A Tale of Two
Volcanoes
It was the best of times.
It was the worst of times.
The
sun was out nearly every day and the fields were full of wildflowers.
The air was full of the scent of lemon
blossoms.
The food was delicious and the
wine was ripe.
But the Autostrada was
under repair from
Naples to
Sicily and the traffic was horrendous.
Gasoline was so expensive that it cost about
$100 every time we filled up the car.
And Rita says if I don’t quit this she will knock the Dickens out of me.
We took this trip over part of the Greek Orthodox Easter
holidays.
We left
Athens
on Saturday, April 23, and drove to the
port
of
Patras at the top of the
Peloponnese.
Patras
is a pretty little town surrounded with mountains, a new suspension bridge
across the Gulf of Corinth, a thriving university, sidewalk cafes and a rather
large gay community – shades of
San
Francisco.
From
Patras we took a Blue Star ferry that left in the late afternoon and arrived in
Bari, Italy, the next morning around
sunrise.
We took our car and booked
ourselves an inside cabin.
It was better
than I expected with bunk beds and a bathroom with sink, toilet, and
shower.
The ship was clean and had two
good dining areas, several bars, and a small casino to entertain everyone.
As we left port we sat at a bar on the rear
of the ship, sipped our beers, and watched Patras fade away while the full moon
rose for a nice setting.
We arrived in
Bari
Sunday morning and quickly made our way off the ship heading through town and
onto back roads towards Castle del Monte.
Let me say here that Rita did an outstanding job of navigating
throughout the trip and that’s quite a feat since Italian sign posting leaves a
lot to guess work.
We made it to Castle
del Monte a good hour before it opened at 10:00 am.
Castle del Monte is an UNESCO heritage site
of an unusual castle built by Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen about 1240
on his return from the Crusades.
The
castle is octagonal in shape with eight towers, each tower being an octagon, and
with eight rooms on each floor.
The
reason for the castle is not clear as it wasn’t built for battle.
Some speculate that it was a hunting lodge
but today experts feel that wasn’t the case either.
It did command the highest hill on the plains
and offered great views of the surrounding vineyards.
We finally toured the castle which took less
time than we had waited for it to open.
We took back roads to the A-16 Autostrada towards
Naples but exited the Autostrada so we could take minor
roads around the back of
Mt. Vesuvius, the still-active volcano that buried
Pompeii in AD 79.
We arrived in new
Pompeii
and our Hotel Amleto which is located a short walk from the entrance to the
ancient
Pompeii
ruins.
We checked in and immediately
walked to
Pompeii
to begin our walking tour.
We bought a
three day ticket and started at the eastern end of town, viewing the oldest
Roman amphitheater, the large palestra or sports practice area, Via dell’
Abbondanza with many nice city villas and shops, the Stabiane baths, villa
Citarista, villa Celi, the grand theater, the small theater or odeion, and
finally the gladiator’s barracks before we left.
We walked to a recommended restaurant, La
Situla, and had the first of many good meals and red wines.
We fell into the Italian habit of having a
first course, usually of pasta, followed by a second course of meat.
We did have the occasional dessert dish, too.
Monday morning we had our only bit of rain on the trip and
it was a slight drizzle as we walked around
Pompeii once more.
We had visited this area back in 1977 on our
three-month tour of Europe but because of strikes and closings we had to rush
through
Pompeii
at that time.
This time I promised Rita
all the time she wanted walking the streets of old
Pompeii.
The town is quite large since 25,000 people lived here at the time
Vesuvius erupted and covered it with ash.
Much more has been uncovered since we were there in 1977 but there is
still a large section yet to excavate.
So we spent about half a day Monday visiting more villas, the forum, the
forum baths, public buildings, the
Temple
of Apollo, cemeteries and
much more.
The brothel, which we saw in
1977, is closed and won’t reopen until September.
We walked the half mile to Villa dei Misterie
which was a large villa on the outskirts of town with great wall
paintings.
After a good pizza for lunch
we took the train to
Herculaneum, another town
of about 4000 that was covered by mudslide whereas
Pompeii was covered by ash.
Herculaneum
is more compact which makes it easier to view.
It was a wealthy town right on the
Bay of Naples,
but stands inland today because the bay was filled in by the eruption.
We walked
Herculaneum for the rest of the afternoon
before calling it a day.
By afternoon
the skies were blue once more and the sun warmed everything up.
Tuesday was a long day.
We started out taking back roads, and getting lost occasionally, over
mountains with super views of
Mount Vesuvius
and the valley below.
We drove through
the Valico di Chiunzi or
Chiunzi Valley which, I think, means
Dragon Valley.
At any rate it winds down to the beautiful
town of
Ravello,
a small village on the side of steep slopes with alleys, stairways and roofed
passages.
We parked and walked around
town with its pretty square full of inviting sidewalk cafes.
Ravello was a place Richard Wagner went to
for inspiration in composing his music and a favorite place for notables such
as Virginia and Leonard Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Gore Vidal, Hans
Escher and others.
We toured the gardens
of Villa Rufolo with spectacular views of the
Amalfi
Coast and mountain cliffs dropping
straight down into the
Gulf
of Salerno.
This whole area of
Italy is one of the most scenic but
sadly much more built up since 1977.
We
stopped in a lemoncello brewery and purchased a few bottles of this lemon-flavored
liqueur.
The
Amalfi Coast
is full of lemon groves and the main area for making lemoncello.
We drove the winding coast road through
Atrani, Amalfi, and Positano to
Sorrento
where we stopped for lunch and to pick up more lemoncello.
By mid-afternoon we headed south on the A-3
Autostrada through
Salerno, Eboli and
Cosenza.
Highway driving is usually boring but this
Autostrada was mostly under construction the entire distance making driving
painfully slow.
So slow, in fact, that I
changed our itinerary on the spot because I thought we might take longer than
planned to see all I had wanted to see.
We drove until dark and then called a hotel listed in our Michelin red
guidebook and stayed at a “business man’s” hotel in the little nothing town of
Rosarno.
It was clean but at dinner (the only
respectable restaurant was in the hotel) we noticed that Rita was the only
female in the dining room.
Wednesday was the only day we set our alarm because we had
concerns about how long the rest of our trip would take.
We made it to the toe of
Italy at Villa San Giovanni where most ferries
cross to
Messina in
Sicily.
We took the ferry, better described as a rusty bucket, and ended up in
Messina about
mid-morning.
Instead of heading to
Palermo as we had originally planned, we headed south
along the coast towards
Taormina.
The road was better and faster going.
We stopped in
Taormina
to visit the Greek theater ruins that had such super views of smoking
Mt. Etna
that we wondered how anyone could concentrate on a play.
After our visit to the Greek theater we
walked around the pretty town and I had a sinful cannoli for which
Sicily is known.
Rita had one of many gelati and her favorite
was fragola or strawberry.
We certainly
travel on our stomachs.
We headed further south around
Mt.
Etna, which looked ominous with smoke
puffing out the top, past the large city of
Catania
and checked into a hotel in
Syracuse.
Our hotel was near the Greek ruins so we
walked over and toured the Greek theater, Roman theater, Quarry of Paradise and
the Ear of Dionysus, a cave with acoustics that let Dionysus hear the plans of
his captives below.
Then we walked to
the early Christian catacombs of San Giovanni which our guide book assures us
are second best to those in Rome.
We
went back to the hotel for a short rest before walking the mile into old town
on
Ortigia Island
where we saw ruins of the early port, the
Temple of Apollo,
and the cathedral (Duomo) built on the ruins of a temple to Athena.
The old town was interesting with narrow,
winding alleys lit up by old street lights since it was about sunset.
We had a nice meal at restaurant Minosse
where I had two Sicilian traditions, pasta alla Norma and sword fish or
spade.
Thursday morning we headed for the interior of
Sicily and stopped in the town of
Caltagirone which is know for its
ceramics.
We walked to the long steps
that the city decorated with different ceramic designs on each step and went
into many stores looking for a biscotti jar with no luck.
The style of the ceramics was not one we much
cared for so we had a small lunch and pressed on to our next destination.
We drove to Piazza Armerina, an ugly town,
with a short side trip to the Villa Romano de Casale, sometimes called Villa
Imperiale del Casale.
This excavated 3C
or 4C Roman villa is huge and has the best preserved mosaic floors in one
setting.
We found this very interesting
and spent a good hour looking at the mosaic floors, some of which you could
walk on.
The best preserved, and of much
interest to most people, is the room sometimes called the bikini room.
This room has several young women
participating in sports which look like jogging, weight lifting and volleyball
and the girls are dressed in skimpy costumes resembling bikinis.
We continued on in mid afternoon with the
weather quite warm and the scenery pleasant with green fields, rock-laden hills
and many wildflowers in a multitude of colors.
We drove past
Lake Pergusa, where according to legend Pluto carried off
Proserpine (or Persephone) as his Queen of the Underworld, to the hilltop town
of
Enna where
we checked into Hotel Sicilia.
We walked
to the medieval Castle di Lombardia and then the 12
th century Duomo
before a nice dinner at the Centrale café.
I had a nice first course of pesto gnocchi and then a main course of sea
bass.
All the seafood in
Sicily is fresh
daily.
All this time in
Sicily and
I never thought of the Mafia until this evening while looking at our map and
noticing the town of
Corleone,
the Godfather.
We had no fears of crime
in
Sicily and
walked the streets at night with no problems at all.
The next day involved a good amount of driving again.
First we asked a couple of people how long
the drive to
Agrigento
would be and received the same answer of about an hour.
It was a two-lane highway with moderate
traffic but they were right.
We arrived
in
Agrigento and went directly to the Valley of
the
Temples,
our main intent in this town.
Agrigento is the old Greek city of
Akragas with some remarkable Greek
ruins.
We walked to the best preserved
first, the
Temple of
Concord, then the
Temple
of
Hercules and
Temple of Olympian Zeus.
We decided that we had seen the best and
returned to the car to press on.
In
Agrigento we were just a short distance from
Tunisia and
Malta but that will have to wait
for another trip.
We drove back to Enna
and picked up the Autostrada to
Catania and
Messina where we caught the ferry across to the toe of
Italy
once more.
We were back on the A3
Autostrada heading north past
Cosenza and then towards
Sibari and the
Gulf of
Taranto in the arch of the boot of
Italy.
In the little seaside resort of Trebisacce
(you would need a very detailed map to find this town) we checked into the
Hotel Stellato and relaxed.
We walked
the short distance into town and had a good meal at the Trattoria del
Sole.
I had swordfish once more while
Rita had a nice chicken dish with prosciutto ham and smoked cheese.
We sat outside under an awning and had a nice
bottle of local white wine with the meal.
Saturday morning we headed along the
Gulf
of
Taranto and just before
Taranto we headed inland to the city of
Matera where we stopped for a visit to this
unusual town.
The old town is a series
of houses, buildings and churches hewn out of stone with many narrow alleys and
stairways that often went over the roofs of houses.
The troglodyte quarters are called
Sassi.
It was a labyrinth or maze and there were plenty of guides willing to
help you for a fee.
Instead we bought a
map and promptly got lost.
However, the
town wasn’t all that big and we had fun going up and down stairs and blind
alleys – well, it was fun for a while.
We finally found the car and headed off to another unusual town in the
precinct of
Puglia,
Alberobello.
Not before getting good and
lost once more on the poorly marked roads.
Once we found Alberobello we checked into the Hotel Colle del Sole and
had a quick pasta lunch before setting out on foot.
Alberobello has hundreds, maybe thousands, of
strange stacked slate rock dwellings, with conical roofs, called
trulli.
They were all over the surrounding countryside as well but in this town
there were many of these weird buildings.
One section was sort of touristy with each building a shop selling
trinkets.
Another section was much nicer
and almost none of the houses were turned into tourist markets.
After walking this town for a couple of hours
we stopped at an enoteca and bought some wines to take home.
We had our best meal of this trip at a Michelin
starred restaurant in Alberobello called Il Poeta Contadino. The chef greeted us at the table and took our
orders himself. Rita started on a pasta
dish of small gnocchi with new beans and wild asparagus. I had a mushroom flan with smoked scarmoza
cheese and walnuts. Rita’s main course
was pork tenderloin with wine sauce while I had monkfish encrusted in
potatoes. We had a good red Puglia wine and shared a
chocolate dessert with espresso. It was
a delicious meal. As we paid the bill and walked to the door, the chef was
there once more to wish us on our way.
Sunday, May 1, was Greek Orthodox Easter but that didn’t
matter in Italy. We checked out of our hotel and drove a short
distance to the pretty town of Locorotondo
where we parked and explored the town by foot.
After a while we pressed on towards Bari but upon arriving there found that we
could not go into town until after 1:00 pm as there was a major foot race in
town. So we decided to drive further up
along the coast and find a place for lunch since we had plenty of time before
our ferry departed. In the little town
of Giovinazzo
we found a large, pine tree shaded restaurant called Il Poste del Saracero
where we stopped for lunch. As we
settled in many people arrived, all around 1:00 – 1:30 pm, for a very large
wedding reception – in fact there may have been two wedding receptions. Our waiters didn’t speak any English and we
couldn’t communicate very well but were immediately given plates of food with
the waiters telling us it was the antipasto course. We understood that but we didn’t order
it. It seemed that we didn’t have much
choice because apparently it was the Sunday lunch custom. First they brought smoked salmon, prosciutto,
and a cheese plate with fresh mozzarella and a creamy cheese. We enjoyed that thinking that was the
antipasto course but they took that away and brought more! Next were plates of eggplant parmigiana,
roasted potatoes, mussels, roasted squid, polenta and tiny, whole, baby
octopus. Rita balked at some of the
dishes but I had some of all, even had one of the baby octopuses, which I found
tasty. But wait, there’s more. Next came plates of fried sardines, large
octopus tentacles, and langoustines. I
sampled everything. After all of this I
was quite full but our main course of shrimp rissotto was yet to be
served. We enjoyed this large lunch with
a nice rose wine. It took nearly three
hours to eat and cost very little. It was
delicious, too.
After our last Italian meal we headed back to Bari where we could now
enter town and board our Blue Star Ferry once more. We sailed at 8:00 pm for an uneventful trip
back to Patras, Greece. We arrived back in Greece
about noon on Monday, a holiday in Greece, and drove home in heavy
Easter traffic. We calculated this was
our seventh trip to Italy
and we have enjoyed every one of them.
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