Sriracha Chicken Salad with Greek Yogurt

In our house we love Greek yogurt, we always have a tub of it in the fridge.  We use it when we cook Mexican food instead of sour cream, in dips and I have started using it in my baking.  Lately the husband has been using it more in his cooking to replace mayo and cream.  Last week he roasted a chicken and we still had leftovers we needed to use.  For lunch this weekend, it was chopped up and mixed with mayo, greek yogurt, celery and sriracha.  We still included a little bit of mayo to give it the tang that you are used to in chicken salad.

Ingredients:

Chicken Breast

1 Tbsp Light Mayo

4 Tbsp Non-fat Greek yogurt

1 stalk of celery

Sriracha (season to taste)

Chop up the chicken breast and celery and mix in the mayo, yogurt and sriracha.  I used it to make a sandwich with a toasted potato bun and pepperjack cheese.

Healthy chicken salad

Chicken salad sandwich

Honeymoon Day 8: Pompeii and Naples

We woke up Monday morning ready to move onto Sicily for our second week in Italy, but first we planned to head to Pompeii for the morning.  We packed up our room and headed to town to catch the Circumvesuviana for a 30 minute ride out to Pompeii.  It was much less stressful without our luggage.  The train was still crowded but not packed since it was late morning.  When we got off at the Pompeii stop we were approached by a lot of people offering tours but we made a right once we got off the train and headed to the entrance of Pompeii.  There are certified tour guides near the entrance and we almost went with one, he kept trying to add more people to keep the price down and the whole process was taking so long we decided to go on without him.  We ended up going with just the audioguides which worked for us, but I would recommend getting a tour guide if possible.

We headed into the entrance and up to a sort of town center where there were multiple alters to the gods and where some of the artifacts are housed.  We quickly realized that Pompeii was much larger then either one of us expected, which is what made me wish we had a tour guide.  I learned about Pompeii in school and read up on it before we went but I didn't really appreciate until we got there that it is truly a city and you can explore a lot of it.  I think I expected that we would only have access to a small portion of it.

View of Pompeii from the entrance

Artifacts dug up from the site

A lava cast of one of the victims

Alter to one of the gods

After we realized how large an area there was to cover, we pulled out a map and made a plan of what we wanted to try and see.  There is a cafeteria where you can get a decent lunch so we did that next before we did a couple hours of sightseeing.  There are several bath houses and brothels that can be toured as well as a theater.  We did a few times get turned around since roads would be blocked off for different reasons and we would have to work our way around.

Bathhouse 

Painting in the town's largest brothel

Looking down one of the city streets

Stairs to nowhere

Oven and mills used to grind wheat

 We spent about two hours walking around to different sites taking in as much as we could.  Our last stop before heading home was the amphitheater and forum.  We enjoyed walking around and fortunately had decent weather for it.  If you are nerds like we are I would recommend to anyone traveling to that part of the world to visit Pompeii.

Greek theater

Forum

By that point we needed to head back to Sorrento and get our luggage.  It had long been decided we would need to find a different way back to Naples then the Circumvesuviana.  An American couple we talked to had taken the ferry from Naples, we decided that made sense since we would need to get to the port anyways to catch our overnight ferry to Sicily.  We took a cab to grab our luggage from the hotel and then headed to the port.  We bought a ticket for the next ferry to Naples, they run pretty frequently even in the off-season and headed to a cafe at the port to wait.

The commuter ferry to Naples was large and comfortable, we were one of maybe 10 people on a ferry that could easily hold 150.  We were able to sit by the window and enjoy the bumpy ride to Naples.  When we arrived at the port we did have trouble finding our ferry.  We asked several people by showing them our tickets who tried to help but we ended up walking further then we needed to with all our luggage.  Eventually we found the office for the TTT ferry and checked in.  Since we had a couple of hours to kill we paid to leave our luggage with them and struck out to find pizza since we were in its birthplace.  I was a little nervous because we had a lot of our valuable items on us and I had read the worst part of Naples was of course by the port and it was dark.  We walked a few blocks and found a pizza place where we sat down for a Margherita pizza, which of course is known for being red, white and green like the Italian flag.  It was delicious, they don't mess around with their pizza in Naples.  

So good

After that we found some wine at a local store and headed back to the ship.  The overnight ferry was one of the parts of the trip that made me the most nervous.  We were decided to go to Italy I looked at our options and I thought the ferry made sense.  The cost of cabin was around $200 which was only slightly more then we were paying for hotel rooms most night so the overnight travel was almost a wash for us.  It took off around 9pm and landed in Cantania on the east coast of Sicily around 7 in the morning.  

When I started looking into our options though I found good reviews for the TTT ferry.  The English translation on the website had been shaky though and I was nervous even though I thought I had booked us an exterior cabin for two that we would have strange roommates or something else unexpected.  Flying from Naples to Sicily was another option but we wouldn't have saved the cost of a hotel room for Monday night and it probably would have taken more of our time since most of the ferry trip we were sleeping.  We got on the boat, which had a lot of people bringing cars on board since there is no bridge from Sicily to the mainland of Italy.  It became obvious quickly that we were probably the only Americans on board, if not the only native English speakers.  It very much had the feel of being off the beaten path, which made it an adventure!

We were the only ones in our room which was just like a small cruise ship cabin, with bunk beds and a small bathroom.  The ship was a bar and we also realized the cheaper tickets we had seen online literally bought people space on the boat and there were a lot of men camping out on bench seats.  

View of the cabin from my bunk

Slot machines in the bar

We sat in the bar for awhile before heading back to our cabin.  The ferry was not a bad way to travel to Sicily since we were able to get a good night sleep while traveling.

Honeymoon Day 7: Capri

When I heard that the island of Capri was where the Caprese salad was invented, I knew we had to go.  Capri is approximately 30 minutes by boat from Sorrento and the ferries are frequent from morning to early evening.  We made our way to the port after breakfast and bought our round trip tickets there for the next ferry to Capri.  Once we arrived at the main marina for Capri, we ignored the cabbies who were offering us rides and found the ticket office for funicular.  As an engineer, the funicular was a must see for me.  The funicular is two cars that counterbalance to use a minimal amount of energy to get people from the marina up to the main square or the Piazzetta in Capri.  At the ticket office we again bought day passes which we were able to use for the funicular plus to hop on and off the buses on the island.  Capri is only four square miles and the buses were fairly simple to figure out. 

View while coming into Marina Grande

Looking out from the Piazzetta in Capri

I had read some recommendations on how to spend the day in Capri and I decided that right away that we would get on the bus to go up to Anacapri.  Anacapri is a village about a half mile straight up the mountain, so the bus was definitely the way to go.  However the bus ride was even more terrifying then the one we experienced the day before.  The bus climbed straight up with almost no barrier and a lot of hair pin turns.  This bus was crowded so we weren't able to get any pictures to show how steep the drop was but I'm not sure I could convince the husband to do that again if we went back.

We explored the streets of Anacapri, popping into the shops and enjoying the scenery.  I had read that Anacapri was the best place to catch the bus to the Blue Grotto we wandered around until we find the bus station for Anacapri.  We also daydreamed about someday owning a place in Anacapri with a view of the sea.

Dream house

 I had been looking forward to taking a boat ride to the Blue Grotto but we soon learned that if the wind is up they will shut it down since the entrance to the grotto is so low.  Even though the weather was beautiful, it was also breezy so we unfortunately missed seeing the famous grotto.  There is also a chair lift that you can hop on in Anacapri and ride up the mountain, I was told if I wanted to go I'd be going alone so I passed.
 

Path we followed through Anacapri

After finishing our stroll through Anacapri we took the bus back down the mountain to Capri and decided it was time for lunch.  We found a beautiful restaurant overlooking the water and of course started with Caprese salad!  Since we were on an island I knew I wanted seafood so I ordered the daily special which was fresh sea bass.  It was expensive but worth every penny.

View from our lunch table

Caprese salad

Sea bass

Once we finished lunch we explored the town of Capri.  It's not that big and many of the stores were closed for the season but they were well out of our price range anyways.  There is no question that Capri caters to the wealthy.  Even though we were stuffed from lunch we decided to stop at a different restaurant and try the caprese torte cake which I was not impressed by.

Caprese torte

Since it was still early afternoon so we decided to take one more trip.  We headed back to the little bus station and got on the one headed to Marina Piccola.  The main attraction I had read about that part of the island is it has the best view of the Faraglioni which is a famous rock stack.  I wasn't sure what else to expect when we got there and we quickly discovered it was just a few restaurants, a church and the beach.  We decided to enjoy the weather and the view and sat outside at a small restaurant.  We weren't starving but I wasn't going to pass up a chance for another Caprese salad.  Our day in Capri was some of the best weather we had on the trip.  We had made a snap decision that morning to not bring jackets or heavy sweaters and we were glad we didn't.

Faraglioni

Caprese salad #2

It was barely 70 but people were sunbathing

We realized if we wanted to catch the next ferry out of Capri we needed to get moving, so we caught the next bus back to Capri and then took the funicular down to the port.  We caught the ferry and headed back to Sorrento enjoying the view of the sunset on the ride.

View out the front of the furnicular on the ride down

Sunset from the ferry

Honeymoon Day 6: Bus Ride to Amalfi and Positanio

I don't remember the first time I learned it existed or saw pictures of its beauty but for years I have dreamed of visiting the Amalfi Coast.  Saturday morning we woke up and headed to town early so we could get a start on our day.  Positano was about 45 minutes from Sorrento and Amalfi was another half hour past there.  We bought our passes at the train station for the SITA bus and decided to head out to Amalfi first.  There are day passes that can be bought for about six Euros so we decided to purchase those since we knew we wanted to do four trips total.  

From the tour books, I knew we wanted to sit on the right side.  Fortunately it was the off season so the bus only had a few passengers and we had our choice of seats.  I had read about how the trip isn't for the faint of heart since the road hugs the side of a cliff over the water but I had forgotten to tell the husband ahead of time about it.  That was probably for the best since he isn't a fan of heights... and he really wasn't a fan of the fact that a short barrier was the only thing between us and plunging to out deaths.  The other unnerving part was some of the curves the driver would honk his horn and just go around blind.  The road wasn't that crowded fortunately, I can't imagine what it's like in July.  In 2005 my family went to Ireland on a bus tour and the experience was definitely similar to riding around the Ring of Kerry.

Barrier wall

The road along the Amalfi Coast

View of a garden below the road from the bus window

Amalfi is the last stop on the bus from Sorrento so at least we knew we were going to get off at the right stop.  There are two stops in Positano and we noted that it looked like we wanted to get off at the one further from Sorrento.  

When we got to Amalfi it was raining and we were starting to get hungry so we decided to scope out a place for lunch while exploring the town.  The first thing we came across was a square which had a charming church with the hills in the background.  From the square we started heading up the streets of the town and found little covered alleyways and stairs, which we assume were built to protect the residents from the weather but we still don't know for sure.

Amalfi square

Main road through Amalfi

Covered walkways

 After walking up and down the main road we started exploring a little and found a restaurant that was just opening for the day.  We were glad we decided to eat there, the food was delicious.  Since we were on the coast we had to get more of the fresh seafood as an appetizer.  For lunch I had pasta with a lemon sauce since that area is known for lemons, the husband has homemade pasta with seafood.  For people who love seafood as much as we do, visiting the Amalfi Coast was heaven.

Mussels

Pasta with a lemon sauce

Seafood Pasta

After lunch we browsed the shops and bought a few things, but the city was getting ready to close for the afternoon siesta.  Italy shuts down between about 2-4 in the afternoons for a siesta.  It's part of their culture but it can be a pain when sightseeing.  When we realized Amalfi was shutting we decided to move on, but first got some delicious gelato before getting back on the bus.

Chocolate and lemon... I know I'm weird

We got back on the bus and got off at the first stop in Positanio coming from Amalfi which drops you at the top of the town.  We had a little bit of trouble finding the right road to get us down to the beach but once we did, we decided to take our shoes off so we could say we put our feet in the Tyrrhenian Sea.  The sun had come out by then so we sat on the beach for a while soaking in the scenery.  I had read a lot about the beauty of Positanio before we left on our trip and we were not disappointed.  The town was still shut down for their siesta so we got drinks at a beach bar and some pizza as an afternoon snack.

View of Positanio from the bus stop

Church on the sea

Town built into a hill

Tyrrheanian Sea

Looking back from the water

While making our way back up the hill to the bus stop, we did some shopping since the shops had opened back up.  Our feelings about visiting the Amalfi Coast in November were similar to visiting Rome.  When you go in the off-season certain restaurants and shops aren't open, but everything is cheaper and not crowded!  I have heard that during the summer the towns along the coast, like Rome, are swarmed with tourists both staying in town and coming off the cruise ships but we just about had the place to ourselves.  By the time we finished our trek up the hill the moon had come out over the water and we got to enjoy the town at nighttime before the bus arrived.  The ride back was possibly more terrifying then the ride out since it was dark, but we managed to make it back to Sorrento without plunging to our deaths.