Rome - Quando A Roma Vai, Fai Come Vedrai!

'When in Rome do as the Romans do'.

We had heard of the notorious humidity and the sleepless nights in Rome, but we actually got a bit lucky with the weather. It rained every afternoon, but usually for not too long. Served to clear the air and keep the temperature down. 

We were 5 minutes walk from the Vatican so we decided to do that the first day. We had booked tickets online to avoid lining up for hours. We toured the Vatican museum and the Sistine Chapel. The Vatican had many rooms that were used to welcome guests with all their splendour, including fine paintings, marble statues, and no shortage of gold trimmings! After about 3 hours, we were museumed out, and decided to leave St. Peter's Basilica for another day. It was really strange wearing long pants a gain after two months in shorts, but it was required to enter the Vatican.

The second day back to the Vatican was truly special. To see St. Peter's Square after climbing to the top of the Duomo was amazing! Towards the top of the climb, the steps became steeper, the passageway narrower and  you had to tilt your body on a 30 degree angle to keep walking (sorry about the math!).

We quite enjoyed walking in Rome, it was fun to take a side street a little off the beaten path in Travestere, never knowing exactly where you were going to end up!

We bought a Roma Pass (€34), which gave us free access to two museums, free public transportation, and concession access to other museums. 

We took the Metro to Colosseum, and it is a fascinating building. It is so easy to imagine the 60,000 spectators cheer for the gladiators.

Unfortunately we couldn't get into Villa Borghese, where the have some of the most famous paintings and sculptures, but we walked the beautiful gardens.

We also visited the "Keyhole of Rome", suggested to us by fellow traveller, Doug Corbett, a teacher at St. Thomas More Collegiate. Through the keyhole and the archways, we could see the duomo of St. Peter's Basilica, but with the light and several valiant attempts due to the light we couldn't get it to show on the camera, thus the picture from a postcard! It's really cool, you walk to the Piazza dei Cavalleri di Malta and peek through the keyhole!

Due to a thunderstorm one afternoon we had to seek cover in a store for mo than an hour. We almost made it to Castel s. Angelo, and of course it cleared when we were inside the Castel.

The Napoleon Museum on Piazza Ponte Umberto I had menu memorabilia about the Bonaparte family, collected primarily by Napoleon's mother, and well worth a visit.

We also ventured out to a store known as Eataly, a four story affair devoted solely to Italian food and culture. It is a modern version of a local market where high quality products of the Italian food tradition are bought, consumed and studied. 

It was fun to see aisles with maps indicating the wine by region, tons of different pasta and cook books. We looked at wine from Piedmonte, having done a workaway volunteer stay there. We were both excited to find a wine from Ca'Rossa made by Angelo, the friend of our host Pino, and being the winery we visited during our stay. In our previous blog on Piedmonte (Priocca) we noted that Angelo's wine was in the running again this year in Italy for best wines under 10 euro, a contest he has won in the past. Needless to say we bought it, and it was delicious! We also had a nice meal in the Pasta restaurant (one of the several restaurants in the building). 

The top floor of the building had a fine restaurant and a cooking school. On the second floor, we were quite intrigued by the wine to go. Just take a one litre bottle, just fill it up and go, for a price anywhere between 1.5 and 3 euros (about $2-$5 Cdn).

We also really enjoyed the Trevino Fountain. We went there once on our first day, but felt the need to go back on the last day to see it again because words or the pictures to follow simply can't describe how incredibly beautiful it is. We timed our arrival just before sunset to get a different perspective. We where planning to eat around there, but it was just too touristic and too expensive, so we ended up eating in a courtyard restaurant close to our house, being the only non-Italians that night. We both had great meals, with a nice bottle of rose, fitting for our last night in Rome. 

Arrivederchi Italia, and thank you for a wonderful month!

We had had a wonderful week in Amalfi, and were sad to leave, so we choose to leave with dignity by boat. which was a means of transportation we hadn't done yet. The trip took 35 minutes to Salerno, and it was 3 times as expensive as the 1.5 hour by bus, but it was a beautiful trip along the Amalfi coast.

The train station was a short walk from the marina, and the train to Pompei took just under an hour, so a short and easy day of transportation for a change.

We were staying at B&B Galleria, 10 minutes walk from the train station, next to the main square and 200 metres walk from the ruins of Old Pompei, so great central location.

On our way to the ruins we ran into a couple around our age from New Zealand, who were half way through their 3 month trip through Europe, and they loved it. They had expected to be homesick by now, but not the case - we are not home sick either!

The ruins of Old Pompei is located 8 km from Vesuvio (the mountain in the background) and covers an area of 163 acres. All of it still hasn't been excavated.  

On the morning of 24 August 79 AD a sudden tremor abruptly disrupted the daily routine of the 20,000 inhabitants of Pompei. This was followed shortly after by a tremendous blast signalling the violent eruption with a column of small stone rising over 20 km into the sky from the volcano Vesuvio. Carried by the wind, the cloud of small stones hailed down upon Pompei, submerging the city in just a few hours in more than three meters of materials. The roofs of the houses caved in killing everybody inside. But the worst was yet to come. At dawn the following day, the first flow of hot gas and fine ash hit Pompei and sealed the fate of every person and animal it encountered.

The hot ash clogged the lungs and caused death by suffocation. During the excavation, plaster was used to fill in the voids between the ash layers that once held human bodies. This allowed one to see the exact position the person was in when he or she died.

In the end, Pompei was left buried under 5-6 meters of ash and small stones in a desolate grey landscape whose only features were a few protruding walls.

Some houses are more well-preserved than others.

The big stones were pedestrian crossings, as the middle of the road was the gutter flowing with unmentionable things. The wagon wheels could easily pass between the stones.

It was fascinating and sad walking around imagining the lives of the people living and dying here 2,000 years ago.

The dust and the heat was washed away by a Campari on the town square.

We also made a trip to Vesivio, now that we had seen the damage it could do. We took a public bus from Piazza Amfiteatro, just outside the entrance to the ruins, and the trip took about one hour to the parking lot at 1,000 meters up the volcano. Then we had to hike up a gravel road the 1,000 meters to the crater.

Vesuvio lies 1,281 meters above sea level, and the last eruption was in 1944. The crater has a diameter of about 500 meters, and a depth of about 250 meters. 

Sign on the way down Vesuvio - Italians sure know how to make a point!

We can definitely recommend staying in Pompeii, as it is lively, quaint and the food is great.

All roads lead to Rome .........

Amalfi - Chi non conosce Amalfi, non conosce l'Italia.

Who has never seen Amalfi, does not know Italy - O. Sitwell

He is right! I (Dorte) has been to Italy many times, but never to Amalfi, and it is stunningly beautiful, the simple pleasures thrive, and life is lived in the slow lane. 

When we entered the regional train towards Salerno at Naples station, we couldn't understand why there were 4 conductors on the platform. But we got the explanation a few minutes later, when from the train we watched several Italians and African people arguing with the conductors about their tickets, trying to scam their way onto the train. At some point one of the conductors tore apart a train ticket. Others had tickets but hadn't validated them, so they were sent back to stamp the ticket - no free ride for them. This obviously happens often since the staff was prepared - we enjoyed watching it.

The train ride from Naples to Salerno took just over an hour, and the beautiful bus ride to Amalfi 1.5 hour. The bus was full, and it seemed like every Italian in the country was on their way to Amalfi, made worse by the fact that this day was a national holiday! It was a beautiful drive along the coast on winding roads with view of the ocean and villages tucked away in the mountains.

At one point some passengers on the bus started shouting, and it turned out that the hatch of the luggage compartment under the bus had opened, and some luggage had fallen out! So out went the driver and some passengers to get the luggage, while the other staff on the bus directed the traffic around the bus on the narrow road. Our luggage was still on the bus!

The Tourist Information didn't offer accommodation services, so we walked up the main street looking for a hotel, but found a real estate agent who had one apartment left for rent 2 km outside Amalfi in a small town called Vettica. It was expensive and not ideal as it didn't have internet, no shops nearby except for a fish market and a corner store, and we would have to rely on busses or our feet to get to and from Amalfi, but it had a wonderful view of the ocean and the coastline, and looked fine on the pictures. So we took it.

The real estate agent called a friend, Antonella, and she was going to take the bus with us to the apartment. Service. She suggested she and I went shopping before we took the bus as we, otherwise, would have to take the bus back to Amalfi to shop - very practical lady. So I went shopping with her while Andy did the paperwork. It is fun shopping in Italy with an Italian. It seemed like she knew everybody in town, and I said what we needed, e.g cheese, ham, bread, eggs, butter, vegetables, and she ordered the best local food at the butcher, in the supermarket and in the vegetable store. And of course she recommended pasta! And she insisted on carrying all the bags! A very memorable experience for me.

So on the bus we went; us with our luggage and Antionella with our shopping bags chatting away to everybody along the way. The view from the apartment was amazing, and the apartment very nice.

We had been looking at the ocean all day, so now it was time for swim. Unfortunately the path to the beach closest to our appartment was blocked off as part of the staircase had fallen into the sea, so we had to walk another 10 minutes to the beach. The only challenge....

There are 473 steps (yes, I counted them!) down to the beach and, ta daaaa 473 steps back up to the road!

After a week of doing this once a day we will be fit for hiking in the Himalayas!

Alora, it was such a pleasure to be back by the ocean again - and well deserved too. 

Dinner (and all other meals that week) took place on the balcony, and it was wonderful to be eating home cooked food again. 

We found it easy to adapt to the cycle of life here. Get up, go for a swim after breakfast, buy local food and wine, eat gelato every day, go for walks, or just hang out on the balcony and read.

One day we got up super early to beat the heat, 

and to do the famous Amalfi mountain hike known as Sentiero degli Dei (Path of the Gods). It started in the town of Nocelle and ran about 7.5 km to the town of Bomerano. There were countless beautiful vistas along the way. 

Our second last day we took another hike from Pogerola to Amalfi known as Valle dei Mulini (Valley of the Mills). It was around 7 km and not well marked from the Pogerola side. Luckily we met a German woman named Andrea, who is a member of FreeRamblers.com, so they guide hikes for free. Andrea insisted she would walk with us part of the way to Riserva Naturale, which had a lush forest and a beautiful waterfall.

The walk back to Amalfi from Riserva Naturale was full of old abandoned towns built away from the sea as protection from pirates and invaders. Italy has so much history and, unfortunately, only so much can be preserved. 

On the way back, Andy visted a paper mill museum. Andy and two of his brothers, Robert and John, both worked in a paper mill to pay their way through university. This paper mill was about 400 years old and last produced paper in 1969. Andy got to see how paper was made from Egyptian cotton, how to do a watermark, and how the waterwheel powered the mill.

Our daily walks from Vettica to Amalfi were always an adventure. The roads were winding and narrow and definitely not room enough for pedestrians, scooters, buses and cars. We made sure to hug the side of the road when we heard the bus horn as it rounded the corner. We always laughed when we saw the no horn blowing sign in front of a fancy hotel, because it was routinely ignored by EVERY bus! 

Most days on our way back from Amalfi we stopped at the corner store and had gelato as a reward for our two kilometre walk!

By know some of Andy's Italian lessons were starting to pay off. He could say "Vorrei una cafe americano con latte caldo aparto" and get a coffee with hot milk separate every time!

Every night we made sure to be back to our apartment before dark, and to have supper as the sun was going down. It was always the highlight of our day to recount what happened over a glass of wine on the balcony. Dorte got quite good at making bruschetta and it was usually our appetizer.

Sadly, after a week, it was time to leave Amalfi for new adventures.