Our journey home - days 6 and 7, Positano and Ravello

Yesterday and today have been two absolutely gorgeous days.  Initially Plan A had us going to Naples yesterday, but as we did not want to drive into Naples and we had no internet access to plan our alternative route we decided to catch the bus down to Positano again and go to the tourist information centre to get some advice so that we could head into Naples today.  On the bus trip down we got chatting to an English woman.  She said she had been to Ravello on the previous day and that she would absolutely recommend it.  We didn't really give it another thought at the time....well maybe we did, but we didn't discuss it with each other at the time.  We went into Positano and the Information Centre and found we could drive or catch the bus to a town called Meta and then catch the train to Naples.  Job done, off we went to find some lunch (well for the past few days it has been our one and only meal of the day!) We decided to walk around the headland a bit further than we had previously.

The harbour area of Positano.

The view from the harbour back up to town. 

.....and this is the view back to Positano and the harbour as we walked further around the headland. 

The place with the arches on the right in the centre is where we ended up eating lunch. 

The view towards the west from that beach. 

After lunch we wandered through town a bit more, in and out of galleries and then had yet another gelati and came home!

We woke this morning and Richard 'admitted' to me that he didn't really feel like going to Naples and wondered what I thought about going to Ravello instead.  I breathed a big sigh of relief because I was going to put the same suggestion to him!  So we lazed about this morning and then headed off for Ravello and I am so glad we made that decision.  Ravello is just gorgeous!  Where the pace everywhere else on the Amalfi Coast has been somewhat frantic, Ravello was incredibly relaxed and quiet.  It is inland from Amalfi and is incredibly charming.

The view across from town as we arrived.  I just love all the terraces that are filled with fruit trees and vegetables!

The view across the town square when we first climbed the stairs into town. I just went 'oohh!'

Today's restaurant view as I ate the most delicious tuna cooked in citrus honey and grilled vegetables and enjoyed 250ml of white wine! 

Maybe this is why it is such a relaxed place! 

Notice how quiet it is!  That was one of the things that made it so lovely! 

There were many of these pottery galleries and other art galleries in town! 

... and some gorgeous towers! 

I am so glad we went there today rather than Naples!  

I may not be able to blog for the next week or so as I do not think we will have internet access, but I intend to 'journal' on my computer so that I can download it as a blog or two, or three from Rome!  Tomorrow we head up to a little town called Spoleto in Umbria.  Until next time keep safe and lots of love!

Our journey home - day 6 Marina del Cantone

On Wednesday we had another slow start to the the day so I decided to sit out the front of our apartment and draw the plaque.  I think many of the apartments have names and plaques.  Our's is Minerva.  The plaque is a painted tile...and yes her face does look that masculine!

In the late morning we decided to go for a drive to the west of where we are staying.  We drove to the western most point of the peninsula and had a fabulous pizza for lunch. Here are the views from where we sat.

It was a very hot day, but the breezes here were beautiful.  According to our guide book this is an area the people staying on Capri often do day trips to, so that they can have lunch.  While we were there we watched launches pull up to restaurant piers and take boat loads of people to and from the bigger boats anchored further out.  One way to live life I suppose!

The 'beach' didn't look very inviting at all to me.  It's like Brighton beach, all pebbles!  In some photos you can see people laying on just towels - that is the 'public' or free area of the beach.  Here also the umbrellas don't match and are not in neat rows!  Further down there are all the lined up umbrellas with deck chairs underneath.  You pay to go into these areas of the beach and it can be as much as 18 Euros per day per person - that's about $25AU!  Can you imagine trying to take a family to the beach and it costing that?

After lunch we went back to the car park to collect our car.  Here is parking Italian style!

It was like a community car park with a 'valet' service of sorts.  You parked your car and left them with the keys.  Obviously they needed to shuffle to get others out while you were gone.  There didn't seem to be any system as such....just chaos!  It took about 10 minutes for them to find our car when we got back, but all was good and we were on our way again and the fee was relatively cheap!

We decided that we would drive into Sorrento to check out the railway station and parking around there as we were intending to go into Naples (we have now decided not to do that, but more about that in another blog).  Portia took us on one of her 'short cuts' and we ended up down this lane way! There was about an inch to spare on either side and these photos were taken when I could get my arm out the window!  Just before taking the last photo I was going to try to squeeze out to get one of the whole car, but noticed someone zooming along behind us!  Luckily we were near the end of the lane and didn't hold him up for long!  

Our journey home - day 5 Pompeii

We have had no internet for a couple of nights so I have become a bit behind with my blogging!  I wrote the following when we arrived home from Pompeii on Tuesday night:

Our day started with a drive from Nocelle to Pompeii.  Once again it was madness on the roads with someone beeping at us at one stage for driving too slowly - we were 10 km/hr over the speed limit, but apparently that was not fast enough!  We are constantly amazed by the cars and scooters that just pull out straight in front of you as if you did not exist.  I think even more incredible is the number of pedestrians that step straight out in front of cars and then meander across the road as if they are strolling through a park!  Today at one point as we were driving on the main highway, we were following an old lady walking down the road on one side and about 3 or 4 young people on the other with the footpath almost empty beside them and they seemed annoyed because we wanted to drive on the road.  At another point two men stood in the middle of the road for a chat and at another a scooter rider road along holding hands with the driver of the car beside him!  It is insane!  Anyway enough of my rant about the drivers – I nearly said roads, but they are another matter.  A lot of the roads would give the term ‘goat track’ a bad name!

Once we made it to Pompeii we were welcomed by the sound of  the bells in the bell tower.  Then we found a bar.  We needed to go to the loo and the cheapest and easiest way in Italy is for me to have an espresso coffee standing at the bar for 80 or 90 euro cents and then we both use the loo!  Other than that it can cost up to 1euro 50 cents each to use a toilet!  So win/win I get a coffee and we get to go to the loo for less than a third of the cost! 

The Bell Tower in Pompeii

Next we had a parking fine to pay…another story… and went to the post office to pay it.  We were standing around trying to work out which ticket to take of the three options for the turn taking machines when a lovely man came up to help.  At first he thought we should ignore the fine as we are from another country!  We told him the car hire company would chase us and charges us fees on top of the fine so he then pushed up to a counter to get the form for us to fill out.  He then filled out the form for us and then took a slip from two of the three options and then decided ‘no we wouldn’t wait!’  He pushed up to the counter again and apparently explained to the guy behind that we couldn’t speak Italian and we were called straight up.  We paid the fine, he said ‘now you have a good picture of Italy and Italians’, shook our hands and sent us through the doors of the post office!  We decided Italian people must have a behind the wheel persona and an everywhere else persona!

Then we headed off to do what we had really planned with our day and went to the archaeological ruins.  My goodness they are amazing.  We went to Athens earlier this year and were impressed by what we saw.  Pompeii is astounding with the amount of stuff that is there.  The site is over 66 hectares, 44 of which have been excavated and 12 are open to the public.  There are casts of humans who were killed when Vesuvius blew and the buildings they have unearthed are amazing.  There are frescoes on walls, statues and pottery all immaculately preserved.  The road ways are all very obvious and from archaeological records they have replanted to give very clear representation of what it was before the destruction.

The site was incredibly hot, with few shady spots to find relief.  There were stray dogs everywhere!  Here’s some photos to give you an idea of some of what we saw:

The statue of Apollo in the Temple of Apollo

The altar in The Temple of Apollo 

The statue of Dianna in the Temple of Apollo 

Eumachia! 

Mt Vesuvius as the backdrop to the archaeological site. 

The frescoes that are still there are incredible!

These are in the bath house 

These were in a home

...and these were the 'inspirational paintings in a brothel!

This is Priapus.  He is from the brothel too and holds a phallus in each hand, he is a representation of male virility!

This was the bakery. The cylindrical structures were for grinding the grain and the oven looked like a massive pizza oven!

We left the site after about 4 hours of walking around and walked back into the centre of Pompeii.  We grabbed the obligatory gelato on the way and then a cold drink and started the drive back home.  We thought it was going to be a horrible trip, but it was relatively smooth sailing!  We stopped at a restaurant in a 'village' (there's really only two restaurants there) before Nocelle on the way up the hill and had one of the best pastas we have had in Italy!  It was homemade pasta with a tomato and clam sauce.  We then got home about 8:00pm and had a quiet night! 

I will add the next two days soon.  Will probably type them up tonight and add them tomorrow providing we have internet access!  Bye for now!

Our journey home - day 4

Another gentle start to the day!  Today we woke at about 9:00 and lazed for a while.  By 10:00 I was showered and dressed and had decided that I should head out the door to see what was happening when the bells started to ring.  Not necessarily an harmonious and melodious sound but they were a sound!  I decided to take my sketch book, coffee and supplies out and to draw!  This is the result of this morning's journalling:

I am quite pleased with this morning's effort which was drawn with pencil then coloured with inktense pencils. I then went back over the lines with a brown pitt pen and painted the cross with Shimmering H2O (that info is really for me!).  I was quite pleased because it only took me about half an hour all up so I am getting faster with architectural things and getting a reasonable likeness down!  Today was some sort of religious bank holiday in the area for the 'Assumption of Mary'.  Hence the church bells, service and choir!  I sat outside in the same spot as yesterday (once I had most of the drawing done) to do to most of the colouring and writing!  Richard joined me this morning.  It was lovely to have him beside me as I drew.

Just after midday we left and caught the bus down to Positano.  It's a pretty village, but we decided that it was no place for the infirm or elderly as it is built into the side of a cliff and is either stairs or steep slopes!  The bus trip takes about half an hour and is positively hair raising!  The roads are very narrow, windy and steep.  The driver beeps his horn the whole way down and I have to say at one point when Richard told me (I was facing backwards) that he was driving one handed while on his mobile phone I decided that it was too much information!  Anyway we made it safely and went straight to a restaurant and had a fabulous lunch.  The seafood here is brilliant!

After lunch we wandered around Positano.  Mainly in and out of art galleries, clothes shops and tourist shops - all ridiculously expensive so nothing bought.  We had  a gelato and then decided to try to find a shop to buy some simple stuff for tonight's dinner before coming home.  We walked past one place at the bottom of the hill up to near the bus stop.  Had a look in the place near the bus stop and went back down the hill!  Here are some photos from around Positano.

The main pathway down the hill

Stairs up to the first shop and the slope down! 

The shop where we eventually bought tonight's dinner. 

The church doorway! 

Stairs near the church 

After our walk back down the hill we had about fifteen minutes to make it back up the hill to the next bus.  As we headed back up the hill however we came face to face with an Italian funeral coming down the hill towards us.  The coffin was proceeded by one group including the priest saying prayers, then came the coffin carried by six or eight pall bearers and then the congregation of mourners.  We obviously stopped to allow them to pass, bowing our heads respectfully.  After some time, we looked at each other, and by that we I mean Richard and I and the surrounding others, and thought that's it and started to move on.  We moved about 100 metres up the track and there was a 'pedestrian jam'.  Streams of people were still moving down the hill obviously connected to the funeral and those of us heading up the hill were going nowhere fast!  Well we eventually made our bus otherwise it would have been another hour's wait!  The bus was packed and for the first 10 minutes or so I nursed a little 4 or 5 year old French girl on my lap.  It was very hot in the bus and she was safer on the windy roads sitting on my knee.  Richard decided I was getting back into practice for grandma mode! The things you do when you travel!  

At home this afternoon we have taken it easy again.  We went out into the courtyard for dinner.  While we drank our wine and ate we watched what we presume was a helicopter from the local rescue service practice filling a bucket from the ocean and then dumping the water again.  We listened to more Italians as they chatted while they sat in the Shrine opposite our gateway and most importantly we enjoyed the opportunity to just be together watching the world go by. I took these photos.

Our dinner.  Great company, fresh bread, ham, sun ripened tomatoes and chianti.  Life doesn't get much better!

Our view of the setting sun along the coast line from Positano to Capri.

Mostly I breathed long and deep as I reminded myself just how wonderful life is and how I got so lucky to be living it this way!