The Amalfi Coast and Sicily as seen from Chiang Mai, Thailand

Now, where were we?  Last post had us contemplating our journey to Sorrento and then Sicily.  For reasons of inconvenient internet availability we have fallen way behind.  We left our apartment in Rome like seasoned pros, marching our four selves, five bags and assorted carry-on stuff the three blocks to the train station.  We had heard that pick-pockets lurked about the Rome Stazione Centrale but the Circumvesuviana Stazione in Napoli had us most concerned.  The guide books painted a gauntlet like path for us to traverse but to our relief, the station was clean and organized, and seemingly pick-pocket free.  We made it to Sant' Agnello, next to Sorrento without a hitch.

The sun-soaked Amalfi Coast clings to a plateau of land that looks south and west over the Bay of Napoli.  Mt. Vesuvius overshadows the entire coast and set the stage for the points of our interest, beyond our usual interest in the local wine and food.  In a.d. 79, Mt. Vesuvius blew its top, burying the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.  Each has been excavated providing a very clear and intimate view of life in that time.  Pompeii is a large site, requiring hours to walk through and begin to understand.  Lying within just a few steps of the train station, many tourists find their way there, with organized tour groups hustling from marked site to site.  We were a bit less organized but took our time, eating sandwiches of tomatoes and mozzarella in the shade of stone walls, as I suppose the locals did once upon a time.  Just prior to mutiny of the children we escaped back to our little village and dinner in Sorrento full of awe for what we had seen.

The next day we were off again but this time to the top of the monster that caused all of the destruction.  With bus and foot, we arrived at the rim of the crater that is now the top of Mt. Vesuvius.  According to eyewitness description, Mt Vesuvius had a cone summit, and like Mt. St. Helens, blew violently taking the top with it and depositing it mostly on Herculaneum in the form of mud-lava, but sufficiently with ash on Pompeii to snuff out existence.  The view from the top is wonderful, stretching along the whole coast and to the islands of Capri and Ischia.  We enjoyed the view and cool breeze then reversed ourselves with the goal of touring Herculaneum.

Herculaneum was a smaller village than Pompeii but received worse treatment.  Buried under some 60 feet of lava, it was all but forgotten until excavation began in the late 1700s.  And while such a burial is ghastly, the village was incredibly well preserved for it.  There are even wood door frames still present showing how they were charred by the incredible heat of the lava.  And maybe because we arrived late in the afternoon, or maybe because it is eight blocks from the train station, or who knows why but we had the place to ourselves.  We wandered through entire houses where frescoes still decorated walls, and beautiful mosaic floors welcomed us.  Eery in that some of the structures appeared in better shape than houses dotting the countryside, except nobody had been home for almost 2000 years.  Probably because we had such a quiet time to absorb Herculaneum, we were awed by it even more than we had experienced in Pompeii.

With our time on the Amalfi coast running out, we hopped a ferry to the island of Capri for a day of wandering and lying on the beach.  Our plan was to hang around Capri for the day and then ferry to Napoli to meet our over-night ferry to Catania, Sicily.  Everything went as planned though hanging around Capri turned out to be mostly just hanging around.  Long an island with a history of attracting the rich and famous, we found it to be filled of (perhaps) "the rich-and-famous" seeking tourists.  Oh well, if we have to hang out somewhere, it could have been far worse.  We made our ferry to Napoli and only wandered around the port for a little while trying to figure out where our next ferry left from.

I suppose the calmness of the water has everything to do with how the ferry ride goes, so we were lucky in that regard.  But the cabin we stayed in had four comfortable and long enough beds, and a shower.  We all felt like we were living big.  Dinner and then a walk about the deck, with its night-lit view of Capri and the coast, as we crossed the Bay of Napoli toward Sicily was all we needed to nudge us to a good night's rest.

First impressions mean something.  We crossed through the narrow passage between Calabria on the mainland and Sicily and were struck by the imposing massif of the 3300 meter high Mt. Etna, Europe's highest and most active volcano, spewing steam from its summit.  It has molded and still dwarfs the villages that cling to the coastline beneath it.  Our next first impression was of Catania.  In one view, Catania may rank among the ugliest of cities, sprawling broadly across an uptilted volcanic plateau, with obvious disregard for any attempt at city planning.  Yet as we entered the old city on a quiet Sunday morning, a different impression formed - one rich in Baroque architecture.  The streets are chaotically arranged, becoming even more chaotic with Italian drivers full bore on them, and densely packed.  A block changes from apparent ghetto to Baroque cathedral to shop to Roman ruin all within a few steps.  There was a lot to take in.

Our apartment lay within a piazza next to the Castel Ursino, formerly a military post on the sea, which became land locked by lava diverted by its own walls into the sea.  The lava at once formed new coastline and made the castle somewhat obsolete.  The guide books suggested our neighborhood was shady and it certainly appeared that way, in part because of the copious graffiti on the buildings.  Yet, we were two blocks away from the most amazing (and largest in Sicily) fish market.  Next to that was a beautiful vegetable market several blocks long where we could buy everything we needed.  We went everyday and never did have a problem in our neighborhood.  Each night, right below our balcony, the piazza turned into an outdoor restaurant with the kindest proprietor.  And did I mention the food?  Just like the streets, the food was dense but not in a heavy, belly-sinking way.  Sicily has a long history of occupation from before the time of the Greeks.  Each conquering culture seems to have left its mark on the cuisine.  The flavors are complex, the aromas and fragrances enticing.

Lest you think we ate the whole time, we toured a little also.  We enjoyed a walking tour of Catania guided by Hal Sharp, our friend Peg's brother.  Hal has spent years on an archeological site in Sicily and is well versed in the history and architecture of Catania.  We spent a day hiking about the flank of Mt. Etna.  At 2000 meters, the Sicilian heat tempered a bit, the breeze blew a bit cooler.  I mentioned how large the mountain looked from the sea but once on it I gained an appreciation for how big a mound can become when it is erupting all of the time.  We also spent a day in the tourist destination town of Taormina.  It sits some 200 meters above the sea and Isola Bella (I love that name).  The beach, though rocky is lovely, the water very comfortable, and the gelato delicious.  Another day found us in Siracusa, a city that rivaled Athens for importance and power in the days of the Greeks.  Ortigia, the old city, lies on an island and is laced with twisting and narrow alley-ways that drew us into their shady depths.  And though I never thought I would find it, we entered the oldest church in Europe.  The church was built from an old Greek temple of which the original massive columns still support the ceiling.  Its construction as a church began while the Romans were still actively persecuting Christians in the early third century.

Our time in Sicily passed and we left much of the island unexplored.  But aside from the tours we met Charlie and Rita from Malta and enjoyed a dinner with them.  We became familiar with the people in our neighborhood, which turned out to have quite a silver lining to it despite what the guidebooks said.  We gained a sense of what Sicily, at least from the point of view of Catania, is like and have put it on the short list of places to which we would already like to return.  But leave we did, via Munich and a dinner with dear cousins, Helsinki, and now to Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Phew!  Caught up now a bit, but more to follow of our time in Thailand...

Ciao,

Paul