Monday, September 7, 2009

Into the Fire


Getting an Internet connection when you want is not easy in Italy. If your hotel doesn't have one you need to search out an Internet cafe which could be across the street or across town. Luckily, the one I was using in Sorrento is across the street from the hotel but opens on Italian time; late in the morning, closed from 1:30 to 4:30 and open until 8:30 at night. If that doesn't match our touring schedule, I'm out of luck. And it's even worse if their connection shuts down, which it did for two days and of course, they weren't open on Sunday. So obviously, I have a lot of catching up to do.


Thursday evening we visited a small local farm. In the southern part of Italy, they terrace the hillsides and pass the farms down in the family, generation to generation. Agritourismo is business to these farmers. They open their farms to tourists and make extra money this way. The farm we went to has 11 family members working it. They have olives, grapes and small areas of row crops on 4 acres of terraced land. After our “tour” we learned how to make pizza the Neopalotano way. They use a wood fired oven and as you can see the flames were pretty hot.


"Into the Fire" © Kathy Dunham 2009

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