Sunday Nov 21, 2010

All pictures from our port of call in Naples, Italy can be seen in the Naples, Amalfi Coast, Pompeii photo gallery.

We arrived in Naples on Sunday after spending a full - and eneventfully relaxing - day at sea on Saturday on our way from Santorini.  The only thing we had to do that day was reclaim our passports.  We passed through the Strait of Messina again, but I was disappointed as we didn't get to see it coming from the other direction.  The passage happened at night, at roughly 1:00 am or so.  I didn't stay up for it because I knew we would have an early morning in Naples.  We were supposed to meet our tour guide at 8:00 am after getting off the ship.  It was a little confusing, though, the way the port and dock area worked there in Naples.  They would let some of the cruise-organized busses and vans into the immediate area around the ship, but not the private tours.  Our group milled around next to the ship for a while, and then I decided to strike out on my own and see if I could find our van and guide.  I finally did, and it was a pretty good walk away from the dock.  I met our guide and driver and told them I would be back with the rest of the group, and went to gather them up.  I guess we finally got on the bus about 8:35 or so.  The lateness definitely wasn't their fault - it was ours, as we didn't really know what we were doing.

Speaking of our guide and driver, our tour provider out of Naples was Giovanni Lerusce.  Mom found him through some reviews out on CruiseCritic.com, and everyone had high praise for him and his outfit (he doesn't have a website that we've been able to find; just Google him and you'll find him).  Giovanni himself didn't guide our tour that day, though.  He sent another team of guide - Mina -  and driver - Luigi - with a van large enough to accomodate our group.  They were both fantastic!!!

We spent virtually no time in Naples proper - most of our time was spent in the surrounding areas.  We did drive through parts of Naples and got to see some things from the van, but we didn't stop anywhere.  The first portion of our trip led us out of Naples on a portion of Autostrada A3 before hopping off on a road towards Sorrento. This is where we got some of our first views of Mount Vesuvius, the Bay of Naplesand ultimately the bluffs at Sorrento.   Sorrento is where we caught the road for one of the most spectacular drives I've ever taken in my life:  the Amalfi Drive.  Unfortunately, due to the design of the road, there were virtually no places on the section we drove to pull off of the road to take photos.  I'm not much for shooting pictures through the auto glass, either, so I didn't take any while we were driving.  Instead, I just sat there, looked out the window and tried to soak it all in.  We did pull off for some pictures outside of Sorrento, though, before actually starting on the section of road known as the Amalfi Drive.

Mount Vesuvius

Sorrento Coast

Sorrento Coast

We didn't drive all the way to the town of Amalfion this drive - there just wasn't time because we wanted to see and do other things during our stop there.  We did, however, drive around the penninsula as far as the town of Positano.  Dating back to at least medieval times, and probably longer, Positano is an old fishing village turned tourist resort area, and it is set in some fantastic landscape.  In certain sections of the town, cars must be registered and have a permit before entering the town from the freeway.  That implies there are roads there, and there are a few, but they are extremely difficult to navigate.  I'm really surprised Luigi was able to move that big Mercedes van around and get through some of the spots he went through.  Better him than me!  However, while there are a couple of "main" roads where there is a little bit of traffic, most everything in Positano is pedestrian streets and pedestrian-oriented.  Because of the town's setting - on the side of steep hills - wheeled vehicles just aren't practical.  The best way to move around in town is on foot because of all the stairs and inclines.  I'd probably be about 30 pounds lighter if I lived there just due to all of the walking and climbing and inclines and stairs!  But Positano was gorgeous and very quaint.  And very expensive!  It is a resort destination that draws the rich and famous, and the prices there reflect the usual clientele.  After leaving the van in a parking area towards the middle of the hill/town, we walked down and through town looking for a cappuccino.  It was still before noon, so it wasn't yet a feaux pas; it is after noon, though - they'll immediately peg you as an American tourist if you ask for a cappuccino after that.  The ladies found a few places to shop, and I continued down the hill to a square with a church and bell tower very near the beach.  I walked back up and found the folks in a little shop that happened to have some cappuccino and danish, so I helped myself (both were yummy!).  We then went back up the hill and hopped back in the van for the drive back to Sorrento.

Again, there were no places to pull off for pictures, so we went nonstop back to Sorrento.  Upon our arrival there, Luigi dropped us off and Mina walked us towards Piazza Tasso, one of the main plazas in Sorrento.  Being a Sunday, many locals were out and about and going to many of the shops and markets there.  As we were walking from the van to the plaza, though, we came upon the big crag or ravine that runs through the middle of town and all the way out to the sea.  Later research revealed that it is called the Valley of the Mills.  Visible from above, you can look down into this ravine and see a stream flowing by a very old stone building that was built (at least parts of it) sometime around 900 AD.  It was a mill that would grind wheat, and in later times they harnessed the stream's power to drive a sawmill.  It was abandoned in the late 1800s, though, because the building-up of the town around the ravines caused a sharp rise in the humidity of the ravine, making it almost unbearable.  But it was an impressive sight to see - that ravine is deep!

Sorrento

Old Sorrento Market

Old Sorrento Market Square

From there, our guide took us in the direction of Piazza Tasso, but before we got there, we got sidetracked.  There is a woodworking and other craft shop there in Sorrento, and I have to say I've never seen such magnificent inlaid wood furniture.  The name of the shop and store is A. Gargiulo & Jannuzzi, and they've been in business since 1863.  All of their inlaying is done by hand, and everything they had in there was absolutely exquisite.  I could only aspire to being that fine of a craftsman.  And let me tell you, their pieces had some HUGE price tags.  There was a gorgeous inlaid dining table that was probably eight feet in diameter with a price tag of €16,000.  That's roughly $24,000.  Eeek!  But it was sure pretty to look at!  When we finished there, our guide turned us loose in the Piazza Tasso and told us where to go to find the old market street (pedestrian only) for some shopping.  We agreed to meet about an hour later, and she would take us to lunch.

As a side note, Sorrento and the whole Amalfi Coast area is known for its production of excellent citrus fruit, and especially lemons.  Sorrento is world renowned for its production of an alcoholic beverage called Limoncello.  Ranther than being a brand, though, it is a type of alcoholic beverage made from lemons (actually, the zest of lemons), sugar, and strong grain alcohol like Everclear or something flavorless like that.  It has become pretty popular, and I know Charles loves it, but I have to say it isn't necessarily my first choice in an adult beverage.  It isn't bad, but it isn't my favorite, either.  It is definitely something you can make at home, though, with the right supplies and time.  While off on one of my research tangents, I found a website dedicated to making homeade Limoncello here (kind of an interesting process).  Anyway, as we shopped in Sorrento, almost every shop carried some variety of Limoncello, and many stores were dedicated to it and other lemon and citrus products.  Many even gave away samples - I only tried one, though.

After shopping, we met back in the square, and Mina walked us over to a restaurant for lunch.  Since we were in the vicinity of Naples, and since Naples is supposedly the birthplace of pizza, that fare seemed like the logical choice for lunch.  She took us to Ristorante Pizzeria Tasso, and it definitely didn't disappoint.  The place didn't look as large from the outside as it initially appeared to be, but it was very nice - and they were busy.  My lunch that day consisted of a caprese salad and a fantabulous calzone ripieno.  The calzone had ricotta and mozzarella cheeses with ham, salami and tomato.  Yum!  But I have to tell you about the caprese salad.  Caprese is one of my all-time favorites, but it has to be done right.  The grainy, generally flavorless mozarella you generally find in US grocery stores is just horrible, and while it works in a pinch, it just doesn't do this salad justice.  The other ingredient that makes or breaksa caprese salad is the tomatoes.  Again, generally tomatoes found at your run-of-the-mill grocery store just won't cut it.  They're typically flavorless, too.  You need good cheese and good tomatoes to make a good caprese salad.  Well, the salad I had with lunch this day hit a home run!  Holy cow it was good!  Wait, maybe "holy cow" is a misnomer.  It should probably be "holy water buffalo!"  Why?  Because the cheese they used was water buffalo mozzarella.  It wasn't grainy, it had a wonderful flavor, and was just fabulous!  Needless to say, after putting down the salad, the calzone, and a couple of bottles of Peroni brewski...I was stuffed!

After waddling out of the restaurant, we hopped back on the bus for the relatively short drive to the destination I'd been waiting for all day and was most excited about:  Pompeii.  Two years prior during our 2008 trip to Italy, I had wanted to join some of the group when they day-tripped down to Naples and Pompeii.  I didn't get to go, though, and was very excited about the stop in Naples offering the opportunity to see Pompeii.  The funny thing about my semi-obsession with Pompeii was I remember seeing a TV movie back when I was growing up called "The Last Days of Pompeii."  The folks let my brother and I stay up past our normal bedtime to watch it, and I remember being completely fascinated by it and thinking then, "I want to go there someday."  I missed the chance a couple of years ago, so needless to say I was pumped about finally visiting.

On the previous trip, dad, Charles, Mac, and a couple of others drove from Rocca di Papa to Pompeii and had a blast (except for the horrible cafeteria food they had there).  As it turns out, they went in through a completely different entrance than we did this day, and dad and Mac said that while they saw the forums, the stuff they saw besides that was completely different.  Mina said that if you want to see all of Pompeii that has been excavated, and spend ample time to learn, you really need three full days to see it all.  The place is huge!

So we entered the site at the main southern entrance adjacent to the modern city of Pompei (notice the different spelling).  Walking up to the main entrance, you can see the old city walls to the left, and they are quite impressive.  After entering the site, we moved into the area called the Quadriportico dei Teatri.  It sounds fancy, but our guide just described it as the gladiator barracks and training grounds.  The theater part comes in because there is a large theater and a small theater adjacent to this area.  We didn't visit the bigger theater, but we did go into the smaller theater.  The interesting thing about the teatro piccolo (or odeion, or small theater) was the acoustics.  There was a certain spot in which you could stand on the stage area, and you could hear yourself in stereo.  You could whisper, and people in the seats could hear you.  Move a couple of feet in any direction from the "sweet spot" and the effect went away.  But it was very interesting to hear and experience, and to know that something that acoustically perfect could have been built so long ago.

Pompeii

Pompeii Gladiator Barracks/Tra...

Small Theater

Speaking of long ago, Pompeii was destroyed - well, not really completely destroyed, but buried - almost 2,000 years ago by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 AD.  What is so remarkable about it is that it is a virtually perfect snapshot in time of what Roman life was like back in the height of the Roman Empire.  Some items were burned or destroyed during and after the eruption and pyroclastic flow, but virtually the entire city remained intact after being buried in volcanic ash.  There were even people and killed by the hot gasses and ash that innundated the city, and they were essentially entombed by the ash.  See below or in the gallery for some pics of a few of the plaster casts.  Another interesting fact:  several years (17 years I think) before the 79 eruption, Vesuvius foreshadowed its eruption with a large earthquake that damaged a large portion of Pompeii.  As we walked around, you could see the difference between "original" and "repair" construction.  They weren't finished with some of the repairs from that earthquake when the big eruption took out the city.

After exiting the small theater, we made our way down some of the streets.  Honestly, I got pretty lost and didn't really have any idea where we were.  I was busy taking pictures and just following the guide and the group along.  One thing I did notice was the stepping stones across the rock streets, and then the wheel ruts in the roads between the stepping stones.  They had the stepping stones so pedestrians wouldn't have to actually walk in the street to cross it.  That was important when it was raining...but even more important because the streets were used as sewers for human waste, too, and there was always animal waste.  Definitely don't want to be walking in that...  The wheel ruts were made by the wheels of wagons and chariots as they navigated down the roads - and put their wheels in the spaces between the stepping stones.  Anyway, I'm not entirely sure which houses we visited (they weren't too far from the theaters), but we went into two, and they were spectacular.  The finish on the construction was amazing, and the art on the walls was fantastic.  They were both definitely upper-class homes, but one was larger and more ornate than the first.  It had a beautiful garden in the center of the home.

Via Stabiana, Pompeii	Roman Home
Stable Fresco	Roman Garden

After finishing up at the houses, we walked a ways to one of the more famous attractions of Pompeii:  the Lupanare, or brothel. It was a relatively small place, even though they supposedly called this one of the larger "dens of sin," and the rooms were even smaller.  The "beds" - actually made of stone - looked like they'd be awfully uncomfortable to get busy on, but I guess they did.  The interesting part was the lewd scenes painted on the walls.  As our guide described it, most people back in those times didn't read, but they could decipher a picture.  So the "customers" would come in, look at the pictures, pick what "service" they wanted, pay, and get after it in one of the rooms.  Another interesting thing our guide pointed out to us:  there were "signs" around town, ummm, "pointing" the way to the brothel.  She actually pointed out one of the stones in the road a few blocks away that had a phallic symbol carved into it that would "point" the direction to the brothel.  Interesting...

After leaving the brothel, we made our way towards the forums, which in typical Roman fashion was a large public area in the center of town.  This is one of the places that dad and the group had visited two years prior, and it was definitely worth seeing again.  The most impressive structures in the forum were the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter and the Temple of Apollo.  Inside the Temple of Jupiter, there is a bust of Jupiter himself - kind of cool to see that.  Adjacent to the Temple of Jupiter are the Granai del Foro, or Forum Barns.  I don't know if these actually housed livestock back in the day, but in modern times they use them as a covered area to house and display many of the recovered or reproduced works of the city.  Most importantly, the barn has several reproductions of famous plaster casts of people and the dog.  It was eerie seeing them, and the funny thing is I felt more sorry for the poor 2,000 year old dog than I did for the three human casts we saw.

The story behind the casts goes something like:  when there were some excavations going on back in the later 1800s, the excavators found several voids in the ash and earth that contained skeletons.  One of the excavators had the brilliant idea of rather than making the holes larger to recover the bones, why not fill the voids with plaster, let it dry, then excavate around the plaster to see what it looks like.  Turns out, the shapes of bodies as they were before they decomposed (leaving just the skeletons) were left in the surrounding ash and earth, and filling the voids with plaster allows us to see how they died.  There's even a cast of a pregnant woman who was killed during the eruption.  Absolutely amazing.

Temple of Jupiter	Temple of Jupiter
The Pregnant Woman Cast	The Dog in Agony

Our final stop before exiting the site was the Temple of Apollo.  It looked like it would have been a magnificent temple, and there was a reproduction bronze statue of Apollo in the square.  With that, our time was running short, so we made our way to the exit, and apparently none too soon.  Rain clouds were looming, and it began sprinkling on us as we made our way to the van.  I did try to find some blood orange juice, but was unsuccessful.  From there, it was probably a 30 minute ride back to the ship.

The following day was Monday Nov 22, and it was the final day of our cruise.  On Tuesday the 23rd, we would arrive back in Barcelona and begin our trek home. 

Read the end of the story in the Trip Wrap Up article here.

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