Amalfi in November
Last weekend in Amalfi reminded me how the Italian summer goes on and on.
Early November on the Amalfi coast means tintore and pedirosso grapes plucked from the vines in Tramonti.
We found them when we ventured inland, a few kilometers from the sea, where rounded hills, terraced slopes and gentle valleys host intensely fertile lemon orchards, vineyards, chestnut groves and olives.
Leaves are just beginning to turn in these early days of November. The olives have been gathered and so have most of the grapes, but there are still quite a few bunches that their friend the organic winemaker offers to the children.
The children reach up to pluck grapes of their own.
We pick and sample succulent late season figs.
On the Amalfi coast in early November, tourists have nearly all gone away. Hotel rates are 50-70% less than in August.
The light is golden, the water inviting.
The air warm and dry.
Our favorite hotel — where I have myself been staying for 20 years, and where owners and staff will greet you as friends — is barely full. Staff are very relaxed but as delighted as ever to focus on making you especially comfortable. (For similar conditions, consider March, April and early May too.)
By the sea a duck called Caterina stays and keeps the children company in their fishing.
They fish the way local children here have fished forever.
using a simple line and hook wound round a piece of cork.
As bait, they use shrimp from the sea and mussels. A dear friend plucks mussels, below, from the rocks…
Easily the children fish up several ombrina… and a rockfish.
In early November, coastal meals are all outside.
As have so many Insider’s Italy clients, we enjoy a lunch that celebrates the seasons — pizzas with local mozzarella, local Furure tomatoes (which with its new potatoes, brought culinary fame to this tiny hillside village), greens from Cristina’s naturally organic gardens, homemade wines, grilled eggplant. Cristina must surely be among the single best cooks on the coast, and is remarkable in that she cooks nearly exclusively what she produces on her property — and only those dishes that are local, traditional and seasonal. These are her garden potatoes, with the church of Sant’Elia in the background.
Her husband Uberto fishes, and looks after her chickens and pig
Uberto maintain the single most interesting larder I have ever seen, at its most replete in November. Nathan is in wonder.
Uberto and Cristina offer our clients superb in-home cooking classes which for many of you have been the highlight of a trip.
Cristina flours the chldren’s four fish and fries them in her olive oil. The fish join the lunch.
Cristina’s tomatoes dry outside in a bunch, ready to be cut and used to enliven the next months’ cooking.
We walk and climb steps
taking paths we have enjoyed so many times before (like this one to Atrani.)
And walk to Conca dei Marini, a village I have been visiting since I was six weeks old. Here is the view looking east from that town. Note the neatly terraced vineyards, vegetable gardens and olive and lemon groves.
Capers spring from the walls.
We swim and lounge some more.
And eat some more.
And walk some more.
If we want, four major archeological sites are just an hour away. If we want, we can spend a day in Naples with our superb docent guide Sabrina — this for one of the world’s great archeological museums and one of Europe’s great cities. If we want we can spend the day sailing to Capri, stopping at bays and beaches along the way to swim, to lunch, to explore.If we want we can take one of Italy’s best walks, a four hour adventure that offers a bird’s eye view over much of the entire coast.
We do not want.
Like so many of our travelers, despite our ambitions to undertake all sorts of plans, we do not move.
It is all too perfect.
Amalfi in November.
