John: Food and drink break

I've just realised I have overlooked something very important when writing a holiday blog. Telling you all about new foods and drinks we have tasted. Limoncello was a new drink to me which I wrote about earlier, in the Italian blog.

Thanks to Linda for recommending that it tastes good over ice. It must be a very popular drink in Europe because I saw this sign on a blackboard in Amsterdam a couple of weeks later.

Below is a photo of a page from my little blue book that I always carry with me. It's always useful to have to ask waiters, tour guides etc. to write things down for me.

The first entry is the name of an Italian wine, called "Primitivo Di Manduria." I had the sweet variety.

This is a red wine from the Puglia region of Southern Italy. This sweet version has a very high sugar content, and is 13.5% alcohol by volume. I have never tasted a red wine so sweet before, yet it wasn't syrupy like a desert wine. It was just the right drop for the end of a busy day. The entry below it says "Sfogliatella" The Neapolitan version called "Sfogliatella Santa Rosa" is a shell shaped pastry made from shortcrust dough filled with dried fruits and lemon, garnished with cream and raspberries. They taste as gorgeous as they look, and are twice as fattening as you could ever imagine!

When in Naples you eat pizza. The dish that the city calls its own. Our guide and some other residents we spoke to recommend a pizza place called "Sorbello's" as the place to go. Reservations were not taken, and there was always a queue whenever we walked by. The menu is only in Italian, but depending on the waiter you can get an English description. The pizzas are huge (the edges spill over the edge of a very large dinner plate), and delicious. I'm sure that this will be the only place where I order a pizza that had a registered trade mark against its name! It had a very unusual topping made with nuts! Surely not. But now I'm sure it was. A couple of days ago back in Oz, I saw a packet of something called Dukkah, which is an Egyptian creation made of crushed nuts, and spices. I'm sure I saw this ingredient on the menu, because it didn't look like any Italian word I had ever seen before. The rest of the topping was standard pizza stuff, but as a pizza this creation was quite something.

As pizza is to Naples, so cakes and pastries are to Paris. It looked like a ho hum sort of a morning taking the washing to the laundromat and killing time whilst the washing was done. But what a find! Just next door to the laundromat was one of the most mind blowing, taste buds spoiling bakeries I've ever seen (and enjoyed) and I've experienced a few. The coffees and the cakes were so good, I got Julie a loyalty card.

And folks this will be all for this blog because the technology is driving me nuts. Thanks for reading. (PS Julie doesn't think Blogo works very well with photos so Tripcast and /or Wordpress will be Jule's/ (therefore by default, my) preferred options in future)