Europe Fall 2024 - Digging Deeper Into 'Why Campello' #1

I decided that it would be worthwhile both for you, my passionate, fanatical readers, and for my own development of my personal history do a deeper dive into exactly why I am waxing so rhapsodic about Campello (I've noticed the locals drop the 'El' when they talk about the town).

I'm going to start with our apartment. Now, to be honest, the quality of this apartment is not a Campello thing. It is a 'this is freaking great short-term rental' thing. BUT, it has a major influence on the quality of our experience here. 

Let's start with the fact that there is a lot of seating...A Lot. If you are familiar with the current status of Airbnb/VRBO/and other short-term rentals, you are aware that seating is given a minimal amount of attention and investment, making for stays of any length of time being most uncomfortable. Our place here...

...has a sofa, a couple of chairs, table and chairs, all with a great view. But that's not all!

Turn 180 degrees and you find...

Almost the duplicate! Another table, two more chairs, an honest to God footstool, and another sofa!

This place has all kinds of seating, working, relaxing options.

On to the Kitchen. This is another area where the current status of short-term rentals drives me nuts. You are in an apartment, rather than a hotel, because you want to have a more 'living' type of environment. Yet the vast majority of short-term rentals lack even the minimum necessary to be able to do some cooking. 

It is critically important for Wife and my longer term stays that we can do a substantial amount of our own cooking. This apartment in Campello was like finding the Mother Lode!

Pots and pans galore, strainer, A Freaking Pressure Cooker! A Salad Spinner (never saw those two in in short-term rental!)

A microwave, a tea kettle, and a real cutting board!

But there's more!

A coffee maker...with the filters and a supply of coffee!

Knives, utensils, plastic wrap

Salt, pepper, sugar, oil, even toothpicks! 

I felt I'd gone to short-term rental kitchen heaven

And I know I gave you these kinds of pictures yesterday, but the overall view and ambiance is to die for.

We conclude with our run to the Carrefours Hypermarket to do our major shopping for the month. (We will fill in with our ability to walk to many markets close by).

Europe Fall 2024 - Returning Home - On To El Campello

Throughout the last three weeks of posting, I've talked about trying to find another place other than the two we've already identified for potential long-term stays. That testing period has ended. Yesterday, we flew to Alicante, Spain and drove to one of the two places we've identified, El Campello. 

Like all such transfers, it was tiring. Getting to the Rome airport and dropping off our rental car (involving going into the wrong garage, figuring out how to exit said garage, going around to re-enter the airport and finding the correct garage), two flights, getting a new rental car, setting it up to drive and handle the GPS holder, driving to our new rental, getting checked in, getting some food. It was a tiring day.

BUT, there was this sense of relief and pleasure. Why? First there was a familiar, comfortable, and enjoyable feeling as soon as we entered into the beach side area of the town. Second, as soon as we got into the apartment and verified that the views were every bit as good as the pictures on the Airbnb website, we started to smile. Third, as we woke up this morning, opened windows, realized we could hear the ocean, see the ocean, be in a peaceful environment, our spirits soared. Fourth, as we checked out the apartment further, we realized just how many wonderful features it has which so few comparable short-term rentals do, we began to appreciate this could really be a relaxing time for us. Fifth, as we went out for our first walk on the waterfront, we were totally reminded that we are no longer in Italy. We had the clear view of the ocean, the openness, the vista. 

We will see how this all ages over the next four weeks. For the moment, I am feeling very full and joyful. I will go into a lot more detail about the community and the apartment as well. For the moment, here are some quick photos I took with my phone today to give you an idea of the ambiance.

Europe Fall 2024 - Third Gastronomic Post from Italy

As mentioned in my second Italian gastronomic post, eating while we are traveling is more of a stream-of-consciousness type of activity than a true gastronomic focused adventure. The last week covers our period at Francavilla al Mare and Ostia on the opposite coast by Rome. 

 Despite which side of the coast, whether you were in the countryside or in a city environment, if you were on the water, we found the Pesce (seafood) menus to be almost identical with minor variations. This meant me focusing on the seafood pastas (which were almost uniformly excellent), and Wife searching for grilled whole fish. We also ate a lot of salads (which were just 'okay', and a lot of grilled vegetables which were mostly zucchini and eggplant and were uniformly very good.

Seafood Pastas

A note on Mantis Shrimp

Those are the long, shelled things on the pasta. They are really hard to eat. You basically cut them in sections and chew on the shell like you would a shrimp head (if you are into that kind of thing). The flavor is very sweet.

Whole Grilled Fish

Non-Grilled Fish

At one place I ordered something I had no idea of. I thought it was going to be in tomato sauce. Turns out to be a type of eel (I thought it very good) with olives, wine and a bit of tomato.

Sample of a Salad and a Grilled Vegetable

No, we did not stop eating gelato

This was from a place in Francavilla. The one on the bottom was without doubt the best version of pistachio I've ever had with a ton of nuts in it. Sadly it was closed the second time we went there.

Non-Big Meals

There were times when we simply could not find a place open. Mondays were horrible for finding a place to eat. We were in Giulianova on a Monday and could only find this one cafe/bar open. No one was in it and they had some pizza slices and calzone available to be warmed up.

They were actually very good. The tarts we tried were not so great. One was a mixed berry and the other was pastry cream.

If we can find Kebab, that is a go to, non-fancy meal for us. This was from our last day in Ostia when we were still recovering from our Roman meal experience.

Okay, but not as good as the one in Vasto

Roman Eating

We'd not had pizza hardly at all because it is only made in the evenings and most of the time we were too tired to go out in the evening. But on arriving in Ostia, there was a pizza place right on the next block, highly rated, with take out. We went there, ordered our pizza, had it in 10 minutes and brought it to the apartment. It was very good.

 

We definitely wanted something different from the seafood oriented diet. Plus I wanted to try the classic Roman pastas in Rome. We were only there two days. It was after our Ostia Antica mega-outing. It was lunch time and we were exhausted. There was a local place right across the street from our apartment. This was a 'Grandma's Cooking' place...Literally. The entire staff (pretty small) was older women. It had what we were looking for on the menu so we gave it a try.

Wine and Bread

The woman serving us was so sweet working with us on our translation. When we ordered glasses of wine, she had us each taste the wine, then gave us an enormous pour!

 I don't know if the picture does justice to the size of the glasses and the pours. And these were 5 Euros ($5.50) each!

Cacio e Pepe

One of the classic pastas. I cook it a lot. Mine is always more soupy then this

 I think partially because I'm making it for more than one person. It was VERY peppery. Wife was eating this and it took her a long time. I was making fun of her until I tried it and realized how much black pepper was in it. BUT it was very good.

Carbonara

Another classic preparation with egg, cheese, and bacon. I also make this a lot, and also have the too wetness issue for I think the same reason.

 The bacon, when you get this in other parts of Italy is frequently very softly cooked. This was like pieces of lardon - cubic rectangles - and very crispy cooked. You will not also they didn't put this on spaghetti. It was also delicious.

Arostoncinni

I was supposed to try this in Francavilla but we never got around to it. It is basically meat on skewers. This was lamb. It was a bit under seasoned 

 

 Wife had fried chicken wings...which doesn't sound very 'classic' Roman to me, but what do I know?

 

 They were fatty (which I enjoyed but Wife did not) but were way more favorable than the skewers.

And we did the mandatory grilled veg which included carrots this time!

Europe Fall 2024 - Italy Exploration Ruminations

Our Fall 2024 trip has a specific focus - getting ourselves truly bought into changing our international travel so that we are doing less physically taxing running around and staying more in one place. As such we can consider this trip to be an experiment. And following the principles of the scientific method, it is as important to disprove a hypothesis as to prove it. (Though in the real world, anyone who has been professionally in academia knows that you only get published and tenure if your hypotheses are proven!). 

In fact, we are doing two tests. 

The first was to see if we could find another locale that meets the criteria we've set up for our desired long-term stay. This has been the first three weeks of our trip where we have been looking at numerous locales along the Northern half of Italy's Adriatic coast.

Our failure to find any place that met our objectives in Italy should therefore not be considered a failure of the test. The test merely proved that there are no locales in this area for our needs. Italy bombed out because of a number of factors. 

It has (at least based on our sample which now includes the opposite coast based Rome/Lido di Ostia) the unique culture/system of renting out vast portions of its beach to private operators who turn them into turn-key sites for beach goers which include shade (umbrellas), chairs, access to food and drink, often times sporting activities (beach volleyball courts, beach soccer courts, paddle boards, etc.), music, etc. I remember when we arrived our very first stop, Caorle, where the hotel we stayed at told us if we wanted to go to the beach, we were assigned spot (I forget the number) where we would find an umbrella and chairs. I thought it odd at the time. Little did I know.

There is also a distinct separation between beach areas and the towns. We stayed at a number of nice places on the beach. But none of them had shopping and services in convenient walking range. We stayed or visited at other places that were nice towns for walking around, where you could potentially live a walking lifestyle. But none of these were close to the water.

Finally, the towns that did seem to intrigue us (I'm talking about you Vasto) were lacking in short-term rental housing suitable for us in the areas where we would want to stay. 

 We're now on our way to the second test. This is a long-term (one-month) stay at one of the locales we've previously gone to see if we would be content going back there. Personally, I am looking forward to the slowing down and being settled for a while. Whether we go nuts after two weeks remains to be discovered.

 

Europe Fall 2024 - Closing Out Italy In Ostia

 Wife and I are pretty pleased with how we've handled the physical aspects of this trip. Before we left home, we were quite concerned because both of us had a bunch of physical issues. We had serious questions as to our ability to get around, walk, climb stairs, and be as active as we've done in the past. Getting so beat-up on our trip to Asia and Ghana in the spring did not help our frame of mind.

But by taking it gradual and slowly, we've really built up our capability as was demonstrated by our climbing in Francavilla a couple of days ago, and our tromping around in Ostia Antica yesterday. We were sore but nothing 'broke'. So it was good.

Today, our last day in Italy, we wanted to go to the ocean side to see if the beach here was any different than all those we saw on the Adriatic side.

Hmmmmmmm

NOPE

Commercial Lidos with beach umbrellas as far as the eye can see. Clearly this has to be insanely popular with Italians because you look at the sheer volume of these across the county, there must be a demand for it. 

They even found the ancient Roman Deity of beach umbrellas

Parapluisius

Here shown with his tool for raising the beach umbrella.

We went inland 

There are always interesting things to see (unless you are in Pescara).

Why would a bakery have a couple of Gorillas in front?

Look at this poor girl. Holding her head. Must have a headache. I would too if I had my morning snack with two massive Gorillas, a giant toy soldier, and ceiling of disco balls around me!

It is no shock to readers that Wife and de-I love their gelato. We tend to go for places that 'say' they artisanal (artigianale in Italian). But when you see that word everywhere...

 I begin to wonder. Did Parmalat, the huge dairy company in Italy, create a subsidiary called Gelato Artigianale? Is all this coming from a few factories?

And let me close with a couple of modern travel ruminations.

 Cell phone antennas. 

How incredibly wonderful it is to have voice, text, data, email, internet at one's fingertips all around the world. Wife and I were reminiscing on traveling using travelers checks, and writing to make reservations, and using maps to navigate.

 The ATM

Seriously, I never, never stop being amazed each and every time we go to an ATM in another country and take out local currency...in a matter of minutes. It is so freaking wonderful!

Well, our Italian research portion is at a close. I have a last foodie post which I will get up this weekend. Tomorrow, we're off for our return month in El Compello, Spain. Talk to you from there.