Today we had booked a driving tour of the Amalfi coast. That was one of the main drws of coming to this part of Italy. The pictrure you see of the place show beutifl hillside villages like Positano and Amafi tumbling down to the sea.. What they don’t show you is the massive crowds there to see the same thing .
Our guides picked us up from the AIRBNB at 9AM
Today we had a great driver Oreste and a great guid Giovani.. who turns
out to be Paulo from Pompei’s charming wife. They were both great. Oreste is just about to have his second daughter.. Congrats ! His wife is from Ukraine
The first thing Oreste did was to hand us a motion sickness bag.. A pretty funny way to start a tour.. but our friends Shmul and family had made the same drive a few days back and the kids had all gotten carsick.. They had also warned us about the crowds.. but noting could have prepared us.. I think
Giovana told us that we were lucky, we’d beaten most of the crowds.. The road was busy, but cars were moving. It reminded us very much of the ‘Road to Hana’ .. more on that later.
THe scenery was spectacular…
Because of the beuty,. The crowds were everywhere… and we were part of the problem !
The first city we saw was Positana.. it was beutiful from a distance. We stopped at a small fruit stand to catch the view.
We could tell as we approached that the city was full.. the narrow streets were sholder to sholder with peoplke
Giovsnna gave us the choice of stopping and trying to explore the town with the crowds, or to skip positano and head down the road to a less crowded town
We opted to take our chances down the road
We stopped at another fruit stand and sampled the lemons.
Giovanna showed us this crazy rock tower that looked like a woman (Mary ?) holding flowers.. Very cool
By now the traffic was even worse.. busses passing us in the other direction almost took off our mirrors ! Oreste was a fabulous driver.. so glad we werent driving. Shul had driven his family.. brave man !
As we approached to town of Amalfi.. the traffic got even worse.. We felt for the folks trying to go for a run
Amalfi was as crowded at positano, so we decided to push on yet again. We heard the next day from our friend Liz that they’d foudn a busy resturant in Amalfi.. waited a long time to get seated.. ordered.. then after 45 min of not gettign there food, had to leave to catch their boat !)
Fianlly we got to the town of Ravello.. it was higher above the sea, off the main (and olny ?) road.. and much quieter.. still busy, but navigale by foot. We spent a really nice hour there… we looked around the town a bit.. but soon found a shady courtyard with a great view and no (ZERO !) peopkle.. we took our shoes of and layed in the grass and took in the quiet.. it was the high point of the day.. .. kinda funny that doign nothing with no-one around felt so nice !
We headed back to the square for a quick gelato (whihchwe had to buy in order to use the bathroom) .. and met up with Oreste and Giovana
next stop was Minori ..next to Maiori .. Min and Max just like my grandparents.
Minori was the sight of Giovanna’s favorite pastry place. it was soooo good !
Oh.. one interesting thing.. every easter theres a procession in Ravello where the towns folk dress like this for a procession. As you can see they look like klu-klux-klansman.. but it couldnt be fiurther from that,. its abotu love and devotion
we got back in the van then had the choice of turning aroudn and goign back up the super busy road.. or continue on straight to salerno.. We opted for the 2nd to see more sites.. Salenro is a big city.. but interestign to look at
And that was the amalfi tour.. I have to say it was pretty underwhelming.. and dissapointing. Oreste and Giovana were really great.. it was the location.. or more specifically the over use of the location that caused the problem. the bggest impression was of a beutiful place that was overtaxed by visitors.. making it no fun for the vistors.. and (i’ll bet) no fun for the locals. It was so much like the ‘road to hana’ on maui.. a must do trip..we did 37 years ago on our honeymoon (super fun) .. and last summer (super not fun ) that was a solid line of cars.. and filled up parking lots.. (see here)
Anywhoo (are Alora.. as an italina might say) .. we got back home .. and decided we needed to get out of all these cities.. Diane, Linda and I headed out on a trial we found on Alltrails. First we had to crawl through the busy streets of sorento.. but soon we were climbing the hills out of the city.. we walked about 7 miles total.. which included a nice walks arounf stone foot paths, a great view of soreento (much prettier from far away).. and a visit to an ancient roman ruin on the beach. It was the best thing we ended up doing in the sorrento / amalfi area (other than seeing smhul and family and liz and jeff) .. we are definitely country people. not city people
Irony noted 🙂
Everywhere were olive and lemon groves. THere were nets out to catch the olives as they fell
here’s lookign back at sorerento. not bad from here !
hey we blend in !
then the long wonderful walk home
We stopped for a few groceriens and went hoem to cook dinner.. now this is the best meal we’ve eaten in Sorrento !
NIce long day.. showing that siple pleasures of nature and erecise .
Today we headed north from Calabria up to Pompeii then on to sorento. We packed, said good bye to the neighbors, four legged, two legged and winged., fed them some of our leftovers closed up the airbnb and were ready to go when Luigi cane by at 8 to pick us up
This has been a really nice place to stay.. Really homey
We piled in the van and headed north
The contryside we drove through was really beutiful.. very green and mountainous.. It got busier the further north we got. By the time we hit Salerno it was like one bug city. We pulled off the highway and headed in to. the Pompeii site. It was a zoo as one might expect.. super crowded.. bt from what we understand it was nothing like the peak crowds of summer. It was a very fun place to just do people watching.> tHere were som many languages being spoken.. I think English was the most common… but we heard italian (obviously) , german, french, hebrew, hindii.. etc.. kinda cool
We met our guide Paulo.. He was Italian… but also a native english speaker. His mom is from England.. He gave that away when he used the term ‘cats eyes’ to describe some reflective white stones embedded in the ancient cobbled streets to guid people to the market. Paulo was a great guide. In addition to facts, he gave us context.. and asked us questions to draw out our understanding.. I loved the way he explained that at the time of the eruption in AD 79 no one had ever recorded a volcanic eruption .. The ancient Pompeians had no way to interpret the huge earthquake of AD 62 as a harbinger (never used that word before) of the eruption. Paulo told us that as many as 16000 people died as a result of the earthquake . The folks of the day viewed that the earthquake and the eruption were the rath of the gods. .. Paulo explained that when other romans arrived after the eruption they found the land where the city was apparently wiped clean.. actually it was covered with 20 feet of volcanic ash.. Pompeii had once been a port town that directly abutted the sea. The ash moved the shorlien out more than a kilometer.. When others arrived at the shorline. it was completely bare.. what were they to think other than the gods had wiped the city from the face of the earth..
Our tour was full of surprises like that .. Paulo knew the place well and after spending some time in the central parts.. we took off for less touristed sections of the city which was very welcome. Paulo is also nearly 2m tall and was in several episodes of James May : Our man in Italy
Note: it took some sneakiness to be able to do a screen capture from Amazon Prime.. They evidently add a black rectangle over all screens to prevent screen capture of stills or movies I did a little digging and found out that if you turn off the ‘use hardware acceleration if available’ feature in settings, then relaunch your browser you can circumvent this anti copy stuff.. bwa-ha-ha !
Anyway.. back to Pompei. . I took way too many pictures to post everying I saw (>400 .. ) So I’ll try to share a few that really stuck me.
I took a bunch of pictures of this statue before Palo told me it was a piece made for a recent contembeperary art exhibit.. Still I liked it
Here’s the central square of the city with Mt Vesuvious in the background
And here”s what the crown looked like through most of the center of the city
Paulo showed us the first plaster casts made of victims of the ash cloud. The ash cloud was so hot that the people died within a few breaths. The ash sealed around their bodies then set like clay around them as their bodies decayed. What was left was their bones and a hollow place where their bodies had been . When people started unearthing the city in the 19th century they came across these hollow places not knowing what they were. In 1860 the head archeologist at Pompei Giuseppe Fiorelli developed a way to fill the cavities with plaster which made the forms and position of the victims visible. Looking at them eas fascinating.. but I also felt the deep sadness of people dying while trying to save themselves and others. THough copies have been made, These are soem of the first casts made.. and they are original. The bones of the victims are still embedded in the plaster.
these people were found within the market place. The frescoes of where people could find, fish, meat and vegatables were still visible on the walls. Paulo explained that as a port city, there were many poeple coming through and not all understood latin…. so the pictures were like a menu
It was amazing to see the frescos on the walls and the tile floors. They looked totally modern..
Thehere were many of these small faces hidden in the pictures. some of them grosteque. They were thought to be there to scare off evil spirits.
Some of them were decorative, some were boastful.. some were vulgar.. like this one. Actually the large penis in this one is balanced against coins.. meaning the owner was rich.. probably newly rich and wanted others to know it
In that same house, the slave quarters also served a brothel.. and the frescos were like a menu .. no translation required
We got a glimpse into what life was like in AD79 and how they made things workl. Like these lead pipes.. still intact. That must have effected their health.. though their life span was already pretty short.
Paulo told us about some of the subtleties of archeology used to pinpoint the date , season and even time of the eruption. This is a Pizza /bread oven that was goign during the eruption. the loaf got burnt.. but it preserved the stamp of II.. out of.set that had I,II, and III. from that archeologists figured that eruption happened early afternoon (I think) during the second baking of the day. . THe flour grinding stones where near by
Paulo is tied in to the new discoveries being made at the site. He showed us soem recent forensic work that shows facial reconstruction based on the shape of the casts and the skulls they contained. It was amazing to see these creconstructed faces
Paulo took us out of the most vistied part of the site to places where we were often the only folks in sight. THat also speaks to the size of this place.. its a whole city !
This one villa had only recently been opened.. it was beautiful !
We learned that the ancient romans were pretty short.. so these spaces were more diane and linda sized
THe mosaic and fresco work is amazing and has just been opened to the public..
There wer soem great examples of forced perspective and Trompe-l’œil.
We also saw a reconstructed garden where archeobotantanist (is that a word).. reconstructed the type and placement of plants based on plaster casts of their burnt roots
Here’s an ancient fast food restaurant
We learned abotut he construction of the roads.. they were two siedwalks where b=people walked.. and a channel; in the middle where the romans through all their sewage. and waited for rain to carrry it away.. must have been a fragrant place.. THere were ruts where wagons went and stepping stones for people to cross the channel . And frequent aateer spouts for peopl eand animale
And like everyhere.. this good luck sign
We visited two amphitheaters ,, one for music, one for plays.. and were told that the guides tease each other about trying to sign there.
Then oit was time to go.. We said bye to Paulo and found luigi .. and headed off to Sorrento.
Then on to Sorrento…
And thats where I need to change directions a bit. I debated how much I should say here.. but decided to include this editorial, because I want to be honest..
We decided to go to Sorrento to check out the the famed beach and the legendary Amalfi coast. If you look at them and guide books, they sound like paradise. I have to say, though they were not for us. .. Or maybe it was that we were not for them . I’m sad to say this because I know many people love the place ..
Our vacation to this point was in a small back country towns that were Quaint the people were friendly, and the prices were good. The towns were friendly to tourists, but not completely about tourism..
Sorrento and the Amalfi coast were completely different.. While , they were physically beautiful. They were packed with so many people that it was very hard to enjoy the beauty. every street was packed with shops catering only to tourists . the food, though great, was very expensive. We are devfiently small town people.
The hilight of our days in Sorrento were the beautiful Airbnb we’d rented from Mariangela and the hiking trails we found that took us outside of the city. Indeed sorrento was much more fun and beutiful when viewed from a distance.
OK.. that said.. here’s what we did.
Our stay began at a nice restaurant on the beach. It had a sun deck where you could swim . The chef said he’d take care of us.. and chose food he thought we would like. The food was very good and beautifully served .. though it turned out to be much(!) more expensive than we expected.
The highpoint of the meal.. even though it was a bit sad, was to saying goodbye to our driver and now good freidn Luigi. He has been such a wonderful companion for us. Not only is he an excellent driver.. but he is an excellent tour guide, our translator, our trip planner, our genological researcher , our social director , our counselor and our language coach
((He taught me how to say: Trentatré Trentini entrarono a Trento, tutti e trentatré, trotterellando .. which means 33 people from torento entered terento , all thirty three were trotting)
We had a short goodbye celibration including a short poem we wrote for him. We will never forget Luigi for his kindness and for his skill. We hope to see him again soemtime.. you never know !
Luigi dropped us at our Sorrento adventure
It was pretty cool seeing vesuvious in the backdrop.. hope it doesn t\t blow its top druign our visit … (htats what diane is saying in this pic 🙂
If Pompee was the highpoint of the day.. then meetign up with my freidn Shmul and his family was the highpoint of the evening. Shmul lives in Israel and is one of my favorite peopl,e on the planet (and I’d say that even if he wasnt reading this 🙂 .. He and his lovely family have visted us here in VT>. Shul and I have met many places incluing a really great day in las vegas which inclded and 8 mile run and a phil lesh show, he’d stayed with me and a coupel of other freinds in my moms house in massachuestes ..e ven though she was out of town.. and last year shmul and three other freidns and i rented a house in Betherl NY to see two nights of Phish shows.. Now, SHul was were in Sorrento for the holidays (between the days of the jewish new year). The fact that we overlapped was a complete coincidence. We met up at a nice tratoria they found and had a wonderful eveing catching up .. and introducing Shmul, his wife Karen and their kids Noah, Tamar , and Aaaf to Linda and David . It was so great catching up !
we walked down to the water. .then went back and slept great..
Like alll our days so far in Marano Marchesato (Maraschino Cherry as we call it) Today started with cats and a short run among the hills of the village
Luigi came ’round at 9AM and we headed to the cast. Our destination today was the town of Fiumefreddo Bruzio which is the closest point on the Tyrrhennian Sea to us. Fieumefreddo is another city divided into two parts. Lower Fiumefreddo is a beach village with lots of restaurants, a nice long beach and lots of hotels.. The upper villiage is an ancient fort city.. kind of a standard pattern around here it seems.
First stop was the nbeach. The water was clear and cold.. we didn’t go in.. but stood in the water a bit. What was amazing abotu the place was the variety of colors in the pebbles on the beach.. unlike anything I’ ver seen.. bright greens, yellows reds.. that sparkeldwhen wet.. and looked like rocks when dry.. and evidently when photographed 🙂
Here’.. let me play with the colors a bit.. Here’s what my iphoen camera captured
and here’s moe like what we saw
Similarly before and after
I put this near the wterline and watched it get taken by the sea.. felt good/sad
we walked for a bit then headed back to find luigi
The road up tthe old city was curvy, narrow and steep., I tr4ied to get some pics.. Not too successfully.. There was this local take on the ‘Christ the redeemer’ statue in rio
The old city was a medieval fortress surrounded by a wall, with narrow streets and alleys and a crumbling castle.. Like every place we’ve. gone in this country.. I think the US should invest more in Crumbling castles.
This one is from 1200s if I recall correctly
here’s the view up one of the old chimneys
Luigi met us up at the castle with his good friend Fabio. THey met back in college and have stayed close ever since. He’s a super nice guy .. he showed us around the town..
We came across this great square with a beutiful view of the ocean
We were surprised to see this on one of the church buildings essentialy read ‘The Mafia cannot enter here’
We ate at a really nice ‘slow foods’ place that also associated with a wholistic breasty cancer center ‘La Casa di Rosa’
Interestingly that poster was just near this one 🙂
We all got combo antipasta plates.. vegitarian for us. They were so tasty !
These folks were militantly healthy
It was time to go.. so we all said good bye to Fabio and headed for the van
We got back to our place in Marano Marchesato in time to meet our hosts family. including Juri , His very pregnant wife and their 2 year old son Gianfranco
AN our neigbor came by to say hi too (I think thats what she said)
This evening we met Luigi for a light pizza dinner at a place near his B&B.. It was a really nice place.. with a different spin on pizza than I’d ever seen: eg pistachio and potatoe pixza.. and they weren’t even trying to be fancy..
One surprise was that I managed to break two differnt chairs while I was eating. Must be all the pasta !
We were greeted this morning by the zillion cats when we opened the door.. they are sweet and pretty much leave us alone.. though they have tried (unsuccessfully) sneaking into the house a few times. Diane and I started the day with a nice run through the countryside .
Today was our main family history day for Linda. Luigi picked us about about 9 and We made the hour and 15 minute drive to the town of Tiriolo , Calabria where Linda’s Maternal grandmother and great grandparents were born .
Tiriolo is a very cute mountain town that seems to be divided into two layers.. the lower town., which has all the commercial stuff, and the upper town which is an ancient walled city with very narrow streets and alleys, very few cars and beautiful old houses crammed together on top of each other.
First stop was the lower city to get our bearings and find the municipal office. We didn’t have as much info on Linda’s family and figured we could do a little research on the spot. The lower town was beautiful in its own way. The mountain air was cool and fresh and the views were amazing in all directions .
We found the municipal offices and went in to show them the genealogy that I’d helped Linda pull together for her maternal grandmother over the last couple of days.
Luigi acted as interpreter as we explained to the records clerk about the people we were looking for. (He’s been so much more than a driver for us ! With him it’s been a much richer trip !)
The clerk was really helpful and quickly found the records for Lindas grandparents and Great-grandparents.
We found so much info so quickly ! Dates, names, addresses, Linda was so excited and happily overwhelmed
We went outside to a cafe and planned out how we’d go find some of the places that linda and luigi had identified, as well as a few more questions to ask the clerk. I We created a subset of Lindas a family tree to guide our search. We also had soem wonderful pasteries and this awesome coffee ice cream thing.. life here is not bad !
also started the process of searching contemporary phone records maybe finding a few living relatives still in town. There’s were a zillion folks still here with Linda’s family names of Badalato/Badolato , Morgentini, Cuturo, etc.
From here, the four of us started the long hike up to the old town.. Luigi stayed behind to wait… and (as uyou will see) kept busy himself !
We kept seeign these faces of a man with his tongue out.. I think they we’re used to scare evil spirits away.. maybe baby even spirits ? THye were kinda cute actually
At the very top we found the location of the house.. more like THE house where lLnda’s grandpparents had lived in the early part of the 20th century
Across the square (whihc was the size of 2 cars 🙂 was the church that Linda’s family must have attended
(Yes .. it snows here !)
The church looked locked up.. but one of the doors was unlocked, so we let ourselves in. It was so cool being in the place that was important to Linda’s family back who-knows how many generations
Linda was lighting a candle for her family when David found soemthign very cool: a pew donated by Linda’s family.. THat was soooo cool . !
there were some pretty cool and funky paintings on the walls. check out the devil in the details here
We found a staircase that went up to a bacony.. kinda cobwebby but very cool
Interesting stained glass too.. .. shades of the little mermaid !
It was interesting letting ourselves into this church with no one else around. It reminded me of when I was in high school and first taught myself to pick locks. I’d sometime go and let myself in to the Episcopal Church down our street (where i’d been in nursery school) .. I’d just go in and sit quietly.. never did anything. This adventure gave me the same sense of “peaceful mischief”
We then set out to find the street where Linda’s great grandpaernts lived.. didnt have to go far.. it too was just across the street.. We didn’t have a house number, but there were only about 12 houses.. so we must have walked by the one.
We followed the narrow alleys up to the ruins of a middle ages castle.. that dated from early in the 11th century (!)
The view from up there was really spectacular ! and the whole place was full of scraggly mint plants and flowers..
We started getting hungry so we headed back to the 21st century and found a great restaurant .. (the ONLY one in the old city.. if Google is to be believed !)
The restaurant is called Ristorante due Mari because your can see across the ‘instep’ of the boot of italy two the two seas: to the Northwest the Tyrrhenian sea (yes.. isnt that ‘yrrh’ in there cool ?!?!) and to the southeast the Mediterranean sea.
The restaurant was so great. incredible view and incredible food. pickeld onion compote (not sure thats the right word). and anchovy garlic pasta for me
Midway through lunch we got a whatsapp from Luigi.. Turns out hwe’d been using his time to further research Linda’s family with the help of the guy at the municipal office. By way of that he found a distant cousin of Lindas named Franco who runs a bar in the lower town with his son Giuseppe !.
Franco still owns the house in the old city where Lindas Great-great grandfather Giuseppe Badalato once lived !
We made our way down the step set of stairs and alleys down to the lower tan to meet Lindas Kin !
On the way we met a woman and her kid cleanign out a wine barrel from their basement wine making
Even the modern lower town was charming.. we foudn soem wall murals done by someone with Lindas family name
We found the Time Out bar easily and met Linda’s brand new (to her) cousins Franco and Giuseppe
Even though they weren’t related to us.. they felt like family to us as well !
Eventually Franco had to run.. we all said goodbye and headed back to the van
