Walking versus Riding on the Amalfi Coast

Like a previous trip I have been extremely remiss in not staying current on these posts.  However I did use that wonder App called Track My Tour (please tell Chris that I sent you if you check it out) which did a much better job.  Here is the link to this part of the trip -- Click here.

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I've droned on and on about the narrowness of the roads and the large numbers of traffic on them in past posts but I don't think I've done it full justice.  Certainly we simply avoided the entire issue by not hiring a car and handing ourselves over totally to Daniele and his mates. In doing that we didn't have to drive, worry about other cars, worry about having a drink here or there or worry about where on earth we were in a land where roadsigns are to say the least open to question (if available).  For sure it cost us money to do that but on the other hand we were able to really enjoy ourselves and not wonder what some total plonker coming at us will do in that tiny gap in the traffic (hint: they won't wait and wave you on).

On the days we had no adventures we felt imbued to walk everywhere.  Being based just outside Amalfi itself, this was no real issue.  Had we wanted to go to other villages, both bus and water taxi were available but on the one occasion we tried the bus, it was full, the next one was an hour away and in any event the bus may not have been going where we wanted.

Further leaving early would certainly mean getting onto your preferred means of public transport but given the crowd numbers, that didn't automatically guarantee your return visit would be available to you.  So we didn't bother trying.

What we did discover is that the entire area is actually very small.  With headlands and mountains everywhere you tend to forget that the next village is only 1/2 a mile away and in any event the local inhabitants had found a short cut there years ago... over the top.

The short cut

That's what we did with Atrani, home to the best colatura pasta on the coast (according to who else but Daniele?  "Mention my name to the owner and he will..." You probably can guess the drill here).  Even though it was only 1/2 kilometre away (had we walked on the road around the headland) it took us over 3 hours walking up and down hillsides, viewing the cemetary on the side of the hill, various churches, monasteries and cathedrals and all manner of lovely stuff.

We'd meant that it would take us this time as we needed the exercise for sure after the wonderful food and drink we'd had.

We walked the Via Valle dei Dragone nearly up (a lot of steps and steep paths) to Ravello before turning around and strolling the lanes over to Atrani, a village with an 11th century cathedral that was in use for a family funeral... with 1,000 attendees (the village itself has 1,300 full time inhabitants and is the smallest city around).  Of course everyone in the village turned up!

The best colatura on the coast according to Daniele

The cathedral itself is right on the point where the coast road turns around over 90 degrees from Amalfi and with parked cars everywhere, it was a trial for normal sized cars to pass, let alone the two buses that came to a grinding halt facing each other.

This is the point where someone would normally reverse or say something like 'after you' but in Italy neither happen of course.  Both buses started edging forward gently whilst any Vespas in the vicinity nipped in and out of the cars and between the buses generally being thoroughly annoying and unhelpful.

Duelling buses

It was fascinating so we found a vantage and watched.

To us it was improbable in the extreme that either bus could pass the other given the space available yet within no more than 15 minutes of edging around that happened and the traffic started to flow again leaving me with this thought: if it doesn't work, don't worry.  Go to Italy.  It will there!

The view from the cathedral at Atrani.  Decidedly unshabby.

Despite itself seemingly, Italy just works... just. Don't ask me how but I love it!

We'd booked train tickets from Salerno to Rome for our departure and asked the landlord to give us a lift to the station (a service he does for all guests apparently) some 40 minutes away at the end of the coast road.  The gentleman in question was about 70 and had a car that was quite old.  I'd spotted him banging something on or in the car to get it going before he'd announced his arrival. Clearly this would not be a luxurious ride like we'd been enjoying with Daniele and the others.  This would be a real local experience and so it proved.

The coast road winds through a series of little villages and in one of them there was quite a long promenade for the region.  That meant people walking along a sea walk and... wait for it... pedestrian crossings.  We'd seen how pointless these were in Naples already on this trip and experienced for ourselves that feeling of 'will they won't they' when cars approached the crossing that we were thinking about crossing.  Random results.  Some stopped, others didn't.

Traditional traffic.  Plenty of room to pass.

At this village there were several such crossings and quite a lot of people around.  At one an elderly couple, one with either a walking stick or zimmer frame was slowly crossing the road and our driver simply didn't stop.  Or rather it did but with a screeching of brakes and the car somehow stopping just and I do mean just before ploughing into this little procession.

Both were Italian as all around people started shouting, gesticulating and banging on the bonnet of the car.  The response was not a 'sorry, my bad' or equivalent, it was zero to total maniac in a nanosecond.  He started shouting and screaming too.  How I wish I spoke Italian!  I'm sure if he'd had a gun, he'd have used it.  Everyone by this point was totally beside themselves.

Then it stopped.  The elderly couple shuffled off and we started off again.  Our driver showed absolutely no sign of either remembering the incident or showing remorse over it.  It just happened and now it was over!  Had he been able to wash his hands like Pontius Pilate, I think he would have.

Like I said, I don't know how it works, but it does!

Getting Ready for Pompeii

Like a previous trip I have been extremely remiss in not staying current on these posts.  However I did use that wonder App called Track My Tour (please tell Chris that I sent you if you check it out) which did a much better job.  Here is the link to this part of the trip -- Click here.

**

Probably the highlight of our sojourn in Naples was visiting the Archaeological Museum.  We hopped off the bus here for several hours which were just wonderful.

First of all, this entire region is really old.  There is loads of old stuff to house here.  But the really important raison d'etre of the museum is that anything of quality that could be found in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum were moved here.

Not recently of course.  The Farnese family of the 16th century were popes and had a taste for antiquity so moved anything and everything that he could (statues, sculptures, mosaics, etc.) to his palaces in Rome.  Once Bonaparte invaded Italy in the last years of the 18th century, Italy's map was redrawn but one thing that remained was the Kingdon of the Two Sicilies which passed under the control of Murat, his great cavalry commander.  Murat took back all these wonders and put them into his palace which ultimately morphed into this fantastic museum.

Included too is a 'naughty' room where all those artifacts found in Pompeiian brothels are displayed.  In past days, only the bigwigs could view these delights.  Later on, just men.  It is now open to all over the age of 18.  Interesting sculptures, toys, trinkets, paintings and things couldn't really be identified.  As this is a smut free zone, I will leave the details to your imagination.

The young Augustus when he was still called Octavian

Uncle Julius with a very generously sculptured profile

One of the most famous mosaics from Pompeii

Imagine this was on the floor first of all.  This is what you walk on when entering a house in the Roman era.  It is a mosaic from a house in Pompeii that we later visited taken from an old Greek painting of one of Alexander's great battles against the Persians.  A copy of the painting is to the left.  Alexander's head is all that can be seen on the left.

This is a painting taken from the wall of a house in Pompeii.  The Romans painted directly onto the plaster which is why so few paintings remain.  This is red hued due to the heat of the big day in 79 AD.

The famous bull sculpture (room size from one single piece of marble apparently) reminds us why adultery is a bad thing.  If caught you get chained to a wild bull by your children like this God from antiquity.

Hercules after his 11th labour needed a rest so leaned on his big stick.  I had a cold drink and pizza.

Hopping in Napoli

Like a previous trip I have been extremely remiss in not staying current on these posts.  However I did use that wonder App called Track My Tour (please tell Chris that I sent you if you check it out) which did a much better job.  Here is the link to this part of the trip -- Click here.

**

Seeing as we only had one day in Naples we thought the best thing to do was the hop on/off bus tour that is in many cities these days.  It left from the big castle so was just perfect for us.

There are two routes -- one along the coast and one into the city.  We took the first that came along which was the seaside route.  I do like these buses as the format is the same wherever you are -- every 20 mintutes or so another one comes along with 8 choices of languages describing the scene.  With this tour in between the chatting was interspersed local crooners singing songs about old Campania and Naples and all the rest of it.  Just charming... to start with.

The Bay of Naples is huge and the city is sited on pretty much the only flattish land hereabouts.  This is one old city founded in the 7th century BC by Greeks looking to expand onto the mainland from their stronghold cities in Sicily.  They landed further north in a place called Baiae and further south on the bottom part of the massive bay that encompasses Vesuvius and reaches Sorrento.  Being Greeks they fought amongst themselves more than anything else according to the very limited writings around today so while you may have thought that the Greek settlements here may work together in reality it was just like home with competing city states looking at one another first.  This was never part of the Roman make up and one of the reasons why the Romans were so contemptuous of the Greeks, even though they did acknowledge that the Greeks did come first.  The Romans were all about solidarity, country not city, and global not country which is why their empire was so much more successful than the Greeks' attempts.  They had their chance when Alexander was around but as soon as his appendix flared up, his 'friends' and inner circle started divvying up the pie and of course quarreling.

Once the Roman Empire collapsed, the region obviously remained and the Amalfitana Empire rose up -- a strong maritime nation that did pretty much what Roman trade used to.  The city of Naples itself carried on for 500 or so years until the Normans arrived ... always the bloody Normans.  The Normans are the descendents of the Vikings (Norsemen) who gave us such a hard time.  

The Normans got first into Sicily by offering to help against the Moors who kept on calling.  They then turned around and massacred the encumbents and took over moving a couple of hundred years or so later over to Naples where they created the Kingdon of the Two Sicilies.  This endured through various invasions until the Risorgimento in 1860-61 about which more later in another post.  

Architecture therefore is massively mixed.  The big castle for example is Norman whilst are there are huge numbers of buildings from many different eras.  One constant though are the tiny roads and the constant congestion wrought by Neapolitan drivers who must be either the best or worst in the world.

A typical snarl up in the old town

These days the region is very poor.  Most industry of any sort is either struggling or has closed down. Employment is high in this area whilst all the problems of southern Europe are here in spades ... immigration to the fore, particular illegals arriving by boat.

This is a deserted tuna canning factory that has been abandoned for 20 years right on the Bay of Naples, so its a pretty good location.  The commentary on the bus was hopeful of development but didn't provide a time line.

But as everywhere there are always people who are well enough off as well the very rich.  The local tennis club for example is sited right on the King's favourite footpath on the sea front.

About 8 red clay courts.  They looked pretty darn  nice.

Security was curious.  There is heightened tension with worries of terrorist attacks so in various places small groups of armed soldiers are placed looking ominous.  But to me there seemed little rhyme or reason for their location or precisely what they were doing.  I hope someone knows better than I.

As we were stationary for 20+ minutes here on the bus, we could tell that this was in fact a chemist that these soldiers were protecting.  Customers kept coming and going all the time.  

However there are precious few bad views here.  Something we were to discover later on this holiday in other locations.  

And of course Vesuvius was everywhere.

See Naples and...

Like a previous trip I have been extremely remiss in not staying current on these posts.  However I did use that wonder App called Track My Tour (please tell Chris that I sent you if you check it out) which did a much better job.  Here is the link to this part of the trip -- Click here.

**

We'd talked about it for quite some time or rather I'd droned on about it, that we wanted to follow the European red clay tournaments from Monte Carlo in mid-April through to the French Open in the last week of May and first week of June.  However life does get in the way some times so we finally agreed on a cut down version which looks something like this:

• 2 days in Naples
• 6 days in Amalfy
• 8 days in Rome for the Italian Open with a group of tennis guys from Bermuda and Canada
• 7 days in Portugal, bottom left part on the western Amalfi Coast
• 6 days in Paris for the French Open (just Viv and I)
• 5 days in England

That's about 5 weeks.  Fantastic!

I confess to being a little anal in that I really do like to know the whats, wheres and hows of the places that we are going to visit but what the heck!!

I'd never been to Naples.  Viv had but on a cruise ship years ago so our collective knowledge was rather light however I'd started to read the book called Pompeii by Robert Harris and a book about the fall of the Roman Republic so was in the right mindset for Naples despite its more recent history (and there is a lot of it) is really, really old.

The route in took us over the Alps!! Just beautiful.

Naples or Napoli for the Italians was Neapolis for the 7th century BC Greeks who founded the city and Napule for the Romans who used the region as a holiday resort as well as enormous port city (according to Wikipedia anyway).  Home to 3 million people these days, Naples is quite simply a mess and mass of steaming humanity... crammed pack full of wonderful old stuff and really tiny roads.

This of course means road congestion.  

Of course there can be no reference to Naples without reference to Vesuvius which is right next door. It dominates all landscapes being so huge a double mountain, these days.  Formerly it was a single peak before that famous explosion in 79 AD blew it apart and submerged Pompeii, Herculaneum and I am sure a host of other unnamed and unremembered places.

Our first view of Vesuvius

We'd organised as much as possible a driver for all occasions as there had been so many of those warnings about tourists being stiffed over everything.  I found Daniele on the internet, Trip Advisor and the various online tourist guides.  His company could provide transport and tours of the entire region but also he was a sommelier and provided culinary events as well!  Simple choice really. Daniele's website is here.  Do check him out.  He is great.

It was one of Daniele's drivers who collected us from Naples Airport and took us to our downtown hotel.  It was in a maze of little side streets but importantly just up the hill from the central square and the old castle that was the feature of this part of the city.  Not Roman but still 600 years old!  Just a snip in time in fact.

The day we arrived was cloudless.  This is the view from the hotel terrace with of course Vesuvius in the background and the castle in the foreground.  Naples has always been a significant port town.

There really wasn't much time to do anything more than have dinner so we took a recommendation of a place called Il Garum from the check in guy and strolled down the street to enjoy it.

Different cities and countries have dinner at different times.  Spain before 10 pm is unheard of.  Here in Naples, it was 9.30 pm so as we arrived an hour earlier we had the place pretty much to ourselves.  And of course it showed us to be tourists as well.

Dinner was spectacular and looking back on it one of the top 3 meals of the entire trip.

Linguine alla colatura d'alici

Local fare is seafood even though pork, boar and porcini mushrooms are popular local dishes too.  But this one is the #1 -- anchovy juice cooked into home made pasta with olive oil and garlic.  This one was sensational!  It is also very traditional dating back at least to the Romans.  They called this sauce... wait for it... Garum.  Coincidence, eh?  I think not.

I just love the local in season little strawberries called Fragolini served with lemon juice, local of course, and a little sugar which is mostly unnecessary but when in Naples... 

I'd really missed the end of day Gelato and was not going to get off on the wrong foot!

And the night time view over the city ...

Tweeners

You can't always have action packed days like the last few in Saddlebrook. There are always in between times like the last few.  We had to get to Miami in time to watch the Sony Ericsson tournament taking place in Crandon Park on Key Biscayne, one of the bigger islands off the Florida coast near Miami but we had a couple of days in which to cover the 500 or so miles.  So we stopped off in Naples for the night.

The drive down I75 is pretty dull it has to be said only livened up by annoyingly not picking up all the articles we'd bought in Dick's Sporting Goods and having to turn around and get them when we realized what had happened.  (Memo to self: Always check what's in your shopping bag before leaving the store!).  But the GPS worked just fine and enabled us to reach the Ritz in Naples without much difficulty.

What a nice hotel and what an efficient bunch of people that run it.

We'd stayed in the Ritz on 7-Mile Beach on Cayman before so were looking forward to a pleasant if brief stay.  I'd been keen to stay somewhere on the Gulf Coast as I'd never put foot in it before so as soon as we dumped our things we went for a swim (reluctant on my part as the sea was cold!) and walk along the beach.

The Gulf Coast

First thing to say is that the sea was quite wavy.  The staff said this was unusual but it was also a little windy which didn't help much either. Mind you the beach was enormously long in both directions towards who know where.  It sort of reminded me of 7-Mile Beach except that the sand whilst white was also grubby in parts and the architecture of the buildings was very similar to that on 7-Mile Beach except surprisingly there was not so much of it.

Quite some beach!  This is headed north.  South is just the same.

Now under-developing isn't a trait I usually attach to Americans.  Normally I would have said if they start building something, they build a lot of it.  And there was certainly no shortage of available land along the gulf coast there.  I suspect it must have been the protected mangrove habitat along the shoreline that stopped them.

Isolated clumps of development along the gulf coast waterline

In Cayman, the planners had allowed building right down to the beach.  I don't know if there were mangroves before but there are none now.  The result of this is that there is constant beach erosion along 7-Mile Beach.  In Naples there was a mangrove line that I think prevented some if not all of this.  Wise move although it does mean that there is wetland between the hotel or other buildings along the beach that I am sure houses bugs a-plenty in the humid summer months.

Another great trait of the Ritz is that they have great beds!  Just what the doctor ordered after a few days exertion!

It's only a 2 hour drive to Miami from Naples along the part of I75 that borders the Everglades to the north.  Every so often there were lay-bys where people put their boats into the water and presumably head off into the 'glades to go gator hunting or whatever.

We stopped at one and actually ran into at least one gator that was both awake and interested in what we were doing enough to swim over and greet us.  Reminded me a little of Alice in Wonderland.

How Doth The Little Crocodile
Lewis Carroll

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcome little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!   

After dropping the car off in Miami and dumping our gear at the apartment Viv had organized for us right downtown off Brickell, we went for a stroll to remind ourselves of the layout of the city and came across a group of Peruvian street vendors serving stone crabs and ceviche and chowed down immediately.

Very lovely but very fishy so we had to immediately change flavors at our favorite Japanese ramen noodle shop, Moni Ramen (see website here), where mine host offered us a new sake he was looking to import from Japan.  Unusually it comes in a can (he said it is sold in dispensers like Coke here!) and is served cold as opposed to warmed to a temperature of 98.4 degrees fahrenheit as James Bond states in You Only Live Twice -- see here.

007 would NOT have approved!

Tennis starts tomorrow but this time we are watchers not players.

The view from our apartment!  Not too shabby.