Casareccio alla Genovese

Another sunny day in Sorrento, although Mr and Mrs Philadelphia warned us that there might be a storm at 5 p.m. about which the BBC weather forecast had neglected to tell us. This habit of naming people that we meet on holiday is an old one, going back to the 1980s in Maiori when we met a couple who had named many people in the hotel. For example they called a man “Tepid” because he asked them how the pool was and when they said “Cold!” he dipped in a toe and said dismissively “Hmm - tepid!” then jumped in and gasped at the cold. They called his family “Tepid wife” and “Tepid son” which I thought was very funny. Soon James and I adopted the habit although we don’t make a point of it, we only do it if it feels appropriate. On this holiday, as well as Mr & Mrs P, we called a couple “Young Susan and James” because they reminded us of our younger selves, and of course we refer to the head waiter as Mark Rylance because of his resemblance to that eminent actor. 

Before we could head down to the sea, James wisely decided that we should do our Covid tests, which need to be done less than forty-eight hours before our flight home. Luckily they were negative, and we then proceeded to fill out our Passenger Locator forms, to which we needed to upload our negative Covid tests. Finally we checked in for our flights, and went down to hotel reception where they kindly printed it all out for us. This all took nearly two hours!  

We then went down to the sea and swam around together, chatting and enjoying the views and watching all the ferries and boats. Vesuvius was invisible in the haze. After lunch we went to the pool and sure enough large white clouds rolled in and piled up high above us. The resultant few spots of rain were rather disappointing, because I do love a good storm. We had dinner in the old town and I had the above mentioned Casareccia alla Genovese which consisted of short lengths of folded over pasta with a delicious pesto, made from basil, pine nuts, walnuts, garlic, parmesan cheese, pecorino cheese, and of course extra virgin olive oil.