9 to 5 cocktails

Friends, I am so tired.  It is 9:00 here, so it is 6AM in Italy.  My body is begging me to go to bed.  I shall do so soon.

But first, from September online happy hour, the drinks I made for the 9 to 5 theme.  I present the Blue Collar and White Collar cocktails.

Cheers!

the restaurant at Il Monastero

As I have said to several people already, if you don't eat well in Italy, you are doing Italy wrong....

You know, not every meal needs to be fancy, and not all of the good food we had in Italy was fancy.  But oh, yes, we did fancy as well.  At least one meal in each of our destinations was fancy.  I embrace the fancy.  And so it was that we had dinner at the restaurant at our hotel, Il Monastero.

I think it was our second night on Ischia when we dined there.  We put on our pretty clothes and came down from our room, the first customers in the small dining room. 

I think we were always the first or among the first.  Even in Italy, like Spain, they dine later than we typically would.

Because we could not agree on doing the mixed seafood and land menu as a table, Conrad and I opted for the seafood only,

and Van opted for the land. 

Tastes were shared across the table, have no fear.  We enjoyed an Ischia white wine

and then, later, an Ischia red.  And oh, yes, I had some chilled Rucolino to cap the evening.

Bread service started us off,

and then we were gifted a little amuse that featured olive oil, foccacia, tomato sauces, and cheese. 

That sauce pattern emulates the floor tiles in the hotels, by the way.

And then it was off to the races, as it were:

A lovely fish tartare that included raspberries in the garnish.  That was a nice surprise.

Raw shrimp with cheese and a lovely tomato sauce.

Citrus risotto with squid.  This was my least favourite, and while I liked it, I envied Van his ravioli with zucchini.

Ditalini pasta with green beans and shrimp.

Cod served under a rich "foam" (more like a mousse, it was thick) of potato.

A trio of desserts.

Then came a bombolini which was so delightful that it could have been the only dessert itself.  And that's the Rucolino with it.

I may have liked the risotto the least, but it was still pretty good.  I loved the cod and the raw shrimp and the tartare especially.  I tasted some of what Van had, and it was tasty.  Meanwhile, the service was terrific.  The one server gave us great recommendations on wine.  We enjoyed the meal thoroughly.  Outside, a thunderstorm blew through.  Our first great meal in Italy - hooray!

Italy recap: sightseeing on Ischia

A blog entry title that may promise much but under-deliver.  We shall see!

Here's the truth:  we willfully took a relaxing vacation.  We did and saw a lot, but we also didn't overfill our days with things to do and see.  In fact, our choice of going to Ischia was to be in a place that would likely have nice weather and a beautiful hotel so that we could acclimate to a different time zone and country.  In other words, we didn't drive or hop a bus or cycle or anything else all around the island, and although friends gave us a lot of suggestions for villages to visit, thermal baths to enjoy, or restaurants to try, we stuck within a small zone near our hotel.  I think that dinner a walkable mile and a half away was about our limit.  And that was more than fine by us!  But it did mean that our sightseeing was, well, minimal, or at least not far-ranging.  When you stick in a smaller area, sometimes you notice the details more.

So let me focus on a few different things we saw and did.  Starting with the castle complex where the hotel was located....

I've shown you some of the hotel gardens on the castle grounds, but to see more of the place, we needed tickets.  Oh, there were parts we could see, especially if we chose to walk down to the causeway rather than take the elevator. 

We also enjoyed aperitivos and lunch a few times on the terrace cafe, just above the where the elevator let us out up above. 

Those were familiar to us.  Our stay at the hotel entitled to a visit to the rest of it, though, and we took advantage of that.

I'll let you read up on the history of the Castello Aragonese d'Ischia.  And I'll hope you visit, if only for the views. 

But it was cool to see some of it closer. 

There was one little church on the back side that had some terrific modern interpretations of the Stations of the Cross in a very old setting.  Love that organ! 

There was another church closer to the entrance that had some very old fresco work being cared for. 

That was nice to spend a little time with.  On the macabre side, no these are not toilets in the photo. 

Rather, they were where dead nuns were placed to drain their bodies of fluids as they decomposed.  Read more about it if you have the stomach!  But what was otherwise kind of cool about the complex was that there were modern art installations all around. 

The stark semi-ruins of the complex were a terrific backdrop for the works.

We went to a museum.  Just one.  I know, I know.  We could have done the whole trip on museums and/or churches and/or wineries.  But we didn't.  We did just the one little museum on Ischia, a short walk from the hotel.  It intrigued us on first sight, the Museo del Mare.  And it was an interesting place if a little too, hmmm, dense with objects. 

I admit, there were times when I had difficulty knowing what to look at, and since most of the information was in Italian only, it wasn't always easy to understand the links among the items on exhibit or overall.  Ah well.  It was cool to see just the same.

We popped into a distillery, Distillerie Aragonesi. 

A very very small operation,

but nicely set up and with some good products.  I came home with a bottle of their fennel liqueur,

as did Van, I believe.  We appreciated the tasting, and the couple who were operating it were really welcoming.  I hope they succeed!  Speaking of tasting, we did pop into a shop earlier in the visit that was selling the island's signature amaro, Rucolino. 

I tasted amari all over Italy, asking for local ones when I could get them.  Van had had the Rucolino on the first night, and I think it was not only served too warm, but it was also "cooked".  He stayed away from it the rest of the time (and Conrad does not like bitter drinks at all), but I enjoyed tasting it and some related products, bringing home a bottle of the Rucolino (which is gets its name from the arugula used to flavour it) and of Pipernina, which uses local thyme (or so I gather).

I'll write about our best meal on Ischia separately - it deserves that consideration.  Our first night we went to a nearby place that we could get into and that the hotel recommended, and it was perhaps the least good meal we had in Italy.  Ah well.  The third night, I think it was, we did the long walk to another place we found.  I rather liked my pizza, Conrad liked his, Van's carbonara was, well, gloppy.  Just not great.  So that was two nights of mediocre dining.  The last night we went to a waterfront restaurant near the hotel and enjoyed it. 

Auras didn't rise to the level of our best meal on Ischia, but the cocktails were good,

the food was good,

the service was terrific.  It was too windy and cool for us to sit outside, alas, but we had a nice evening of it. 

My pasta with a genovese sauce made with octopus (we had a lot of seafood on Ischia) was tasty,

and I liked the zucchini blossoms we shared to start. 

Our wine was a local red, and we enjoyed that, too. 

All in all, a very nice dinner that was made even better by the short walk home!

That kind of summarizes our Ischia experience.  I would happily go back and see more of the island.  But that wasn't our goal this time, and I am glad for what we saw within our small, core area of sightseeing.

One more Ischia post to come, I think, the best meal we had on the island, and then we'll move on to recapping Bologna!