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October 27, 2003
Pompeii is awesome!
I drove my minivan up to the military campground just North of Naples (Napoli) this past weekend (actually we left on Thursday). It was a very beautiful drive, I had no idea that Italy was so mountainous. We must have gone through about three mountain passes. The scenery is just surreal. It is rolling hills, verdantly green, dotted with farms and towns. Every once in a while, there will be a fantastic Norman castle thrown in for good measure. In the States, towns start gradually and soon you are in the thick of the town. Not so in Italy or Sicily. There will be pastures/farms for as far as you can see and then BAMMO, a town. This makes the landscape look very three dimensional like those old pop up books that I loved as a kid.
My digital camera is officially dead (may it rest in peace) so I am back to waiting, waiting, waiting - ten days - to get the pictures put on a disk. I plan to have the picture gallery program up and running on this website soon too. So anyway, I had Eli on camera standby while I was driving and hopefully we got some good shots.
We checked into the campground on a very rainy day. The drive was amazingly stress free. It is good to program the kids on long car rides early in their lives I am finding. The campground was outstanding. It really is in a volcano crater. You look all around and are surrounded by the walls of the volcano. The place is chock full of every possible type of sports field and playground equipment, including a mini water park. We looked longingly at all the slides but alas, it was closed (not to mention 65 degrees). Our cabin was two rooms and included a double bed and a futon. It had refridgerator, stove top (that turned out to not work) and a sink but no bathroom. We were the only family staying there the whole time! Ours was also the only cabin that came with a giant mud puddle.
I grilled two of the nights, which is a treat for us because we didn?t bring our BBQ grill from the States. There is just something different about food cooked outside. I bought the orange rolls that come in a can to cook for breakfast but discovered that there was not only no oven but that I didn?t bring anything to cook them in. So, I grilled them. No, really, I did. I stuck four of them in a leftover aluminum take out container and put it on the barbie. You cook them until the bottom is golden and then loosen them and flip them out of the pan, upside down onto the grill. Grill until they are golden on the other side and voila?, it worked. And before you say it, yes, I do know that I am strange.
We decided that since the weather was not the greatest, to just hang out for a day and play at the park. I crossed Rome off the list as being too ambitious for this trip and decided to just do Pompeii. It seems like everywhere we have gone, we decide that we have to go back again. Pompeii was no different. I had no idea just how large it is. It really is a regular sized small town. You can walk across it in a day but there is so much to see that it is best to limit yourself to sections of it. We bought a guide book which outlined three different routes based on how much time we wanted to spend. We ended up only doing about a tenth of it.
We got a certain distance in when Jake had a severe attack of diarrhea cramps. There are NO bathrooms inside the site. So we quickly hiked back out (pushing a stroller over very uneven cobble stones) and made it in the nick of time. The toilets are European port a potties which are very high tech. They are supposed to be pay toilets but these are set up to be free. They are perfectly round - you press the button and the door slides open. You do your business and press the button to get out. The lower half of the port a potty then showers itself off. The whole process takes a good five minutes in between uses, heaven forbid if you forget something and want to dash out to get it. You have to wait for it to clean itself. I had to go in with Jake because he was terrified that the toilet would become psycho and wash itself. Ah, good times.
Oh and we ended up not being able to see the people like we had wanted to - we did see one. I always thought that they were somehow petrified by the lava or ash but that isn?t it at all. I could never understand why they weren?t just burned up. The lava never reached Pompeii. It was the poison gas from the initial explosion, which caught them nearly unaware (they knew Vesuvius was going to erupt and were starting to flee). In the 1860?s, an archeologist came and began to excavate the town properly (it was looted a couple times over the centuries). He found that town had been covered in lava dust and any biological material that was under it had decomposed leaving a perfect hole/impression. He filled the holes with plaster of paris and this is what was left behind at the site. Most of the casts have been moved to a museum in Naples but there are still several there including 13 women and children that were found grouped together in a garden trying to protect themselves (called the Garden of Fugitives). We tried to find it but couldn?t. The whole site feels very sad. You can walk down rows and rows of houses and see frescos and beautiful tile floors, vases, statues and shallow reflecting pools. There are shops and shops lining the two main avenues where you can easily see how the bakery and the different vendors worked. It is definitely awesome. An archeologist?s wet dream. It is now on our ever growing list of places to return to.
So next up for us will be a ski trip to Germany (Garmish). We are very excited about it.
Posted by DebC at 09:22 AM | Comments (2)
October 12, 2003
We made it there and back in one piece!
We ended up starting out a bit later than I intended but no problem, we headed out to Messina around one pm on Friday. We get there only to find a confusing mess which included having to back up the wrong way after getting trapped on the ferry lane leading to ROME - ACK!!. Picture Eli chanting "you are going to kill us, we are going to die, you are going to kill us" about 15 times until we were pointing in the right direction. Have a little faith my favorite Eli.
We tried getting directions at one gas station but they spoke absolutely no English. The next gas station had attendents that also spoke no English but they were willing to duel with sign language. "blah, blah, blah, carta?" Oh, do you mean "do I have a MAP"? Pooh. Silly man, I don't need no stinkin map! So they break out their map and show me that I am about 30 minutes from where I need to be - Milazzo. We got to Milazzo without any further problems and quickly found the hydrofoil and ticket office. YEAH! I had to leave the van parked on the street which, through sign language and broken Italian, I was assured that it would be alright.
The hydrofoil took about 1 hour and the guys loved it. It had great big blue wings under a normal looking boat that raised us up over the water (only the very bottom of the boat and the wings were submerged). I wonder if they have ever hit anything? A lady sat next to us who turned out to be from Seattle but living in Italy on an extended vacation. She told us that she had friends that owned a hotel on the beach in Lipari. It sounded pretty good. I made a mental note to try to find it. She got off at the first stop, which was Vulcano. When we pulled into the port at Lipari and sure enough, there were people from hotels waiting to solicit our business. I realized that I suddenly couldn't remember what the woman had told me, so I just picked the first (and most persistent) solicitor, Villa Rosa. Just as we were loading our luggage into the hotel van, it occured to me that I hope this wasn't located in Timbucktoo.
It turned out to be on the edge of town but within a nice walking distance. No beach and no pool. Also, no fan, air conditioning, radio or tv and no English spoken. Eli's Italian immersion third grade homework is really starting to pay off! The island was beautiful, the beaches are black obsidian sand and pumice from the volcano. We hiked our butts off! I am guessing that we covered at least 15 miles on foot over the course of the trip. Most of my friends had rented vespas (little motor scooters) but that was not an option with small children. I also did not want to rent a car because I didn't have a car seat for Seth and they don't either apparently. We tried to get on a tour for Stromboli or Vulcano (two islands with very active volcanos) but due to Columbus day weekend, they were mostly booked. I guess it didn't occur to me that this was such a big holiday in Italy but he is a national hero here and in Spain.
So, instead, we ate a lot of food that was not exactly healthy - pizza, lasagna, brioches, calimari, ham sandwiches, ice cream and my very favorite, arancini. Arancini is the perfect traveling food and is a gas station staple in Italy. It is a rice ball with ham, mozarella and sauce in the center. The whole thing is then rolled in egg and bread crumbs and deep fried. mmmmmmmm yum-may! We also hiked to a really cool beach. I took pictures but my digital camera went on strike so they are on my other camera. We added a ton of new beach glass to our already huge collection and started a new type of collection (yah, like we needed that!) There on the beach was beach pottery - shards of pottery that have been tumbled like beach glass. The rule was that it had to be smaller than the palm of Jake's hand and had to have a little bit of the original color left on one side. They actually look way cool when collected together. We will find a neat clear glass container to display them.
I also added to my snow globe collection. The shelf of them is now pleasingly full. I hope to buy a tall curio cabinet and have it filled with them by the time we leave. Finding them is a little harder than expected though. Most of the ones in Lipari were the usual tourist kind with the plastic dolphin. Someone had taken a permanent marker and written "Lipari" on them. Blah. That is cheating. I did find a neat one though. I couldn't get a picture of it because it reflected into the camera too badly. Hrmmm. You will just have to COME OVER here and see it.
Much to Eli's chagrin, I found the most fabulous yarn in two different shops - you can see it on my knitting blog if you are interested.
We had a great time and definitely plan to return as soon as it warms back up next spring. Although next time, we will reserve a hotel in advance and book our tours as soon as we arrive instead of waiting until the day we want to tour.
Posted by DebC at 10:56 PM | Comments (2)
October 07, 2003
Off to explore again this weekend.
Seems like I have gotten trapped in the loop between home and work lately. I came here with the intention to travel as much as possible and can already see that faltering. So to remedy that, I am taking the zoo to a little island called <a href="http://www.emmeti.it/Welcome/Sicilia/Eolie/Lipari/index.uk.html">Lipari, part of the Aeolian chain at the top of Sicily</a>. Multiple people have raved about it but alas, none of them have done it with kids. It takes about two hours to get up to the port (in Messina) where we catch a hydrofoil to the islands. That should be another hour or so. I will be leaving the van in a secured parking lot in Messina. Once we get to Lipari, there are supposedly people waiting at the pier waiting to convince people to stay at their hotel. Apparently no one makes reservations, so we haven't either. If worse comes to worse, we can always catch the hydrofoil home at the end of the day. I can rent a car there for a day to see the sites but there are also tours of the <a href="http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/europe_west_asia/lipari.html">island and side trips to the surrounding islands</a>. I am especially interested in the neighboring island of Vulcano, where there are supposed to be mud baths (however sulfur-y stinky).
Then, on the 23rd, we will be staying at a <a href="http://www.nsa.naples.navy.mil/MWR/carneypark.htm">military campground near Naples called Carney Park</a>. This is situated IN a volcano crater - neat huh? I am planning three nights and returning that Sunday. I will drive the whole way, which should take about 8 hours. We will have to catch an autoferry from Sicily to the mainland but that will only take about 30 minutes. We are hoping to do a Roman ruin tour which includes the Colliseum and other major works. We are also really looking forward to <a href="http://www.uniplan.it/ruins/">seeing Pompeii</a> (website is in Italian, but you can at least see some cool pictures). Most of the artifacts (including the petrified people) are actually in a museum in Naples so we will try to see both. Not sure what else we will do but I am not too worried because I fully intend to return to Rome later.
Posted by DebC at 11:29 AM | Comments (2)
October 01, 2003
I got this really cool offer in the mail just now.
Dioplma Pragrom
Crtaee a more prosopreus futrue for yorlseuf
Recieve a flul dipomla from non aicredcted
univserities based uopn yuor real life expcrienee
You will not be tesetd, or interviewed
Riceeve a Mtsaer's, Baceholr's or Dactroote
Clal 24 hrous a day 7 dyas a week
1 - 2 7 0 - 8 1 7 - 8 2 4 7
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Cool huh? I woghnder if theyou can git me and new desgoreee. I think I'd like that.
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Oh, and I forgot to say that the reason I haven't blogged much lately is because I have so much to say that I have to figure out when to type it all out. No, really, I am not kidding. Nothing much new around here, just have some essays to unload on you - one percolating on the difference in the concept of time and one on driving in Italy. I also need to update on vacation plans in October. Fun is mandatory.
Posted by DebC at 11:16 PM | Comments (3)