Category Archives: Naples

Museo Nazionale di San Martino in Naples, Italy

When we went back to Naples, a place where I lived twice in my childhood for a total of six years, I did more than relive memories. Thanks to a friend I made during our time in Hawaii, who was then stationed in my hometown, I got to see a new side of Napoli. Places I had not yet seen in a place that still retains the title of the ‘longest place I have ever lived’. This museum is on top of a hill above the funicolare and overlooks the bay of Naples and the Castello Nuovo. My favouite aspects were all the details, colours and history that encompassed every part of the museum. I think the skulls outside were probably my favourite aspect as we viewed it in the bright sunny afternoon. We took so many photographs and saw so much it became worth every second we spent. I just found it amazing that even in places you call ‘home’, you can still play tourist and be mesmerised by such beauty. I will let the photographs now do the talking. Continue reading →

Panettone & Yammos in Bath, England

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How to Make Panettone

I have to share with you a gem we have found here in Bath. A Neapolitan restaurant called Yammo!

Having lived in Napoli, Italia as a child and later as a teen I have become a food snob when it comes to Italian food. I resist going to any so-called ‘Italian’ restaurants in the USA and only found one in Malibu, California that came close to the food on which I was brought up. We stumbled upon Yammo one evening for dinner as our stomachs were growling, not knowing what was in store for us. I was taking by surprise by finding a restaurant owned by a man from Napoli and won over by the amazing food. I have never tasted a pizza that tasted like the pizza from my home in bella Napoli, until I went to Yammo. One taste of the sauce on the pizza margherita and I was transported back home. We have since decided it is our favourite resturant in Bath and have returned to dine in as well as to order pizza delivery to our home.

How to Make Panettone

For my birthday this year all I would have loved to go home to see my friends and ‘family’ in Napoli. My husband got me the second best thing which was to attend a Panettone demonstration with Ottavia of Ottavia in Cucina at Yammo with a free coffee and tasting session. I have only ever eaten panettone, never have I made one. Last year my mum (known as ‘Nonna’) and sister came for Christmas and we were all gutted that we did not get a panettone to share for the holidays. Needless to say I was very excited to be able to learn all the steps for making this Christmas treat from Italia.

How to Make Panettone

I felt I had learned so much more than just how to make panettone from Ottavia at the panettone demonstration at Yammo. Not only was I enjoying hearing her accent but she was filled with rich information about which ingredients will produce a better panettone and explaining the science behind cooking this yeasted rich bread. In the photos above she shared tips of how to preserve the aroma from the orange zest by mixing it with your butter first, how to make your own candied fruits, the tools she uses for when she is kneading the dough, and how to hang your panettone upside down after it has finished baking. How to Make Panettone

How to Make Panettone The demonstration was amazing. I only wish we could have made it there as part of the class. I did however get to buy panettone cases so I can try this at home.This was my first time having homemade panettone, having grown up eating the ones from the store for Christmas in Napoli, Italia. It was really soft and the most delicious panettone I have ever eaten. I cannot wait to make my own this year too! Thank you so much to Ottavia and to Yammo for hosting such an amazing afternoon!

Yammo!
66 Walcot Street, Bath, BA1 5BD
For delivery call 01225 938328
http://www.yammo.co.uk/

Ottavia in Cucina
http://www.ottaviaincucina.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/OttaviaInCucina

Q: Have you ever tried Italy’s beloved Panettone or made one at home?

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Dec Sponsors

I would like to give a shout out to all my sponsors on my sidebar for the month of December. We have Sarah Rose joining us for the first time from Bristol, England and returning to the side bar this month are Tara from Ontario, Canada and Louisa from Abruzzo, Italia. You will also remember Kate, Lix, Kim, and Melanie my sponsors continuing on through this month from November. Thank you to these lovely ladies for their support to ACR.

25 Days of Christmas

Checking in on the Nutcracker this morning, Prince Ice, who was up last night playing cards with T.Rex for peanut m&ms. Unfortunately with T.Rex’s limited arm reach and after the Maddox broke the Nutcracker by having him eat a jelly bean, neither of them could enjoy their winnings. So the treats were left for the boys to enjoy with a game of cards after school.

*photography by Bonnie Rose Photography © 2007 – 2013 All Rights Reserved | http://www.bonnie-rose.co.uk

My Night in an Italian Jail

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Day Four of Blogtember states, ‘A story about a time you were very afraid.’

I almost regret telling this story again but to be fair the culmination of events are still a very scary moment from my travels. It is something that should have never happened. It happened in a place I have always considered closest to ‘home’. A place that up to this point I have lived the longest. In a country where I lived twice in my childhood. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and I made a bad decision. This is my account of my night in an Italian jail.

It was the summer of 2012 and it was my first time back since my senior year ten years prior. What made this trip special was it was my husband’s first time to Italy and his first time to experience a place where I grew up. As a military brat the places you live, though geographically stay the same, change quite a bit after you leave. The majority of people I knew of my six years in Napoli were gone. Even my church family in Bagnoli had shrunk in numbers. I could not show him the three houses I had lived because they were out in the suburbs accessible by car but difficult to get to by public transport. So we spent the majority of our time seeking out the hidden beauty of the city in both places I remembered and those we found along the way. We savored every bite of the delicious southern Italian cuisine made simple excuses to have more gelato, and captured the beauty we saw in photographs.

On the night that this takes place we had just returned from viewing collections of antiquities excavated from Pompeii at the National Archaeological museum. It was early evening and we were walking through the narrow streets of the city. I was on a high of being surrounded by the sights and sounds of my childhood and had just gotten off the phone with an old family friend who lives in Napoli. I was so happy that I had not noticed I had gotten too comfortable. With my Nikon DSLR safely guarded in my arms, I captured street photography with the ease of my android phone. Sure the photos would not be as amazing as my camera but I was going for artsy and using different filters on my beloved hipstamatic app.

In the process of taking a photo of a pizza being made at a pizzeria, my phone was grabbed out of my hands. I turned in shock to see an obnoxious grin and then the back of a man as he ran away with my phone down another alleyway. While my head and my feet questioned each other with whether I should run or just scream, the man who had turned to run down the side street, jumped on a back of a moped with a driver. In less than a minute my phone was stolen and gone out of sight. It was not even the phone that I was upset about but the number of photos I had taken on our journey. So many of them documenting my husband’s first time in Napoli: his first taste of pizza from the birthplace of its creation, his first time on the funicular, an incline railway, and his first time shopping the street markets in Vomero. I screamed when it had happened and my husband who had been a few paces in front of me said he knew immediately what had happened before he turned around.

Our adventurous night began there in the middle of Napoli in the small darkened streets and alleyways. The people who worked in the pizzeria were really amazing. They took us inside, called the polizia, and made me a calming tea. I had not expected the outcome and so I was shaking and in a state of shock. It was then that I had my first ride in the back of a police car, whisked away to the nearest police station to make our report. I was feeling really stupid for feeling too comfortable being home in Napoli that I had my phone out at all. We should not even had been in that area, but I wanted to show my husband ‘Christmas Alley’, another memory from my fading past. We could have easily been walking aback to where we were staying had I not tried to fit just one more thing into our day.

Still shaking, I answered the questions using the best knowledge I have of the Italian language. I was asked to look at photographs to see if anyone looked like the man who had stolen my phone. Already his face was fleeting from my memory. Looking back afterwards I can now draw from their questions that they were hoping I would say it was this man in one of the photographs who was wearing a white shirt. However he was the opposite of my initial description and I kept getting frustrated with their persistence. I soon found myself in a small room for a ‘line up’, however the actuality of the situation scared me more than having my phone taken from me in the first place. I did not know exactly where they were taking me or what I would be doing before I was thrown into the scene I am about to describe to you.

The room I was in was dark and several bodies of police officials and detectives stood inside. I turned where they wanted me to face and I stood facing a man. Although a wall with a glass window was in-between us the man in question was literally inches away from me. He was not the man I had seen. He was white not tan, he had a bald or shaved head not dark hair, and he was more stalky and muscular than the leaner guy I remembered. It was the man from the photographs that the detectives had been showing me. I looked through the glass and saw this man was bloody, amped up on adrenaline, and looking like he could have come out of a Guy Richie film the way he was ready to throw a punch. I looked at the man in the white shirt and instantly the fear kicked me to my core. I wanted to run, to move, to close my eyes. At that moment I was more afraid of him punching through the glass, especially when it was apparent he could hear my words as I spoke ‘Its not him”.

I will be honest I cried when we got back to the room for more questions and information about the scene. I wish now I had checked the photographs on my Nikon DSLR. When we had gotten home to England all the feelings from that night came right back in a spiraling anxiety attack as I found a photo taken minutes before the crime. The man in the white shirt, whom I had been asked to identify, was up ahead of where I was taking photos, talking to a man who very much fit my description of the man who had taken my phone. Bone chilling. Perhaps the other man was just a man, innocent in his own right. However there was no mistaking the man I had to view at the police station, for I cannot get him out of my mind. Whatever he did from when I had taken that photo on my camera to when I saw him at the police station, I will never know.

Luckily I had my camera to document the rest of our trip and I did not let the incident ruin the rest of our time. I still love my beautiful city. The old buildings, the cobblestoned streets, the laundry hung out all the windows, and the women who lower baskets from tall apartment windows to retrieve recently purchased goods. The best was being able to start every morning and end every day with the beautiful view from where we were staying high up near the funicular to see the beautiful bay of Napoli. It may have taken me many years to return, but no one can take away from me the love I have for the city of Napoli. Not even spending part of our night in an Italian jail. Ci Vediamo bella Napoli!

Il Cimitero delle Fontanelle [Travel Tuesday]

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I had lived in the city of Naples twice for a total of six years before I went back to visit last summer. As life would have it one of my military wife friends from Hawaii was now stationed in my hometown. I had so much fun getting to visit with her in a place that meant so much to me. The highlight was having her show to me some aspects of bella Napoli that I had never experienced before. One of which was seeing the Fontanelle cemetery, which until recent times had been closed off and private any visitors.

The Fontanelle Cemetery is an ancient cemetery located in the Sanita district in Naples. It gets its name because of the presence of water sources back in ancient times. The cemetery includes 40,000 body remains that were victims from a the plague in 1656 and cholera in 1836.

There is something known as the ‘Pezzentelle’ which had provided people with the ability to adopt and placement of one of the unknown skulls which then ‘corresponded to a soul abandoned in exchange for protection’. Which is why you will see many skulls in the photos below not apart of the mass pile but decorated or put in special boxes. It was a really interesting sight and I really enjoyed getting to see it.

TRAVEL TUESDAY!

Together with my cohost Belinda from Found Love. Now What?

a Weekly Travel Linkup. Share your Travel stories and wanderlust addictions.

Grab button for A Compass Rose's Travel Tuesdays

Code below or Feel free to save this button to your computer and upload it in your post.

H e r e ’ s h o w i t w o r k s :

1. Share a post about travel! From road trips to trips abroad and from past travels to dream vacations. You can write about travel tips and tricks, favorite places to stay or anything in between! Just make it about traveling somewhere!
2. Grab the lovely button.
3. Linkup goes live! Every Tuesday at 8 am GMT.
4. Hop around and meet new travel loving bloggers! Link up will be open for a few days, make sure to check back to visit some of the newer travel posts!
5. Please only one linked up post per blogger. Save other posts for future linkups!

*Image original to A Compass Rose blog by Bonnie Rose Photography © 2007-2013 All Rights Reserved | www.bonnie-rose.co.uk

Travel: Dinner with mia familia in Napoli

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I am very passionate about Italian food.
To the point that if you take me to an Italian restaurant outside of Italy,
I will tell you it is not ‘real’ Italian food.
My in-laws insist that that the family owned Italian restaurant
in their small midwest town is authentic because the owner is ‘I-Talian’.
However both the pizza and pasta sauces are so sweet,
you could have fooled me with a jar of processed Prego sauce.
Both do not sit well with my palette or my years from growing up in southern Italy.
I am convinced that any Italians cooking in America cook for the American palette.
Any American-Italians that cook food are cooking ‘American-Italian food’
which is not Italian food.
Which is great. Just do not confuse the two as one.
I am also a purist and I believe that you need certain ingredients like the
salty Mediterranean air to make anything truly authentic.
However I did find one place in Malibu, California that served the closest to the real thing.
I liked the food so much that I made sure to give my compliments personally to the chef.
He was Italian and I give him props for sticking with the pure tastes of Italy.

My husband has had to hear my views on Italian food since before we began dating.
We were in a traveling theatre group at our University and while on a trip
I held my foot down to our group for stopping at Olive Garden for dinner.
I will admit it: I am an ‘Italian food’ snob.
Ten years later my husband finally gets his first (and second and third…) taste
of this amazing food I have not stopped bringing up in conversation.
‘You were right’ he said.
Now he shares my burden.
The burden of all people who have lived or traveled to Italy
and have eaten their hearts out on the beautiful, mouth watering, delicious food.
When you live else where in the world and crave a pizza.
Not just any pizza but pizza from Italy.
Or for us we crave real Neapolitan pizza.
Any kind.
As my husband told my sons yesterday,
‘I’ve never had a pizza I did not like in Naples’.
It is comforting knowing I’m married to man who gets me
and who is equally passionate about Italian food.

The one story I used to tell him about often was eating at the houses of
Ada and Maria, two of the women at our Italian church on the coast of Bagnoli.
How the pasta was the best you would ever eat.
How you would be given seconds and thirds.
Followed by courses of salad, cheese, meat, and dessert.
You would eat past the point of being full, unable to tell your host ‘no more’.
It would be amazing.
This past summer my husband got to finally experience that with my church family.
I will admit I was busy eating and savouring each bite to document the food fully.
But below is a little glimpse into some of the best food and memories
that a girl who grew up in Italy could ask for and then some.
Enjoy.

The busy city of Napoli, Italia became my home twice in my life for a total of six years.

The meal being prepared by Maria and Ada.

You will never leave hungry. Quite the opposite.

Must continue to brush up on my Italian vocabulary to keep up in the passionate fast talking conversations.

Delicious foods that were the ensemble to the main pasta course.

*photographs belong to Bonnie Rose Photography © 2013 All rights reserved. | www.bonnie-rose.co.uk
**Please contact if you want to use any photographs or for more information regarding photographic services.

Italy and the Path Less Taken

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Having spent a significant part of my childhood in Italy has left

an equally significant part of my heart in Napoli.

It meant so much to share this corner of the world

with the man I love and with whom I share life.

I cannot wait to bring my sons home to Italy

To watch their eyes light up as they taste pizza.

To which Napoli is the birthplace.

Though I may be biased I always recommend Napoli as a travel destination.

There are so many sightseeing stops for tourists.

The islands of Capri, Ischia, and Procida. The coast drive of the Amalfi Coast and Sorrento.

Mt. Vesuvius, Pompeii and Herculaneum. Not to mention all the museums and churches.

Sometimes its about taking a more organic approach to traveling

which gives you a more rounded experience in another country and culture.

Take the path less traveled or not traveled at all.

One of my good friends Liisa, from our time together in Hawaii,

was living in the heart of Napoli last summer when we visited.

She took us on a walk I had not experienced in my time growing up in that city.

It was on narrow pathways up to the top by way of many cobbled steps.

There was both beauty and destruction to be found.

Art to behold in many facets on our walk.

I was constantly snapping photographs with my camera

just to remember and nto let any details get missed.

We saw some posters of a self portrait put up by a local photographer my friend knew.

Remnants of old mixed in with the fingerprints of the modern world.

To top it all off was the stunning view from the top before we made our way down.

The bay of Napoli with Mt. Vesuvius in the background.

Perfection not to be missed.

** If you are interested in using photographs or for more information about photographic services, contact bonnie@bonnie-rose.co.uk

Back from Europe Trip

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Military brat. Born in England to American parents and grew up moving around Europe, from military base to military base, until I was about to graduate high school. Quite a lot has happened in my life since I moved ‘home’ to the United States. A decade later and I am returning ‘home’ to Napoli, Italia a place I lived twice for a total of six years. With the grandparents watching our kids, this time I bring my husband for an adventure on our 9th anniversary.

My husband I in Paris on our 9th Wedding Anniversary 2.8.12

An Adventure it was. No luxury cruises or hotel resorts for this free spirit pair. Off the train in Napoli we met our predicament of finding no place to get a sim card, to a broken pay phone, and no wifi to contact our host upon our arrival. When our taxi driver dropped us off at the address we requested to get to my friends’ home, he dropped us off in the wrong location. Standing in a darkened alley way with all our luggage and absolutely no sense of direction to where we are and where we need to be, our outlook was quite foreboding. Our options were to go further up the winding road, or down the cobblestone street to hopefully a busier area of town. We chose the later and finally found a working pay phone where with our last 50 euro on hand called my friend for a rescue. Bottle of wine later and we are outside on my friend’s veranda overlooking the city of naples, the beautiful bay lit up in lights, and Mt. Vesuvio looking magnificently in the backdrop.

Despite the less than romantic arrival, the majority of our time was seeking out the hidden beauty of the city, savoring every bite of the delicious southern Italian cruising, and capturing the beauty we saw in photographs. An early evening after viewing collections of antiquities excavated from Pompeii at the National Archaeological museum, we were walking through the narrow streets of the city. I was on a high of being surrounded by the sights and sounds of my childhood. With my DSLR safely guarded in my arms, I captured street photography with the ease of my android phone. In the process of taking a photo of a pizza being made at a pizzeria, my phone was grabbed out of my hands. I turned in shock to see an obnoxious grin and then the back of a man as he ran away with my phone down another alleyway. While my head and my feet questioned each other with whether I should run or just scream, the man jumped on a back of a moped with a driver. In less than a minute my phone was stolen and gone out of sight. It was not even the phone that I was upset about but the number of photos I had taken on our journey. So many of them documenting my husband’s first time in Napoli: his first taste of pizza from the birthplace of its creation, his first time on the funicular, an incline railway, and his first time shopping the street markets in Vomero. However our adventurous night did not end there. I had my first time in the back of a police car, as we were whisked away to the nearest police station to make a report on the incident. I regret feeling too comfortable being home in Napoli that I had my phone out at all. Still shaking, I answered the questions using the best of knowledge of the Italian language. I was asked to look at photographs to see if anyone looked like the man who had stolen my phone. Afterwards I can now draw from their questions that they were hoping I would say it was this man in one of the photographs who was wearing a white shirt. However he was the opposite of my initial description. I soon found myself in a small room for a ‘line up’, however the actuality of the situation scared me more than having my phone taken from me in the first place. I stood facing a man, and although a wall with a glass window was in-between us, he was literally inches away from me. He was not the man I had seen. Bloody, amped up on adrenaline, and looking like he could have come out of a Guy Richie film, I looked at the man in the white shirt and instantly the fear kicked me to my core. I wanted to run, to move, to close my eyes. At that moment I was more afraid of him punching through the glass, especially when it was apparent he could hear my words as I spoke ‘Its not him”.

I will be honest I cried when we got back to the room for more questions and information about the scene. I wish now I had checked the photographs on my DSLR. When we had gotten home all the feelings from that night came right back in a spiraling anxiety attack as I found a photo taken minutes before the crime. The man in the white shirt, whom I had been asked to identify, was up ahead of where I was taking photos, talking to a man who very much fit my description of the man who had taken my phone. Bone chilling. Perhaps the other man was just a man, innocent in his own right. However there was no mistaking the man I had to view at the police station, for I cannot get him out of my mind. Whatever he did from when that photo was taken to when I saw him at the police station, I will never know.

I may have been without the ease and connivence of taking photos with my phone, I did however have my camera to document the rest of our trip by and I did not let the incident ruin our time. Perhaps if I had not grown up in Napoli, it would not be the case but I still love my beautiful city. The old buildings, the cobblestoned streets, the laundry hung out all the windows, and the women who lower baskets from tall apartment windows to retrieve recently purchased goods. Inside a cave we visited Fontanelle cemetery, a final resting place for thousands of anonymous corpses. These were victims of the great plague in the 1600s. We took the train to see Pompeii where we too a scenic tour and I did an imprint self portrait session in the ruins. Another day we took the ferry out to Capri and walked around the beautiful island to the Blue Grotto. We spent an evening in Sorrento, eating the best seafood and speggeti of our trip right on the water with an equally refreshing white wine. The best was being able to start every morning and end every day with the beautiful view from where we were staying. It may have taken me many years to return, but no one can take away from me the love I have for the city of Napoli. Ci Vediamo bella Napoli! “