Cenadi our future home?

Well, if you looked outside our Cenadi villa window this afternoon you’d swear that you’d been somehow transported overnight to the Florida everglades. The window vista is filled with a Florida-like palm and, just to make Floridians feel at home, the rain is pouring down like hurricane season has just arrived and plans to stay awhile. Our plans to go to Squillace for food and photographs have been squashed. But since it’s been some hours since breakfast, the girls are busily fixing our luncheon feast of pasta with fresh-caught tuna from Soverato and homemade wine from Franco downstairs.

Franco, the builder of the multi-unit building in which John and Helen purchased their town home, is one of those do-anything guys. It doesn’t matter whether it’s doing all the bricklaying on this three-story building, laying tile floors, or making his own wine, he does each with equal enthusiasm and expertise. At one time Franco had immigrated from Cenadi to Canada and spent his career as a contractor and jack of all trades. Then, at very early age, he retired, came to Italy, bought a piece of property from his grandmother, and built this marvelous building full of very nice town homes. The building still has three units available for sale and Franco would dearly love Concetta and I to purchase either the three-bedroom unit or one of the two two-bedroom units. Since it’s raining so hard outside and Franco can’t be working on one of his projects, he prevailed on me to come and see the three units. Like Goldilocks, I found the three-bedroom unit too large and the smallest two-bedroom unit too small. But the larger two-bedroom unit I found to be jusssssstttttttt right. The units are all concrete and steel, which makes them very earthquake proof, and they have tile floors throughout. The exterior is all brick and stone for low maintenance. Truly, it would be an ideal getaway place in Italy if we could afford the purchase price of $120,000 Euros.

Retirement for sure

We’ve entered full retirement mode here in Cenadi, Italy. After madly dashing from archaeology site to museum to mosque to castle to ancient battlefield in Greece for two weeks, Concetta and I now find ourselves here in Cenadi doing nothing but, well, eating. We’re staying with Concetta’s first cousin, John, and his wife Helen who normally live in Toronto, Canada, but who have a wonderful town house in the mountains of Calabria. Here, their villa overlooks thousands of acres of olive groves and grape vineyards, chestnut forests and fig orchards clear to the sea in Soverato some twenty miles away. The days are mild and the nights are cool, perfect for sleeping ‘till eight, giving us just enough time to manage breakfast before it’s time to go find the perfect Italian restaurant for lunch. Yesterday, the only thing we accomplished besides eating, between eight in the morning and ten at night, was a trip to Soverato to look for saffron and a trip to Chieravalle to look for a Vodaphone satellite link for my computer, neither of which did we find.

Concetta said to tell you she especially enjoyed the porcini mushrooms in her pasta yesterday. These special mushrooms are just now in season but can’t be picked, so we’re told by the resident authorities, until nine days after it rains. Through some twist of fate, we’ve arrived at just the right moment for enjoying the those much sought-after delicacies.

This morning, we're visiting the village of Squallaci to see what photographic opportunities present themselves, but really to search for the next memorable lunch spot. The weather here has been a tad rainy, but is just so pleasant that all you want to do is walk the quiet country lanes or sit and chat over coffee. If you wanted a quiet place on the planet to get away from it all and just sort of get back to nature, you could do no better than Cenadi or one of the near by villages. The taxes, they tell me, are low and the living is easy.

Not much more to write about just now, but stay tuned for unexpected adventures.

We travel Rome to Cenadi

Our goal yesterday was to reach the tiny southern Italian village of Cenadi by dinnertime. In the end we made it, though at times we had our doubts as to whether it would be dinnertime yesterday or today. Relying on our GPS, we easily – though carefully – navigated our way out of Zagarolo, the village outside of Rome where our B&B lay amongst an absolute maze of tiny lanes and alleys full of ninety-degree bends no wider than our VW sedan. However, once on the A1 towards Napoli, we made really good time, stopping only for potty breaks and the occasional leg-stretching exercise for the driver.

You can go pretty much as fast as you want on the Italian Auto Strada. I know this because no matter how fast we’re going, the big BMWs and Audis go whizzing by us in the left lane like we’re dragging a sled-full of bricks or something. We don’t go any faster than 140 kph, and usually even slower than that. If we try to go faster, our little GPS unit becomes uncomfortable and starts to beep us until we slow down.

Our B&B for the past two nights turned out to be located in a very pleasant setting among a forest of olive trees. You can’t eat olives right off the tree, of course, but we did take full advantage of the fig and apricot trees. We even loaded up a small bag of the figs and apricots to eat on the road today. When we first arrived at the B&B our fellow travelers turned out to be a friendly chap from Indonesia and a very nice couple from Newcastle, England, just down the road from where Concetta and I visited in 2008. I happened to mention the wonderful fruit just outside our doors and discovered that none of the three had ever eaten figs. After a tentative try, both the men decided that figs were just about the sweetest thing they’d ever had. Of course, when I went to collect a few for our drive today, I discovered that my new friends had virtually cleaned out the whole fig crop. I had to work hard to find the half-dozen we took with us.

Our most memorable adventure yesterday turned out to be when we got off the Auto Strada and went looking for a bathroom and a cup of coffee. After ten minutes of wandering around a big commercial warehouse area, we finally found our way up to the tiny village of Nola nestled in the foothills of southern Italy. We easily found a bright and clean café and went inside to see if they had restrooms. Naturally, as fate would have it, not a single person in the café spoke English. And even though Concetta spoke Italian until she was four or five, she doesn’t speak Italian now. So, between my limited speaking ability born of three semesters at Western Nevada College and Concetta’s tentative understanding ability we managed to carry on a twenty minute conversation with the five people in the café. You won’t believe me when I tell you, but those folks were having so much fun with us they didn’t want us to leave. Yes, it turned out to be great fun, well, except for the bathroom. We discovered that when you tuned on the light in the bathroom a strobe light came on that flashed on and off incessantly until you left, making it exceedingly difficult to perform any necessary tasks in there. Ah, Italy!

The balance of the day was spent going flat out on the Auto Strada, well at least some of the time. Unfortunately, the highway folks hadn’t been apprised of our coming for they had large sections of the A3 torn up and under construction. They’re putting in new tunnels and bridges and generally making the highway wider and the tunnels bigger. Of course, that usually meant that opposing traffic lanes were combined on the portions not under construction. It really made for some slow going for long distances.

Once we got close to Cenadi, we switched to twisty-curvy mountain driving so we had to slow down even further. Sometimes the GPS would get a little confused, but for the most part we didn’t make any mistakes that we couldn’t immediately correct. Concetta’s cousin, John, who normally lives in Canada has a house in Cenadi. He and his wife, Helen are going to be our hosts for the next several days. We’re hoping to get them to come to Sicily with us as Concetta and I have never been there.

So, here I am sitting in John and Helen’s living room talking to the internet via John’s Vodophone thumb-drive-sized “Uplink” device. Now this thing is cool and requires no monthly payment. It’s a “pay-as-you-go” model which you load with minutes when you get ready to go on vacation and then you never have to rely on you B&B (or the local MacDonalds) for you internet connection again. I’ve already decided to go with John into the nearby seacoast town of Soverato where he acquired his and buy one A.S.A.P. This is just what I’ve been wanting all along. Finding a good connection has been a royal pain this trip, a mistake I hope to never experience again. And, while the uplink tends to be slower than wireless hot spots I’ve experienced in the past, it does work. When you’re trying to write a blog and upload photos so folks can see where you’ve been, that can be important.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Ciao, Tutti!

Looking for Ostia Antica

Yesterday, our intended destination was the ancient town of Ostia Antica, southwest of Rome. Since our host spoke wonderful English – his having spent fifteen years in various cities in the U.S.A. – we decided that his instructions to take the Via della Mare from the A1 Auto Strada were clear enough that we didn’t need to engage our GPS. You can probably guess how that turned out. Even though it seemed we were doing just fine and headed straight for Ostia, we ended up in the Village of San Marco with not the slightest notion of which way Ostia might be. We stopped at the Park in San Paolo, and, just to stretch our legs, set off to explore and take a break before we tried to stop being lost and figure out how to get to Ostia. The first thing we stumbled on was a pyramid. Though not quite as large as those famous ones in Egypt, it was nevertheless pretty darn visible over the other buildings. Sorry to tell you that we never did find out what the significance of the pyramid was to the city of San Paolo. The next thing we discovered was a trolley museum. Now I’m sure if you know anything about me, you know I’d never pass up such an opportunity. The museum happened to be adjacent to the train station. So, we thought, the logical thing to do was ask the ticket clerk how to get in. The clerk was only too happy to assist us by opening the gate so that we might pass through, even though you normally had to have a ticket. Of course, we didn’t know that what was she was doing so we waited for her to appear to escort us. When that didn’t happen, we went back to the window and once again she said that she’d help us. This time we noted the open gate and succeeded in gaining entrance. Soon we were prowling around the museum grounds with yours truly snapping loads of photos of all the old rail equipment. That is, I was snapping away until I began to notice a certain nervousness on the part of the museum guards. But I shrugged off the notion and went on shooting. Moments later, the guard approached me and explained in Italian that I had to stop shooting. When I indicated that I didn’t understand him, he started repeating the English word “impossible” and pointing to the camera. I got the point, then, and put the camera away. Later, as we left the train station, Concetta pointed out the large sign showing a camera and the universal sign for something that’s not allowed, the circle with the diagonal line through it. Then we understood. You weren’t supposed to take photos of the trains. Just how the guards decided to extend this prohibition to the museum’s antique trolleys from the 1920s and 1930s is way beyond me, but the photo shoot was fun while it lasted.

By the time we arrived back at the car, we had decided that we needed to ask someone how to proceed to Ostia. I approached a group of park maintenance workers and presented the question. Now you've all seen that bit in "Romancing the Stone" where Michael Douglas tells Kathleen Turner, "Lady, you're way the Hell and gone from Cartagena" Well, that's just about how the much amused maintenance workers reacted to my question about Ostia. Still, they did sort of point in the general direction we should travel. So, we jumped in the car and set out. But after another twenty minutes of wandering in what turned out to be largely the wrong direction, I suggested that Concetta feed the GPS some fictitious address in Ostia and we’d see if we could get the show on the road. And that’s just what we did. Then for the rest of the morning we headed in the general direction of Ostia, we thought, which seemed to work well until we reached an intersection where signs indicated that Ostia was in BOTH directions, left and right. You can probably guess what happened next, we took the wrong/right direction. Thankfully, I decided to try the other right direction after only traveling in the wrong/right direction for ten minutes or so. Once our direction was reversed, we soon arrived at Ostia Antica.

If you’ve ever been to Pompeii, I can tell you that Ostia Antica looks about the same with some distinct differences. First of all, not as many people go there. I was absolutely overjoyed to see but one tour bus when we pulled into the parking lot. The bus turned out to have disgorged a big bunch of fairly well-behaved German teenagers who we found wandering the site in small groups not paying much attention to the wonders of archaeology. They seemed, in fact, to mostly be paying attention to each other, which we didn’t mind at all. Other than the one tour bus, I counted perhaps another dozen cars in the parking lot and that was about it. So, we spent the entire afternoon wandering amongst some wonderful ruins which appeared to cover a tract of land roughly equivalent to eight or ten football fields. Most of the buildings had been constructed with Roman red clay bricks which in ancient times had been covered with either plaster or thinly sliced marble. Not many of either of these wall “dressings” were still in evidence, but it was nice to be able to see the ancient construction techniques. One thing that especially impressed me was the Roman’s practice of constructing walls with nice even layers of brick on both wall facings, but they used rubble mixed with concrete to give the wall width and strength. You could easily see that absolutely nothing went to waste. If they had to knock down some earlier wall or building to erect a new structure, they always used the broken building materials of the old structure to fill the voids between any new walls. That’s got to be one of the earliest incidences of recycling I know about.

Another big difference between Ostia and Pompeii is that Ostia is covered with very large trees, ones that I think are called “umbrella pines.” These trees provide lots of shade while you stroll around appreciating the Roman’s ancient workmanship. Today, it was pretty overcast for good pictures, but it surely made for some nice cool walking underneath those pines. Even better, there’s so much mint growing on the ground around the city that each scuff of our shoes would fill the air with that heady aroma. Very nice.

Day before yesterday when we tried to drive from the airport to Zagarolo where we’re staying, we ran smack dab into rush hour. Naturally, we spent over two hours stuck in traffic. Today, I convinced Concetta that we should stay around Ostia and drive back after the dinner hour. That turned out to be a great suggestion as we stumbled onto the "La Villetta" restaurant in the nearby village of Alicia that, at least to our eye, appeared to cater mostly to local Italians. During the course of our ninety-minute stay, we never saw another tourist enter. We had a great dinner of “antipasti di mare,” bread, spaghetti, pizza, salad, local wine, and, at least for me, a nice double dose of espresso for the drive home. The owner didn’t speak English very well so it was an opportunity for Concetta and I to use our growing vocabulary of Italian phrases. “Due bicchiere di vino, per favore,” I said, and he knew just what we wanted. The wine tasted quite young, we thought, but still very nice. Earlier in the evening we’d been treated to a sample of similar wine when we mistakenly stumbled into a wine wholesaler when we thought the shop was a restaurant. The proprietor handed us a cup and told us to sample any of the many stainless steel barrels on display that we wanted, at least I guessed that’s what he said. He didn’t speak a word of English, either.

So all in all, the day went pretty well. We might have gotten lost a lot, but serendipity has always been one of my favorite ways to discover life. On the way home, though we made a couple of wrong turns, we made it to the B&B in record time since rush hour had long since turned into the dinner hour. So there you have it. Another day in paradise. Ciao, Tutti.

Adventure one at end, Adventure two beginning...

Yesterday’s parting from all our new friends was just a little sad. We found that we’d even grown quite fond of many of the ship’s crew in the two short weeks we’d been on board. To the ship’s crew with whom we had become especially close, we handed out small gifts of money and a enameled pin showing Nevada’s state seal that Concetta had found at the LCB gift shop. We certainly salute those folks for making our stay aboard pleasant and, for many of them, going out of their way to make us feel special. To our fellow passengers we handed out our “travel cards” with our phone numbers and the address of the web site in hopes that we may hear from some of them again.

In the midst of getting ready yesterday, ship’s personnel came over the loudspeaker and informed us that Athens was about to experience a strike on the part of the bus and truck drivers. Horrors! We immediately called Ianni, our favorite cab driver, and asked him to please come get us ahead of our pre-arranged 10:00 a.m. pickup. Thankfully, he told us that he was on his way already. So it was that a half hour later we had picked up our bags, enlisted the aid of a Greek baggage handler who used my phone to help Ianni zero in on us, and we were swiftly on our way to the Athens airport by the “back way,” a more scenic, seacoast route.

Less than an hour later we found ourselves standing at the passenger drop-off point, shaking hands with Ianni, and marveling at how we had somehow circumvented disaster. Not only had the strike not caused us to miss our flight, but Concetta and I had been treated to the dream cab ride. Since we had chosen Ianni for his ability to speak English, we not only enjoyed the scenery but had a nice conversation in the process. Ianni’s cousin lives in Detroit, he told us, and he plans on visiting the U.S. next year. We wish him well. If any of you are planning a trip to Athens, be sure and get Ianni’s phone number from us. He’ll treat you right.

Concetta and I had a couple of hours to wait at the Athens airport I used the time trying to connect to their network so I could update the blog. Unfortunately, it took me a while to figure out just how to do that. By then, the laptop’s battery was all but dead. Fortunately, Concetta found a free charging station that we could use to charge the battery and, while the laptop was connected, I had a little time to update Facebook but not the blog.

Right now I’m typing in our room in Rome which, much to my dismay, does not have a WiFi connection even though they assured me when I reserved the room that it would. I guess they fell behind in their installation schedule. So, I have typed this account into Word Perfect and then when we go to the main house for breakfast I will upload it to the blog.

Visiting the island of Skiathos

This afternoon we visited the island of Skiathos, one of the islands (along with Skopelos) that served as the film location for the movie, Mama Mia. Unfortunately for those of you who were hoping that we might get to see the actual film locations, the ship crew dumped us on the quay with barely an hour to sightsee and we didn't get very far away from the harbor before it was time to board the shuttle boat and return to our home away from home. Still, from what I saw in that short length of time, Skiathos would be a nice place to have an extended visit sometime in the future. From what I hear, like most of the "popular" Greek islands, Skiathos has become very commercialized and has sprouted street after street selling largely useless trinkets and touristy junk. Still, the setting is beautiful with the red-roofed white houses clinging precariously to the steep hillside that soars just few yards from the harbor quay. We found the yacht harbor filled with colorful Greek fishing and sightseeing boats, which immediately drew my photographic attention. The rosy, soon-to-be-setting sun was making the boats sparkle and glow against the backdrop of the blue Mediterranean and the green foliage of the hillsides. After taking my pictures, Concetta and I set off into the interior of the town hoping to grab a few photos of the colorful shops. To our delight, the first thing we happened upon was a beautiful large fig tree full of "burstingly" ripe figs. Now I've been checking every fig tree I've walked by since we first left Athens two weeks ago. For the most part, I've had less than stellar success. But today we finally hit pay dirt. These figs were so large and ripe they were falling to the ground. A little sticky when you're trying to juggle a camera, but yum, yum, yum.

All too soon our watches told us that we had to head back to the harbor to catch the last shuttle boat to the ship. We would have liked to have spent hours and hours exploring Skiathos, but it was not to be. We did hear a funny story while we were sitting on the shuttle boat waiting for it to fill with passengers. One passenger was describing to her friend how she'd gone into a shop to look at blouses and made the mistake of showing a little too much interest in one particular, as she described it, rather skin-tight, revealing blouse. She thought that the blouse looked much too small, but to make the clerk happy she agreed to try it on. Here's where the real trouble began. She said the blouse was so skimpy that she decided to take everything off on top in order to give the blouse the best chance of fitting. But to her horror, once she had the blouse on, she couldn't get it off. And it was about this time that she noticed the time and knew she had to dash back to the shuttle boat. With time running out, but not wanting to damage the blouse, nor wanting to expose an embarrassing amount of skin, she just bought it and wore it back -- suitably covered by a light jacket I noted. As you can see, our fellow passengers can be as entertaining as the planned entertainment.

Tonight we all had to pack our luggage and put it outside our cabin doors for pickup by the porters. I kept back the camera, of course, and Concetta kept her purse and our tiny backpack just for essentials. Otherwise, everything else will show up on the quay tomorrow before we disembark. We were lucky when our Athens hotel called a cab for us when we wanted to go aboard the ship some two weeks ago. We were lucky because the driver spoke English pretty well. This made it easy for us to strike a deal with "Ianni" to return on the 21st and pick us up. We got his business card with his phone number and while we were waiting to up anchor on Skiathos, I called him and confirmed the time for him to show up. That should make it easy for us to get from the ship to the airport where our flight to Rome leaves tomorrow afternoon.

So, the cruise is coming to a close and the question arises, would I do it again? Surprised as I am at the answer, I'd have to say yes. The whole experience was not perfect, not by a long shot. But we had a ton of fun! I loved the staff here. I met a "boat-load" of really fascinating people, including every conceivable personality type and background. Last night I sat next to an environmental lawyer at dinner. The night before, a bee-keeper. Several mornings ago we had breakfast with an enchanting, elderly English lady who can both read and write Greek, though she says she has a bit of trouble with the speaking part. Greece was the favorite destination of she and her husband for many, many years. Now that he's passed away, well, she just keeps coming by herself. In fact, we met lots of ladies doing this adventure by themselves. Of the 333 pasengers on this voyage, over one hundred were single.

We chose this adventure because it was being sponsored, at least in part, by the Archaeological Institute of America. That meant that there were a number of very learned folks doing lectures at various times each week whenever we weren't out prowling around ancient cities and the like. I really, really liked that part and would do something like this trip again if the opportunity arose. My only real complaint, as you know, is that their computer sophistication on this ship is something akin to half a dozen years ago or earlier. Not only do they keep you from uploading photos, but they lock out utilities like the highlight and copy routine. You can't access Microsoft Paint, which would be handy if you wanted to capture photos from the Internet. Totally senseless. So, in my eval, I guess you can guess that I harpooned them big time on their antique technology policies. I won't be taking another cruise unless they can guarantee in writing that WiFi is in every cabin.

Anyway, it's just about midnight and I have to turn in. I hope to type a few words before we disembark, but I'm not sure I'll have the time. So, when next you read this we hope to be in Rome. So, until then, I'll say, ciao, Tutti.

Cruising the Bosphorus

This morning Concetta and I had perhaps our most memorable experience yet as we boarded a tour boat (only partially filled, thank goodness) for our trip up the Bosphorus. The morning was clear and bright, and the sun was low on the eastern horizon making picture-taking very nearly perfect. Just to prove this theory correct, I enthusiastically took 277 photos.

The Bosphorus is the most heavily traveled shipping lane I think I've ever seen. Literally hundreds of pleasure boats, fishing boats, liners, freighters, oil tankers, tugs, and many more sight-seeing boats are in motion all the time. All the traffic from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean passes right through these narrow straits. Our cruise took us as far north as the point of land known since the days of the Silk Road as the "Golden Horn." Nowadays, there's a bridge that ties Europe and Asia together at this point, a vast suspension bridge that seems to float over this Bosphorus bottleneck.

One of the hotels we passed, according to our guide, was voted the best hotel in the world for two years running back in the 1990s. I would never have expected that, which is the point I've been trying to make about Turkey. So much of it is unexpected. It's beautiful and friendly and exotic and photogenic just for starters.

We've had several meals here in Turkey, two that were sort of "picnic style," and one in the very upscale restaurant, the Picasso. All of our meals have been simply outstanding.

Every Turkish person with whom we've had any contact has been friendly and polite and willing to bend over backward to make us happy. After the cruise our busload of happy tourists got to visit the local Egyptian spice market. You may remember that the Grand Bazaar we visited yesterday was so crowded and overwhelming that it was hard to appreciate its many splendors. Today was different. Today we truly enjoyed our experience in the smaller, less crowded spice bazaar. The sights and smells were intoxicating. We were even treated to free pomegranate and apple tea from the vendor where Concetta had bargained a fistful of Euros for spices.

Concetta and I have decided that we simply must come back to Istanbul when we're not being hurried along by a tour guide and rent a palazio for a week or two. For one thing, we didn't get to see the archaeological museum as the tour took place simultaneously with the Bosphorus tour. But the bottom line is, you just can't see Istanbul in a couple of days. There's so much more to experience away from the madding crowd, out where the Turkish people live, out where you can relax over a glass of Turkish tea and just watch people walk by from the four corners of the world.

I'm not sure whether I'll be able to add more to this blog entry later. Tonight we're meeting our Chicago friends for Champagne in their cabin followed by dinner in the upscale restaurant here on board. They're celebrating their first year of marriage (after having been together many years). We've haven't told them yet, but we're going to be celebrating our 33rd year of marriage at the same time. What better place to reaffirm our vows to each other than doing what we love.

Ciao, Tutti!