The Flight(s) Home

As I think I've said previously in the blog, I spent quite a bit of time on the planning end of this trip working with the airlines. This involved the on-line reservation via Cheapoair.com (whom I'd never heard of before) as well as spending much time on the phone with the airlines themselves.

The most time was probably taken up with insuring that at least two hours existed between the landing of one flight and the taking off of the next flight. I'm an absolute fanatic about having sufficient time between flights to cover any contingency. When there are three legs outbound and three legs inbound on your journey, the slack time between flights can become critical. On this particular trip, we didn't have any problems outbound with the planes being on time. But inbound two out of the three flights were an hour late or more, which would have been disastrous if I hadn't booked intelligently.

I also spent much time on seat selection. Though many might think selecting seats is not that important, I always insist on having the aisle seat and the middle seat for Concetta and me rather than the window seat. This insures that you don't inconvenience anyone who might want to sleep the whole flight away. On this trip, it took at least an hour on the phone on two different occasions to finally nail down the seat assignments for all six flights. Thanks to all that careful planning and diligent phone work, the flying part of our trip came off flawlessly.

Like anything else that lots and lots of people want to do at the same time and place, flying can be a gigantic pain. One of the things that made our experience as pleasant as possible is the carry-on luggage. You see some folks who buy the biggest darn carry-on bag possible in order to, what? Put something over on the flight crew? Then they struggle and struggle to get the stupid things on board and into overhead bin. Take my advice, check one big bag and buy a carry-on about half the legal size with a good set of wheels and a telescoping handle and let it go at that.

Our carry-on bags are easy to get on the plane and easy to get in the overhead. Don't put any clothes in them except some clean underwear and socks in case they lose the checked bag for a day or two. Into mine when the computer and the Nikon, two things I wouldn't dream of checking, and all the electric stuff like phone and laptop chargers, etc. Into Concetta's went the above-mentioned clothes, the medicines, the GPS unit, her headphones (always wonderful to have on an airplane), and a few personal items.

We also take what the airlines call a, "personal item." Naturally, for Concetta the personal item is her purse. For me, I have a small bag about ten inches high, six inches wide, and five inches deep that holds my reading book, my headphones, the passports, the boarding passes, my journal, my glasses, and a bunch of other stuff like a tiny flashlight and a bottle of Tylenol. This bag, which I found at Target, is just perfect for sliding under the seat ahead of me.

By the way, our checked luggage is a rolling duffel bag which has a telescoping handle. This soft-sided bag has a host of separate compartments, won't be damaged from having a ton of other luggage piled on it, and with the handle extended it's easy to put your small carry-on above it for wheeling both around the airport. To make them extra visible on the turnstile, we bought a couple of those fluorescent yellow canvas belts that you wrap around the bag and clasp. We also use the TSA-approved combination locks on the the main zippers to deter crimes of opportunity.

Yesterday, you may remember that I booked us into the airport Hilton in Rome to make our appearance at the terminal at the required hour extra easy. That turned out to be a wonderful idea, one that I intend to use in the future. Staying at the Hilton allowed me to get rid of the rental car the day before, thus cutting down on the stress that always results from trying to turn in the car and get to your flight in the same time period. The Hilton had a van and a very helpful driver who deposited us at the proper terminal at the proper time and we were on our way.

This time we rented from Avis instead of Eurocar. Though the Italian woman at the Avis desk didn't seem to care much for her job the day we arrived, I'd have to say that my experience with them was largely positive. Four years ago our experience with Eurocar was a slightly different story.

Anyway, that's it for now on the subject of airlines and baggage. Next time I'll go into what we packed and what we should have left home.

Ciao.

The Adventure Winding Down

Today started early, about 5:30, as Concetta and I made ready to tackle the last leg of our Greek/Italian adventure. We tried to get into the breakfast room just when it opened because our hotel, the Villa Maria, is playing host to a couple of busloads of Brits who've proven to be a tad noisy when cooped up together in a small space.

Though the food is certainly nothing to brag about at the Villa Maria, the hotel is clean and the staff friendly. It turned out that the extra nice room they gave us when we arrived late was a tad expensive, but not quite as bad as I expected. We did enjoy having the nice patio attached to our room.

Sorrento is a tough place to move around because there's only one road in and out. With all the Italian guys and girls on their motor scooters, the tour buses, delivery trucks, zippy little Fiats, and pedestrians stepping into the street from all directions definitely slowed us down a bit. Probably best to arrive or leave on a Sunday as yesterday the streets were much less crowded.

Our little GPS decided to have a go at us one more time as we wended our way toward Napoli where we would catch the A3 to Rome. Once again, though the sign said go left for Napoli the GPS said go right for another chance to get completely lost amid the ancient neighborhoods surrounding the docks. This time, though, we ignored the little prankster and relied on our intuition to head us north.

The next bit of fun we encountered was the chance to be marooned inside a very long tunnel as some sort of crash up ahead brought traffic to a standstill. Neither of us is very comfortable being in tunnels, especially since on our last visit to Italy we were blocked in a tunnel that quickly began to fill with smoke. At that time we had visions of having to abandon the car and sprint for the end of the tunnel we'd just entered. Thankfully, just as the smoke began to look threatening, the traffic suddenly began to lurch forward and we were soon out in the fresh air. We never did find out what caused either the hold up or the smoke. This time, thankfully, we had relatively fresh air -- not counting the contributions from Diesel trucks and buses -- and after a half hour we got rolling again.

Once we reached the A3, we really started to pick up speed. In the past the maximum speed I felt comfortable traveling on the Auto Strada was 140 KPH. Even at that speed the German cars sailed by me in the left lane like I was peddling a bicycle. Today, since the road was so smooth and the traffic so light, I cranked the big Passat up to 160 KPH and we got to Rome in super quick time.

Our first mission once we got to the Rome airport was to find the Airport Hilton where we would be staying. I wanted to check in and take the bags to the room before we returned the rental car. All this worked exactly as planned. The check-in went very smoothly. We made contact with the porter who would drive us to the airport tomorrow morning and we were in our room by just after lunch time. Our next task was to return the car, which always makes me nervous. But this time, with our Avis car, the clipboard guy briefly looked the car over, had me sign a credit card slip, and told me I could leave. I've never seen anything so easy.

Our next task was to go to the Continental ticket desk and check on our seat assignments, a job which should have been dead easy. Au contrar! Because U.S. carriers demand a higher level of security in check-in, they now have their own terminal. For awhile we tried to walk there, occasionally asking non-English speaking passersby where terminal five might be. Finally, a flight attendant, in her pretty broken English, let us know that we had to ride a shuttle bus there. Since the shuttle bus stopped just scant feet from where we were standing, that turned out to be easy. But when we arrived at terminal five, things didn't exactly look right. I tried asking the shuttle driver if he would be back to pick us up, but he just shrugged.

Here things got even more interesting. When we went into the terminal, we found not a soul working there. We looked at each other. The scene reminded me of those sole-survivor films where everyone in the city is dead and only one person is left to wander the deserted streets. Now and again a janitor or similar workman would appear and disappear just to show us not everyone was dead, but for the most part the terminal remained empty. Right about then an elderly couple appeared and informed us that the terminal was closed for the day and no one would be back until the next morning. They, as it turned out, had bought a $50.00 cab ride to the airport to change their flight only to find the terminal closed for the day. Their only choice was to go back to their Rome Hotel -- another $50.00 cab ride -- and come back the next morning. We felt really sorry for them.

Soon after we four gathered in the parking lot and tried to interest someone in our plight. We really didn't know if anyone would be back for us. Why would a shuttle bus come to a closed terminal? The elderly couple tried to use the "wheelchair ordering" intercom to the main terminal to get information, but the person at the other end kept wanting to know if they needed a wheelchair. The conversation would have been pretty amusing if it hadn't been so tragic. Finally, the elderly couple wore the intercom person down and she told them that the shuttle would indeed come back for us.

As it turned out, once Concetta and I were back in the room we easily pulled up our Continental reservation and seat assignments on the PC (finally our last night in Italy we have in-room Internet access) and all looked in order, which I could have accomplished in the first place. But I wanted to have a real person in front of me just in case I had to argue for a certain seat setup that the computer refused to give me.

So, here we are, just chilling out at the Airport Hilton and taking it easy. We are both genuinely sorry that our adventure is over AND very thankful that we will be back in our boring old existence for awhile. At least we won't have to be incessantly looking for the universal "WC" wherever we go. So, I hope you've enjoyed hearing about some of what we've experienced. I apologize for the lack of photos this time. I was very disappointed to learn that the Aegean Odyssey had locked out the passenger's picture uploading ability. In the future, I will have to be even more vigilant in ferreting out suitable hosts for our traveling pants. For now, I bid you the Italian "do-all" greeting, Ciao, and buona fortuna in your traveling future.

The GPS isn't always on our side

This morning Concetta and I set out to undo the questionable karma we had accumulated yesterday on our visit to the island of Capri. Our plan was to visit the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in downtown Napoli where many of the archaeological finds from Pompeii and Herculano are displayed. Now Napoli is one of those cities that most people, even Italians, will advise you to avoid if you’re driving your own car. Take the train. Take the bus. Hire a cab. But under no circumstances should you drive yourself. Naturally, the intrepid Happy Wanderers enthusiastically ignored that advice.

The drive to Napoli started out perfectly normal. We set the address of the museum into the GPS and it quite correctly set our direction north from the Hotel. Of course, in Sorrento there’s only two ways to go, north or south, so it had a 50/50 chance anyway. After fifteen or twenty minutes we found ourselves on the outskirts of Napoli at a “Y”. We probably should have wondered when the GPS insisted on the left fork when the right fork pointed to our destination, but we went ahead and followed the direction indicated by the GPS. An hour later when we’d only gone a couple of miles, we finally turned off the GPS and began navigating by intuition. In between, we were as close to completely lost as you can get in Italy, which is pretty darn lost. For at least thirty minutes the little electronic wonder had insisted on returning us to the same "no outlet" street with a big piece of earth moving equipment sitting in a field where the road ended. No matter how we tried to outwit it, it would see through our subterfuge and take us back to view the earth mover again. We did see some mighty fine urban gardens in our continuous circling and re-circling, which is something I didn't expect.

Actually, I don’t usually mind being lost. I’ve had some great experiences and stumbled on some very interesting sights while lost. This time, however, was different. This time – at least after the first half hour – I got the distinct impression that the GPS was out to have a good time with us. The first thing you have to understand is that the GPS has a hell of a bad time pronouncing Italian street names, which are not only twenty-seven syllables long, but have inflections on different syllables than Americans are used to hearing. So when the GPS says turn right on Colle Grimaldi Su Mare, it comes out sounding like CollegrimaldisumaRE, emphasizing the very last syllable as though it was all one word. So, while you’re trying to figure out just what the darn thing just said, you’ve passed the intended street and the GPS immediately begins to fire more streets at you in order to correct your previous lack of expertise.

Now, I have to tell you that I actually like driving in Italy. Even though I’ve driven in both Rome and Florence, which are probably just a tad easier than Delhi, India, I really haven’t encountered any insurmountable problems. In my experience the Italian drivers are more polite than American drivers. While driving with them you just have to learn to assert yourself or they will not let you into the stream of traffic when the highway engineers funnel five lanes of traffic down to one and don’t provide any merge signs. You just have to “nudge” your way out just like they’re doing.

But there is one thing that truly terrifies me when thinking about driving in Italian cities: the thought of being funneled into a one-way alley that proceeds to get smaller and smaller until it deadends. Finally, you can’t go forward any more and there’s no room to turn around, and there’s a couple of cars or scooters behind you. Up to now, though I’ve been darn close to that situation in the past, I had never experienced my worst nightmare; not until today. But our feisty GPS, sensing that I have had life much too easy for the past month of motoring around Italy, quite intentionally and I might say, belligerently, sent Concetta and I and our very large VW Passat into the bowels of a very run-down section of Napoli this morning with the clear intention of ruining our day. In the end we were lucky. The dead-end alley that the GPS sent us down, the one where the Passat could barely squeeze between the parked cars on both sides, the one that was two blocks long, did not somehow come complete with another car to follow us to our doom. AND, through some miracle of fate, at the very end was a spot just big enough to put a king-sized bed and in which I somehow managed to turn that darn Passat by creeping three inches this way and three inches that way in a tight little arc to where I could finally retrace our route and escape. After that, I say, bring on Delhi, India. I’m ready for it.

Anyway, after my heart quit beating at twice it’s normal rate, we ignored the advice of the GPS until I had found the A3 on the Autostrada on my own and once again pointed the car toward Napoli proper. Once on the A3, the GPS had no choice but to behave itself, so we turned it back on and it soon deposited us in the driveway of the Museo.

Since most guide books tell you to be very careful in Napoli, I suppose that many people avoid going there. But I have to tell you that Concetta and I had an extremely enjoyable morning there viewing the artifacts from the excavations at Pompeii and Herculano. The have some of the most magnificent statuary that we seen on the trip. AND, they have some absolutely terrific displays of coinage that was uncovered, sometimes in the hands of victims of the pyroclastic flow from the volcano, and sometimes buried “secretly” under houses where the owners had their own private bank. One of our favorite displays was the glassware. I bet you wouldn’t even think that glassware existed two thousand years ago, but it did. We were just dazzled by the workmanship and the intricacies of design.

While were at the Museo something just amazing happened to us. We looked up at one point to find a young woman standing nearby whom we knew. We had only recently been keeping company with her as she was one of the staff members on the Aegean Odyssey on which we had taken our cruise to the Greek islands just a few weeks ago. The ship had embarked a new set of passengers in Athens after we left and was now cruising the coast of Italy. Incredible that we should be at the Museo on exactly the same day at the same time.

After navigating our way back out of Napoli, we set our course once again for Sorrento and a late lunch. To your great joy, we managed to find an Italian restaurant that advertised “Slow” food on their sign and we spent a very pleasurable hour munching on Paninis and drinking wine and talking with a couple who hailed from, of all places, Long Beach, California. I can tell you if you’re thinking about traveling to Italy, or to any country for that matter, the best thing about the trip will turn out to be the folks you meet along the way. Last night we spent dinner with a couple of guys from Quebec, Canada, who regaled us with tales of their travels together much as we regaled them with ours. They were completely delightful, and we could easily have spent a several hours eating with them. The food was just so-so, which surprised us since we’d eaten their four years ago, but the instantaneous comradeship we enjoyed with them will stay in our memories for many years.

Lastly today, while walking back to the hotel after lunch, we stumbled onto a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition that, while small, was very interesting and wonderfully quiet and lightly attended (tough to find during tourist season in Italy). It also allowed me to practice some Italian on the museum attendant who spoke as many words of English as I did her language. So, here we are, about to enjoy our last night in Sorrento. We’ve had our ups and downs here, but I’d have to say, mostly ups. If you come here, please don’t come during the high season. I’d wait until October, though days may be too cool for sun bathing. But hey, to heck with sunbathing. There’s just too much to do in Italy to sunbath anyway.

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.