We visit the Isle of Capri

Four years ago when we visited Sorrento with Concetta’s sisters, Phyl and Paula, Concetta and I visited the Isle of Capri, which is just a short ride by jet boat from here. That particular visit, we had a simply marvelous time hiking to the village of Capri that lies several hundred feet higher in elevation than the harbor. Though most tourists opt for the tour busses or taxis that line the quay waiting for customers, we chose instead to walk and take photographs of the beautiful gardens that seem to be everywhere.

This year we weren’t quite so lucky. We hadn’t been on the jet boat more than a few minutes when a tour pitchman descended on us and talked us into spending twenty Euros apiece to get the “special treatment” that only he could provide. I was initially going to send him on his way, but the couple with whom we had been sitting proclaimed that they were going to do it and why not give it a try. The only thing that interested me was that he promised to take us higher on the mountain to visit Anacapri, another, smaller village that we had missed on our first visit.

As you might guess, good ol’ Luigi sang to us, told us wonderful stories, and generally entertained us as we boarded his tiny bus and made our way up the most diminutive piece of highway you’ve ever seen. This ribbon of blacktop promised to allow two buses to pass safely while clinging to the cliff-face hundreds of feet above of the bay, but I don’t think I was the only passenger holding my breath at such encounters. After we arrived at Anacapri, ol’ Luigi shamelessly spent the morning herding us from one relative’s shop to another’s just to let us “take a look.” Midday, we found ourselves in his cousin’s restaurant for lunch where we had a small plate of pasta, a glass of wine probably imported from China, and a frozen dessert of some indefinable sort.

It was about this time that Concetta and I split from Luigi’s company and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring on our own, which is what we should have done in the beginning. Unfortunately, by then the sun had drifted behind a bank of clouds making photography impossible, so we did a little window shopping, some hiking around the tiny lanes that descend into the canyons, and then we rode the funicular railway back to the harbor and caught the ferry back to Sorrento. As days in Italy go, it was not one of our best. But hey, we’re getting ready to venture out into the tiny lanes that wend their way from our Sorrento Hotel down the mountain towards the sea. We’ve had some very fine dinners while wandering down there, and I have high hopes for a repeat performance.

Dashing north for Sorento

Friday morning dawned clear and beautiful from our patio at the Angela Hotel on the Island of Sicily overlooking the cloud-shrouded Mount Etna volcano. We headed down to breakfast as usual, but we sensed since the hotel staff had not contacted us about our stay having been extended due to some last-minute cancellation from another guest that we would have to leave our new-found haven. Concetta and I thoroughly enjoyed our breakfast on the terrace overlooking the volcano nonetheless. Around ten, we loaded up the car and headed down the mountain. We were lucky once again as the hotel van was headed for it's morning drop-off and was going just the way we wanted to go. Thanks to the van, we had no trouble finding our way to the main highway for our trip back to Messina and the ferry.

We had plugged in the GPS to guide us but for some reason we kept choosing the wrong routes and making the little machine irritable. Finally, we turned it off and used our wits to find the ferry. With the Davis luck running high, we found the ferry entrance, presented our ticket, and boarded just as the doors were ready to close. We were, in fact, the last two or three cars allowed on board.

When we first boarded the ferry for Sicily we sort of cowered in the car unwilling to get out and leave our luggage to the unknown. This time, we locked the car, and found the upper decks so we could enjoy the voyage. It was great. Then, when we unloaded, we easily found our way out of the embarkation area and down the road to our next destination, Reggio Calabria. There, Concetta wanted a chance to see the 6th century bronze Greek statues at the local museum. We thought we had found at leaset the general location and, after finding a killer parking spot, we set off on foot to the museum. We stopped several local residents to ask the location, but finding no one who spoke English, we were not successful in walking to the museum. However, as a last try, we stopped a man in an orange shirt and asked him about the museum's location. Thankfully, he knew exactly what we wanted and pointed us in the correct location. Retrieving the car, we drove there and spent a wonderful hour viewing the exhibits.

After our museum visit, we talked about just where we should go at that late hour -- around 2:30 p.m. -- that would allow us to find a hotel. Even though it seemed like a long shot, we decided we'd make the dash for Sorento and, however late we arrived, we'd book a stay for three days and do some exploring around Napoli. At times, I certainly regretted our decision, as the sun sank lower and my lunch of one banana and half a scone began to play on my mind. Finally, after battling traffic through a dozen construction sites and the Friday-night madness of the Sorento coast, we arrived at our destination, the Villa Maria Hotel in Sorento, the hotel where we stayed four years ago. It was nice to be back on familiar ground.

Thankfully, we arrived in time at our Sorento hotel to find dinner still in progress and a room ready and waiting for us. It's always hard to "wing it" in a place as popular as Sorento and I had little confidence that we'd find a vacancy. But luck was with us once again and we now have a cozy room on the third floor. Concetta and I drank a whole bottle of Italian red between us for dinner so this blog may have an error or two that I've missed. But, for now, all is right with the world. We've traveled several hundred miles today from the foot of the Mount Etna volcano to the foot of the Mount Vesuvius Volcano. Things can only get more interesting from here. Until then, I bid you Buona Notte! Ciao.

Tramping around Taormina

This morning Concetta and I decided to spend our day in old Taormina strolling the narrow lanes and alleys, visiting the shops, and – what else? – scoping out the best place to find a bit of pasta for lunch. Our Hotel, the Angela, offers breakfast at 8:00 a.m. on the terrace so we didn’t have to jump out of bed until well after after 7:00 a.m. After a light meal of granola, yogurt, scones, and fruit – and, naturally, several cups of black coffee, we headed for the hotel van which was headed downtown at “half nine,” as the desk clerk put it. My intention was to get some photos before the sun gained its straight overhead zenith in order to get those bluer skies and longer shadows to accentuate all the wonderful old stone buildings and colorful shop fronts.

In one way, we felt a little bad for not seeking out some tour or other that was headed for an archaeological site or ancient Greek ruin or something, but the truth is we’ve grown a little tired of those things and decided that we’d just wander the town and take photos and look for food. It turned out to be one of the nicest days we’ve had on this adventure. We had no time limits and no destinations. We looked at ceramics and local wines and baby clothes. We had time to wait until the proper “models,” like girls in long summer dresses, wandered into my photos. We even had time to wait until everyone wandered out of the photo. I always look for “models” who have on bright oranges and reds and blues, but usually have to count on Americans to fill that bill. For some reason, Europeans tend to like black, a color that doesn’t do a thing for landscape photos.

The best thing we visited this morning was an open-air Roman theater that dates back a couple of thousand years (probably built on the foundations of an earlier Greek theater) and has by far the best setting of any of the ancient theaters that we’ve visited. The seats are cut into a hillside hundreds of feet above the Mediterranean and the theater audience would have as a backdrop to the actors the wide sweep of that awesome blue sea far, far below. The grandeur of it takes your breath away.






The second best thing we stumbled over today turned out to be the parco publico (municipal park) that clings to the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea perhaps six or seven hundred feet below. The park has been designed with long tree-shaded walks, bright flower gardens, and dozens of nooks and crannies where you could find a comfortable bench and enjoy a quiet conversation. In a city full of buzzing motor scooters and tiny Fiats dashing to and fro, the park came as welcome a surprise as a desert oasis.

After a lovely hour in the sanctuary of the park, our tummies told us it was time for that bit of pasta. Minutes later we had retraced our steps into the heart of the old city and had chosen Il Baccanale for our lunch. I settled on the lasagna. Concetta passed on the pasta and chose an omelet just for a bit of change. For dessert, along with our espresso, we decided to share a lemon ice just because it sounded so cool. Our restaurant hosts, for reasons unknown, treated us to a glass each of almond liqueur, which I promptly added to my espresso for some extra kick. As we had done all day, we took our time with lunch and didn’t resume our wandering until after 2:00 p.m.

Concetta was anxious to spend some time on our terrace with her book so around 3:00 p.m. we made our way back to Hotel van’s pickup spot and we were back in our room by 3:30 p.m. There, we checked our email, got our showers, and spent the balance of the early evening taking it easy – or rather, Concetta took it easy. I’m here typing the blog. LOL.

Around 7:30 p.m., we plan to walk up the road to a dinner spot we’ve heard about and see if we can finish off the evening with some more great Italian food. I’ll let you know how that turns out. Until then, I bid you buona notte. Ciao.

Ci Vadiamo in Sicilia

For the last five days we’ve been enjoying a wonderful visit with Concetta’s cousin, John, and his delightful wife, Helen, at their vacation town home in Cenadi, Italy. To give you a bit of insight into what Cenadi is like, visualize miles and miles of low rolling hills with virtually every inch covered in vegetation of some sort. Olive groves march off in orderly rows in just about any direction you look. Fig trees grow everywhere, both in gardens and along the edges of farm fields. Around every bend in the road you see a wonderful profusion of grape vineyards and gardens nestled in beside “rusticos,” or ancient rock houses. And wherever you don’t see carefully tended gardens and orchards, you see wonderful stands of chestnut trees, wispy fern-covered fields (where the wild mushrooms hide), and dozens of other species of trees I couldn’t begin to identify. Amongst all this beauty you find, just here and there, tiny villages full of wonderful old stone and stucco houses with red-tile roofs, bright colored entryways, and even brighter-colored laundry hanging from ancient iron balconies. Below those balconies, wind skinny two-lane roads, so narrow that you have no choice but to slow the pace of your life down and take in some of this rustic beauty, even if it’s for just a moment.

We love to come to Cenadi for the people as well. On either side of John and Helen’s house are good friends named, of all things, Montesano. As some of you know, Concetta’s last name is Montisano. The spelling was changed from the original Montesano spelling when the family immigrated from Centrache, a town just down the hill from Cenadi nearly a century ago. Though the neighbors are probably not relatives (Montesano being the third most common name in the area), we have come to love those folks like they were our own relatives. Frank and Isa on the north side are the family who are offering to sell us an apartment in their building if we would like to have a base in Cenadi from which to explore Italy more thoroughly in the future. Yesterday we had a marvelous lunch with Frank and Isa comprised of such a quantity and variety of wonderful food that I didn’t want dinner five hours later. From Isa’s pasta, fried peppers, wild chicory, lightly battered mushrooms, and to-die-for salads, to Frank’s homemade wine, we feasted like Kings and Queens for at least two hours. For dessert they brought out a plate of home-grown figs and other fruits that was a beauty to behold. That, along with ice wine and a triple dose of espresso made me want to sign the purchase agreement right there and then.

And then there’s the Montesanos on the south side, Tony and Maria. Lovely folks they are and there’s no mistake. The Montesanos “south” always have us to lunch or dinner when we come to visit, and this time was no exception. On Monday the four of us (Me, John, Helen, and Concetta, met at Tony and Maria’s for a whirlwind feast of everything from pasta to roast chicken with rosemary potatotes, stuffed eggplant to garden-grown salad. Of course Tony had his own homemade wine as well. In fact, just last night I was privileged to photograph Tony and his nephew, Giovani, carrying crate after crate of freshly-picked grapes to dump into the hopper where the stems would be stripped off. Tony is 70 years old, but he could work circles around me. After putting his thirty or forty crates of grapes through the stem-stripper, he went to his nephew’s house to do the same job. After that, it was a friend’s turn. He told me he didn’t finish stripping grapes until 10:30 p.m. What a guy. Before we left, I had a chance to get to know Maria better by sitting with her on her patio for an hour and stripping the dried beans out of the center of a whole bunch of string bean hulls for use in next year’s planting. As a reward, Maria gave me a whole package of beans to plant in my garden.

Of course, it was very hard to say goodbye to John and Helen, but since they’re getting ready to fly home to Canada, we had to bid them a very fond farewell and bon voyage. They made us very, very welcome over the past few days, even taking us sight seeing and shopping and letting us use up a bunch of their satellite Internet time. Breakfast was our favorite time of the day as we sat and planned the day’s events. I’m sorry I forgot this morning to sample the fig yoghurt (they get loads and loads of better flavors here), but the coconut was terrific. John and Helen are lovely hosts, and we hope to visit them again some time soon.

Around 9:30 a.m. we had the car all loaded and Concetta and I headed off down the mountain into some dazzling blue skies and toward the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean. We hit just a tad of fog as we gained altitude at one point, but most of the drive was heavenly. We didn’t have to rush since our goal was the east coast of Sicily, and we decided that we could easily do that in half a day. The journey here to Sicily turned out to be a tad more complicated than we thought, but by 3:30 p.m. we had reached our destination village of Taormina, just down the road from Messina where the ferry boat deposited us. We were expecting close to pandemonium in our ferry experience, but in truth, it wasn’t that bad. The Italians are sometimes a bit stingy with their road signs, which can make for some tense moments, but for the most part we purchased our ticket, got in the proper line, loaded up when the ferry docked, and got off without so much as a single problem. We had been warned that all hell can break loose when you’re trying to exit the ferry because they try to funnel four or five lanes of traffic off the ferry to one lane exiting the disembarkation point. In our case, we boarded fairly early in the process, got placed right behind an ambulance with the blue lights vigorously flashing, and when it exited so did we. In fact, we were the number one car down the exit lane. Some piece of luck!

So, our next bit of uncertainty resulted from my insistence on not making any reservations on Sicily. I wanted our choice of lodging to be based solely on accident if possible. Though that sounds a bit daft, I like at least occasionally to let serendipity take control to see just what adventures can result. Before we left this morning, and quite at the last minute, John gave me some Internet searches that Helen had performed some time ago when she wanted to go to Sicily. From that stack of searches, Concetta and I picked out a likely target for our night’s lodging based on whether they had Internet or not. As fate would have it, we found the Hotel Angela without much difficulty, drove up and parked right in front, and discovered that they indeed had space for us. We would have liked three days, but they could only guarantee two at this point. I’m hoping that someone ends up cancelling, but if not, we’ll head off down the road to see just what other adventures we can turn up. At the moment our room is located high up on a cliff face overlooking both the Mediterranean and the slopes of the active volcano, Mount Etna. It almost seems that we have a view that goes on for several lifetimes. I’m not sure what our plans for the evening are going to be, but the hotel runs a shuttle down the mountain to the old part of Taormina where there are a vast selection of restaurants and shops. So, pardon me while I finish getting dressed. I’m starting to get hungry and I haven’t eaten anything but a banana since breakfast. I’m starting to fall away to a shadow.

The photo above was taken from our bedroom patio after we returned from dinner. Quite by accident, I think Concetta and I stumbled onto the very best restaurant in Taromina. We got the full white table cloth treatment followed by the best ravioli I've had in years and years. The wine was superb, the service excellent, and the view was much like what you see above. We stayed the full course from anti pasti to gelato and coffee. I could eat there forever. When we were done, the hotel called for us with a van. What a place!

Tomorrow we'll probably explore a bit around here and then, who knows? Stay tuned.

Adventures in Pizzo

Yeah! The rain finally cleared up for ten or twelve minutes – long enough for us to dash to he car and head down the mountain to drier climes. Thankfully, the rain clouds didn’t follow us and we emerged in the town of Pizzo by the sea under blue skies (mostly). The beauty of the drive down the mountain through fern-festooned glades and arboreal tunnels of huge overarching trees put everyone in high spirits. The Calabrian mountains with their verdant, rolling forests and meadows and sweeping views of the sparkling Mediterranean, makes you want to buy a piece of ground, build a cabin, and raise figs and grapes for the rest of your life.

The first seaside place we visited was La Piesa de Piedigrotta. Here, seventeenth century shipwrecked sailors tunneled into the sandstone cliff face and fashioned a church complete with carved statues of saints and other religious figures. I didn’t try to count them, but there looked to be a least a hundred carved sandstone figures in sizes varying from a few inches tall to life-sized in a room on par with any small Italian village church. Outside, the storm-tossed waves of the Mediterranean crashed against the rocks, but inside, in the dark serenity of the church, you could easily imagine those poor shipwrecked souls working feverishly to influence the God who had seemingly abandoned them.

Leaving La Piesa de Piedigrotta, we found a parking place in Pizzo and picked our way along the highway full of speeding Fiats to find the stairs to the cliff-side piazza several stories above us. The highway had no sidewalk, so we had to plaster ourselves next to the guardrail and hope we would be able to jump out of the way should an oncoming “macchina” get too close. Thankfully, we made it without incident and had soon gained the sunny heights above where a double row of side-by-side restaurants and an ocean of yellow, blue, and white plastic chairs greeted us. Each restaurant came complete with it’s own “pitchman” who stood at the edge of his particular eatery and beckoned you to come sit down. “Sorry,” we told them, “we’re just enjoying our passagiata,” our stroll on such a beautiful Calabrian day.

Our game plan was to finally choose a restaurant and have a bit of pasta and wine, then explore the tiny streets and alleys of Pizzo for an hour or so, then find another restaurant for our ice cream and espresso break. Our secret agenda that caused us to seek out Pizzo in the first place was to taste their famous Tartufo, a chocolate ice cream concoction that simulates in size and shape and color the Tartufo mushrooms (truffles). We weren’t disappointed. The Tartufos were absolutely to die for. I didn’t order one, but John and Concetta did and I got to taste hers. It was wonderful and light and as solidly chocolate as you could want.

That evening, after we had arrived back in Cenadi, we were invited to Tony Montesono’s next door for Italian torta and homemade wines and liquores. My absolute favorite is Tony’s Nocello, a dark sweet liquid made from the green outer husks of walnut shells. Tony says that in order to get the most perfect Nocello, you have to harvest the walnuts on June the 23rd exclusively. No other day, according to Tony, will produce as fine a taste. He makes only a few bottles each year and, sadly, his small supply is already promised for this year. I told him to please, please reserve a bottle for me for next year and he could name his price.

This morning we're off mushroom hunting in the forest so I have to close and get my boots on. 'Till next time, I bid you ciao, Tutti.

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!