Our last hiking day -- Malacoccola

On Saturday, we climbed the Malacoccola (it means something like "unrequited love", as legend has it that spurned lovers would throw themselves off this cliff).  While we started off with a gentle climb, it then led to a real scramble, with some of the steps being high enough that my knee had to bend more than 90 degrees to reach the next level landing spot.  Gorgeous views, but steep drop offs.  I didn't capture a lot of views, as a) they were often just water -- still lovely, but not an interesting picture, and b) you had to get too close to the edge to get the picture.  I probably would have just rolled down 5-10 feet if I had fallen, but that's still unnerving to me. 

This is the Bay of Salerno from the top of Malacoccola

Another view of the Bay of Salerno, a bit in the haze.

These are out two guides, at the mesa on top -- that is Ulisse on the left and Vincenzo on the right.

As we head down the other side, we can see the Bay of Naples.  I forget what town.  

That is the "peak" we had just climbed.  It looks so harmless from this direction, but it was quite a scramble over those rocks.

Those rocks in the distance (they are called Li Gallos, meaning roosters, because in Italian mythology the Sirens were bird people, and they look like rooster combs) are supposedly the rocks that Ulysses had to go by tied to the mast, so he would not heed the Siren call to crash into the rocks.  There are hotels on these islands now (didn't look large enough for that to me).  At one point, Rudolf Nureyev owned them.

Donkey belonging to a local farmer.  On the highly terraced farms, these are their tractors.

We had lunch at an agriturismo farm, where they make a lot of liqueurs and preserves.  We got to taste limoncello and finocchietto (the fennel equivalent of limoncello -- I liked it better), and got to watch them make sun dried tomatoes with garlic and chili peppers (preserved in oil). -- oh was it good.  If only there had been more room in the luggage....  Lunch was about 15 different kinds of veges as hors d'oeuvres, and then superb gnocchi to follow up.  We were told that the owner's wife wouldn't sleep with him that night unless we finished all the gnocchi, so we willingly obliged.

Part of the farmhouse where we had lunch.

The way back started in a very peaceful and level forest, and then the usual steps and views down into Sorrento.

This is the plane of Sorrento, we walked down through these towns to sea level.

In Sorrento I met Jay, who had taken the van down to protect his knees, and we went strolling through the pedestrian shopping area.  We ended up buying him a leather jacket; it is quite lovely, though it was a challenge getting everything into our suitcases that night.  We started with full suitcases and ended with fuller ones.  Thank heavens for expanding zippers.

We had a great farewell dinner from a restaurant with views of the bay from above, then the next day shuttled to the airport and then flew to Frankfurt.  Spent the night at the airport after going into downtown Frankfurt so that Jay could get one last meal of Wiener Schnitzel -- we had never been in Frankfurt proper.  Now off to the US.

Amalfi was lovely, with breathtaking views all around, and our guides were very special characters, extremely knowledgeable about the sites we visited (they knew more about Pompeii than our official Pompeii guide did).  The hiking was longer and more strenuous than I expected (which is good; the literature made me think this would not be a very strenuous trip), and the weather couldn't have been better (temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s; we had rain at night and about 10 minutes while we were stopped for lunch under umbrellas one day), but this is not going to go into my "top 10 vacations I have taken" list.  It's an extremely touristy part of Italy, and even though the guides worked hard to keep us out of the chaos plus this is relatively low season, the fact that tourism is how these people make their livelihood, with all the pluses and minuses, was obvious.   It's also a playground for the "beautiful people"  (Jackie Kennedy, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen, were among those that were long term visitors to various of the towns we were in, not to mention a large number of authors and artists of the last two centuries.), which makes it more focused on high end amenities we didn't value.  

It's been a great six weeks.  I'll pick things up again when we next take off on retirement adventures.

Capri

We spent the entire day on Friday on the island of Capri (the Italians put the emphasis on the first syllable).  It's definitely the island of the "beautiful people", but we got to see many sides of it other than just the Prada shop.  I took quite a few pictures (for me), but I'll try not to bore you with too many of them.

This is looking down from the main square of the town (the top of the funicular)

We started by walking up to the ruins of Tiberius' villa, where he ruled the Roman Empire for the last ten years of his reign.  Not many people go there (it's a bit of a hike -- to the highest point of Capri; things may be higher on Anacapri, the other town on the island), but it was quite interesting, especially because our guides were very knowledgeable.  

Here's the initial view of it.

These are ruins of the the large cisterns that provided water for the villa (there is no fresh water on Capri; these days it is pumped in from the mainland)

These are Tiberius' quarters -- apparently he received people in different rooms depending on their status.

We took a "bushwhacky trail" (our guide's term) down from the villa, and then just wandered around town.  We had a picnic lunch and of course a gelato and looked into the expensive shops.  Here are some of the required gorgeous views of Capri:

Another charming wisteria arbor.  I think this was in the Augustinian gardens.

These are the Faraglioni Islands.  James Bond water skied between the rightmost two in the intro to License to Kill.

This is a view of the town of Sorrento at night from a pier near our hotel.  We were so tired that we had a very simple dinner, took this picture on the way back, and went to bed.

Positano

On Thursday we were supposed to do the Walk of the Gods, but it is closed due to a mudslide last November (which the Italian government has not started to repair).  This was supposed to be a highlight of the trip, but instead we were shuttled a bit, walked up to a viewpoint where we had lunch and then walked downhill into Positano, where we walked around this very trendy city with lots of touristy shops (and where our driver had to pay 100 Euro to park for a little over an hour) and then shuttled to our hotel in an old monastery just outside Sorrento.  I only took pictures of the approach to Positano.  Here are a few of them:

Dinner was at our hotel restaurant, La Scintilla (which I assume has something to do with scintillating), and was quite good.  They make a paccheri and seafood pasta that I have a very similar recipe for, and I was pleased to see that my version is quite respectable.  The baba au rhum was very boozy and a great ending to the meal.  Clearly my digestive troubles have resolved themselves.

Minori

Wednesday we went from Ravello down to Minori, a town in the next valley over. It's called the Path of the Mules, because mules were the only way to transport things into and around this area (other than by sea). The trip back was about 1 mile, 1000 feet of vertical and 1284 steps (Jay counted them).

Another influence on Escher -- look at the arches at the top of this photo and think about Escher's Ascending and Descending Staircases.

We visited a pottery workshop where we got to make real stuff.  The mascot of Amalfi pottery is the donkey head (which was a term for "dunce" in the old days), and this potter is doing a project where visitors customize molds of donkey heads, which he will make into an art installation.  The one on the left is mine (with a sombrero -- the best I could do to give it a California theme) and the one on the right is Jay's, with some other sort of hat on.

I rarely take pictures of food, but this was a famous pastry shop, Sal de Riso, and their most famous concoction -- ricotta and candied pears inside and dark chocolate outside.  We shared one.  It was excellent.

This is the harbor/beach of Minori.  It is one of the places that Jay's father made a beach landing onto during WW II.  Yes, it's about as narrow as it looks, and presumably the Fascists were shooting down at them from above (though the Italian locals considered them liberators).

I'd had some stomach pains all day, which I took to mean I had worked my abs hard the day before, but as we returned, it became clear that I had some sort of intestinal bug that I took to be food poisoning.  I spent the evening in the room, while Jay went out to a lovely dinner at a restaurant with a great view, which I don't have any pictures of. 

Ravello and Amalfi (the town)

Tuesday we hiked down from Pontone, a bit below Ravello, where we are staying for the next two nights, to the town of Amalfi, which was once the trading capital of the Amalfi coast, and then back up to Ravello.  Our walk is called the Path of the Mills, because Amalfi was once famous for its rag paper, and there are several ruins of paper mills along the river, some dating from the 9th century.  The invention of wood pulp paper in, I believe, the 19th century led to the (almost) end of the Amalfi paper industry.  We visited a paper museum, which still makes some rag paper for special clients, including the Vatican, as this mill is one of the few sources of true, unchemically treated rag paper.

We walked all the way back to Ravello, through woods, roads and lots of steps (steps will continue to be a theme of this trip)

This is Amalfi from above, as we walked down.

This is the entrance to an old paper mill.

This building is the ruins of the drying room of an old paper mill, where the sheets were left to dry on long beams.

A view of Amalfi from lower down, showing the (rather small) harbor, but also the way it is built into the hill.

M. C. Escher, the artist, spent time in Amalfi.  If you know his work, you can see the influence of the tower at the top of this photo in one of his pictures.

One of many absolutely gorgeous wisteria plants.  I'm being photobombed by our guide, Vincenzo.

 We had dinner at a place that has local "home cooking" grandma style, where I think I got food poisoning, but that's a tale for another day.
 

Pompeii

Today we started our VBT hiking trip on the Amalfi coast.  We are a small group, ten in total, with everyone but us being from the East Coast. We got shuttled to Pompeii for a three hour private tour -- definitely the way to see this place, as when she found something that was crowded (and the place was pretty crowded, even on a day that threatened rain and is very early in the tourist season), she could find something similar elsewhere on the site. 

I was amazed at how undamaged the site is.  Most everything that was higher than one story caved in, but most of the walls are a full story high.  I had seen the model in the Archeological Museum in Naples, but I interpreted those walls to be half a story or less.

Some random photos

This is one of the bedrooms in a brothel (one of forty they have unearthed in Pompeii).  According to our guide, a 'session' would have cost about the same as a glass of wine.

In one of several public baths, this was the women's "changing room".  The niches on the wall were the equivalent of lockers.

The actual bathing area in the same women's baths.

The men's baths had a more ornate changing area.

Undamaged mosaic in a private home (the really good ones were removed and taken to the Archeological Museum, but this isn't too shabby.

This is called a Thermopolium, where wine and cold foods were sold.  The mosaic in the back honors gods of wine and food.

Another Thermopolium.  The tile work was impressive.

This is a fresco in a private home that shows lemon trees.

This fresco in a garden is known as "Venus on the Shell", and predates Botticelli by 15 centuries.

And finally the city amphitheatre (Pompeii most likely had about 20,000 inhabitants at its peak), where gladiators battled.

For lunch we managed to continue our run of bad Italian food in tourist places (Hint: don't order seafood unless you are very close to the ocean), but we have high hopes for tonight.

We are spending three nights in Ravello, a tiny town of 2500 perched on the side of a mountain (we will walk down and back up each day).  It's very quaint.  They are known for their pottery, and I indulged in a lovely olive oil dispenser (which I forgot to photograph before he wrapped it up, sorry).

Eating in Italy

Well, it's better than London, but we did find mediocre food in Naples.

Our first night we ate at a nearby restaurant that got reasonable online reviews, but we both had pretty hohum meals. The calmaretti we started with were good -- these  were squid that were about 1-2" long that had been deep fried. I had a pesto pasta with prawns, and there were a total of two prawns and the pesto was unlike any other pesto I have had -- no idea what it was based on, but not really very green at all and somewhat slimy.  Jay had a cacio and pepe with clams, and the clams were good, but it had about four times the cheese as any cacio and pepe I have ever eaten.  The next day we had pizza for lunch, at a place near the Archeological Museum, and the pizza (buffalo mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and basil) was watery.  We weren't off to a great start.  We stopped in the afternoon for a well-known Naples pastry treat, sfogliatella, which is very crispy, probably fried, croissant-like outer layers with a lemon cream center.  We both found it way too rich.

But things are now picking up.  We had much better pasta last night.  I had a simple tomato sauce and Jay had spaghetti vongole (clams).  Both were excellent, both the pasta and the sauces.  And today at lunch we shared a whole grain pizza with roasted veges that was quite good -- both the toppings and the crust. And for tonight, Jay had a fresh pasta and I had risotto, each with seafood (we are at the ocean after all), and both were delicious (and we both had salads, me arugula and parmesan, Jay a mixed salad, and it's so great to have veges/produce again).

Apparently in Italy one has dessert for breakfast (and also for Sunday dinner, as we saw some elaborate cakes at our lunch time restaurant).  There were sfogliatella, chocolate almond cake, babas au rhum, and a bunch of other pastries and cakes (but no pain au chocolat, my favorite breakfast treat).  But there were also VEGETABLES for breakfast -- there was a green bean and carrot saute one morning, with a gnocchi dish that had chicken and broccoli, and the other morning it was a seafood and vegetable stew.  Since I'm really tired of steam table scrambled eggs, but I do need some protein to get through the morning, this was great on two grounds.  It's been hard to find vegetables this entire trip (except when I was doing the cooking), so I'm a happier camper.