladies shoved our way onto a bus Japanese style, and a few of us even secured seats - a wondrous feat.

Exiting into the Old Town, we were faced with a split, one stream of people going up some stairs, the others going into a tunnel that sloped up. Heading into the tunnel, we went up, up, up and came off of escalators into some sort of amazing forum or colisseum from antiquity. Lots of dark, arched tunnels and rooms branching off. These types of ruins are so interesting to those of us from Naples because the majority of "our" ruins were buried by Pompeii, thus, to see ruins in this region, you head underground. The hilltowns are, well, on hills, so it's a really different feel when visiting buildings and ruins that are hundreds, even thousands, of years old. In Perugia, there was a display set up from Mexico with samples of chocolate in one of the side branches. It was crowded, but not terrible...we should have known better.

After making our way out of this building, we were hit with the full blast of an Italian festival. Wall to wall people. The festival was set up running up and down the main street of Perugia's old city, along with a few off-shoots. Booths upon booths of chocolate from around Europe on both sides of the already narrow street. We pushed our way up to one of the booths and were able to get a couple of samples - Mama Mia! Delizioso! Unfortunately, that was one of the last samples of the day. The crowds were truly unbelievable and defy description. One of the things we were all looking forward to was the hot chocolate (I was walking around with the ladies from dinner the night before), so we got cups of that - and ate it with a spoon (see picture on right side of blog - yummmmm). We also pushed or way to the booths with liqueurs made from chocolate. All sorts of sauces and cremes were available - chocolate & orange, chocolate & almond, chocolate and pepperocini, and just keep on imagining. After pushing our way through the crowds (and in the rain, so add umbrellas to the madness), we decided to take a respite in a shoe store, an oasis for which were all so grateful that we all bought shoes. This also kept the shop keepers from saying a word about us dripping all over their tiny store and lounging around on their gigantic, leather seating.

I'm really not exaggerating about the crowds - here's a pic, and keep in mind, this street is one of the side streets of the festival!

Back into the madness, we quickly decided it was lunch time. We'd only each had a large breakfast, four sips of chocolate liqueurs, three pieces of chocolate, and cups of thick, creamy, hot chocolate. Clearly not enough food. We lucked out in finding a nearby restaurant with a great menu, good food, and only a ten minute table wait. When we left, the restaurant had a 45 minute table wait because by then, the light, misting rain had turned into an all out assault. But Perugia is yet another beautiful, Italian town with old stone buildings, fountains, detailed carvings hanging off the buildings, enticing alleys, and so on. I wonder if I'll ever tire of these charming, little places. My group decided to spend the afternoon getting off the beaten path and exploring Perugia's old city.

We walked around taking pictures in the rain, found a little chapel with a fresco painted in the 1500s (or thereabouts), and in general, just enjoyed the town without the crowds. The day was so nice, despite the rain, but we had a really rough, long trip home. I did learn a valuable lesson for the future. If we join in these tours on the future, we will drive our own car. The trip home took about 6 hours due to multiple bathroom stops (which each took a minimum of 30 minutes), while the driving time should only be about 3.5 hours.

Just a little sampling of what was available...