Sept 16th, Naples to Rome

9/16     Monday

Today, we travel to Roma! We have no trouble getting through the metro to the train. We have a little waiting time at the station, and then we’re on our way. The ride takes us north close to the coast, with views of farms and orchards, towns on the hillsides, chapels on the mountain peaks. It is interesting to see how mountainous the country is, reminding us of the Sierras in California at times.

At the station in Rome, we find our way to the metro and follow the directions from Ciara, our host. We have a couple stops and a change of lines to get to our neighborhood, but we’ve had lots of practice with the metros by now.

Ciara is waiting for us as we come up the escalator at our stop. She’s bright and lively. She leads us a few blocks to her apartment, where she gives us some iced tea, shows us around the three rooms, and wishes us a good holiday in her home. It’s typical of the places we’ve been renting, small but efficient and cozy. It’s homey but not cluttered, except for a collection of photos and magnets on the fridge, destined to come crashing to the floor as we pass. We put all of it on a platter out of the way until we leave. We have a great big terrace with – a full sized patio table! It will be a treat to have a real table after so many evenings dining off the usual café table.

We are in a pleasant residential neighborhood, on a very quiet one-way street off the main route. As we make a trip to the supermarket that’s a few blocks away, we don’t see any restaurants that are interesting to us, but we’ll be enjoying our terrace for the week.

We have learned that, by happy coincidence, our dear friends Laurie and Steve are in Rome for a few days, ending their two week Italian holiday. We make plans to meet at their hotel in the city tomorrow morning.

Sept 15th, Naples Palace Reale

9/15     Sunday

            We decide to spend Sunday with a visit to the Palace Real, a great building fronting the grand plaza near the waterfront. It’s the plaza that we always find strangely empty, except for a tour group here and there. The palace is guarded by three or four military people, whose uniforms include a very jaunty little cap.

We get our audio guides and start touring through the palace rooms. It’s as grand as Versailles, in a way, but with a certain Naples cachet. There aren’t much of the original furnishings remaining, but the ceilings and walls are incredibly ornate. Except, that is, for one great room that had been a military office in WWII. For some reason, they took the time to plaster the ceiling white.

It is remarkable to see how royalty lived: the gilded walls, the beautiful marble, the elaborate furnishings. There are no photos or videos allowed, and Bob’s shutterfingers are twitching the whole time. When we complete our tour, we come into a hall and see a table full of video surveillance equipment. Nearby, a group of security guards are hanging out, chewing the fat, as it were. “HEY!” says Bob, “Nobody is watching those cameras!” We seize the opportunity to run, discretely, back to the beginning of the tour. Bob takes out his phone and videos a speed walk through the rooms, grabbing shots all through each room. HA!

            

 1 Video Included

Naples Palace Reale

Sept 14th, Naples MADRE Art Museum

9/14     Saturday

We always enjoy a good contemporary art museum, and in Naples, it’s the Madre Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum is new, only opened in 2005, but set in a historical building that contains beautiful arched ceilings and grand spaces. It’s on a modest back street, and we have a little trouble finding it. When we pass a set of massive bright yellow doors opening onto a courtyard, where a gigantic plastic raincoat is suspended from the ceiling on a huge hanger, we deduce that we’ve arrived.

The museum has several rooms of permanent site-specific installations by major artists, including Jeff Koons, and lots of video work tucked into alcoves here and there. We watch a mesmerizing film describing a Mexican artist, Mario Garcia Torres, investigating the story of a small hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, One Hotel, owned by an Italian artist, Alighiero Boetti, in the 1970’s. It goes on and on, but we can’t stop watching it. Another room is covered with tiles, made by Francesco Clemente. They are intricate, Escheresque designs, making a bright crazy-quilt of the floors and ceilings.

One floor is dedicated to a Thomas Bayrle Exhibit, a major artist in the pop art movement of the 1960’s, a contemporary of Andy Warhol and Gerhart Richter. He is still active today, and we see a career in art embracing media from pencil on paper to digital video.

Back home, we find our apartment courtyard strangely quiet. As we have our dinner, though, we heard a certain murmur in the air. Suddenly, there’s a great roar of a cheer. There’s a big soccer game on tv, and everyone is watching it, even the shouting angry man. The collective ooooohs and yeeeeeaaahs signal good and bad passes. At the end, there’s another massive groaning, cheering noise of such emotional complexity that we can’t exactly tell if there’s been a win or a loss. But there was just somewhat more anguish than triumph in the sound, so we’re guessing it was a loss.

1 Video Included

 Naples MADRE Art Museum

Sept 13th, Naples Archaeological Museum

9/13     Friday

One of the most fun sights on the streets as we walk to the Archeology Museum is the guys making a café delivery, diving into the traffic, onto a cobblestone street, maneuvering the scooter with one hand, and balancing a tray full of espresso cups and water on the other.

The museum is not far from our place, a pleasant few blocks walk. It’s in a huge building, once a cavalry barracks, but similar to the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. A tour guide at the entrance warns us, urgently, that if we don’t hire her, we won’t know what to see, but we take our chances with the museum audio guide.

The first great hall is filled with statues from Antiquity. It is interesting to learn how much re-use and re-posing was going on in the statue market. Whenever the powers changed hands, the literal “heads of state” on the statues would be taken off and replaced with the new leaders. One large statue, presented as a seated Apollo holding a lyre, had originally been of a woman, representing Rome. The feet, hands and head were replaced to create a statue of Apollo, albeit wearing a dress. Another great statue of Hercules is a terrific visual companion to Michelangelo’s David. There are many large and impressive works in the hall, overwhelming, really. We need to save some of our energy for the Pompeii floor, so we move on.

At the Pompeii exhibits, we see the artifacts of daily life uncovered at the site. There are some amazingly delicate pieces of glassware and jewelry, ceramics and tools. But for us, the best part of the museum is the mosaics.

The collection of mosaics from Pompeii ranges from four massive, ornate columns that once stood in a foyer, to a small ornamental image of a flower. The tile pieces are tiny, ¼ inch squares or smaller, giving the works the complexity of a pointillist painting. The breadth of the work reveals the remarkable level of culture that was present in Pompeii. A large wall piece commemorating a great battle represents a typical use of art, but the small scenes of a witch tricking two young women is just fun storytelling in the mode of 19^th century genre painting, with a sense of space and dimension that seems very modern. A portrait of a woman is beautifully natural, her eyes a little heavy and puffy, making one think of Van Gogh, or Eakins. There are whole floor pieces, with scattered scenes of animals and gods. Some works are just decorative and amusing: ducks playing in a pond, a kitten catching a pigeon. The still lifes of fish or flowers are incredibly realistic, showing off all the varieties of seafood in the market, perhaps. It’s also interesting to note the stylistic variety of the works as well. There’s a depth of creativity and expression that only comes from having lots of artists working freely. It’s almost a capsule view of art history in the themes and styles here. It’s all just delightful.

In a wing off to the side, we enter the “Secret Chamber” where the mosaics and statues are all erotic. There are small pictures, more cartoonish than the rest, that are presumed to be from a brothel, but otherwise in Pompeiian times, these sex-themed pieces would have been part of the normal décor of the house. They were removed from the public areas of the museum, with the result of instantly creating a salacious notoriety and demand for the privilege of viewing them. Now, the curators are trying to normalize the presentation, but still keeping them in their own, discrete little room.

We go back downstairs to see “the mighty Toro Farnese (Farnese Bull)” as Lonely Planet describes it. It’s a massive sculpture telling the story of the execution of Dirce, Queen of Thebes, by her resentful stepsons. It too, has been reworked through the years, with some of the figures in the complex scene added at a later time. It’s gigantic.

After the Museum, we walk on through the streets to find the Duomo. We’re not sure what the Duomo is, but it’s in all the guidebooks, so we’ll try to find it. We walk along, occasionally asking “Duomo? Doumo?” We get waved through the streets in the generally right direction, until we arrive at the Duomo, a 14^th century Cathedral of Naples. It is exuberantly gorgeous, despite the electric candle offerings.

 1 Video Included

 Naples Archaeological Museum

Sept 12th, Pompeii

9/12     Thursday

We are making the trip to Pompeii today, about a half hour by train. For the first time on our Italian trip, we are surrounded by tourists, including many Americans. Right off the train, the tour guides and souvenir hustling starts, followed by lines and crowds. We ignore it all and buy a couple audio guides.

The site is gigantic, since a full city of 20,000 people once stood here. The entire place is still an archaeological dig, mapped out in a big numbered grid. There’s some signage, but not much. We work our way around with our recorders and map, weaving past the pools of people with their guides. We walk along the stone streets, looking into the broken ruins, imagining the homes that once completed the brick frames. The busted-open peak of Mount Vesuvius defines the skyline to the north, eerily blanketed in a thick cloud, suggesting the original eruption. Soon after we get started, a cloudburst of rain blows though. We take shelter with others under the ruins of a stone archway until it passes.

The scientists who research Pompeii have been able to describe so much of the daily life of the people here because of the sudden entirety of the city’s burial. At one point, we look out over the open field defined by broken columns that was the agora, and find it still serving its purpose as a place for people to gather and talk, with today’s visitors walking around, standing in small clusters, sitting on stone blocks, looking much as it would have in 78AD.

Some buildings are amazingly intact. We can walk through the bathhouse rooms and see remnants of the frescos on the walls and the niches where the bathers would have left their clothes. The floors were heated by a system of hot air ducts through the walls and below the flooring, with heat coming from a room with a fire pit. Most of the actual mosaics and artifacts are kept in the Archaeology Museum in Naples, which we’ll visit later.

The city center was surrounded by markets: meat sellers, fish mongers, vegetable sellers. The use of the buildings is revealed by the signature altar to the deity for each sector. There is one big area for the wool merchants. We learn about the small “outhouse” room near the entry where a large jug was kept to collect urine. Wool was soaked in human and animal urine to remove the lanolin. Fascinating. In the fish market, remains of fish bones in the drains show that the merchants would clean the fish for their customers at the stand, just as they do today.

There’s no indication for it on the street or on the maps, but it’s in this area that we see the first of the famous plaster casts of the volcano victims, just there, in glass cases along the back wall. We’ve all seen them in the history books, but to see them in real life is awesome.

As we walk through the site, it becomes very clear that this was a bustling, prosperous and cosmopolitan city, even a popular spot for the tourists of the day, with hotels and brothels available. There were fine homes, shops, sports, culture, gardens and arenas. The walls would have been covered with smooth limestone or marble, and lusciously embellished with mosaics and frescos.

When we find the amphitheater area, we’re near the entry for the tour buses. We struggle to claim our small portion of sidewalk against the swarms. We still manage to see the theater, and sit on the steps, some carved with roman numerals designating the seat numbers.

We spend the entire day at the site, returning on the train full of tired tourists, feeling excited that we’ll be able to see and learn more at the Archeology Museum tomorrow. We are quite happy to get home to our apartment, relaxing with salad and risotto on our little terrace, feeling all italiano as we listen to the shouts and arguments reverberating through the courtyard. One of our neighbors is a very angry man. What’s the Italian equivalent of “To the MOON Alice!!!?”

 1 Video Included

Pompeii

Sept 11th, Naples Walk

9/11     Wednesday

We take a walk through the streets of Naples to the city center. The traffic is just insane, roaring through the streets like a swarm of bees. At the stoplights, all the scooters, and there are many, rush to the front of the line, driving down the wrong side lane, piling up between the cars. As the light turns green, they’re off in a mad scrum! If any car sits for an extra second, all the drivers lean on their horns, reminding the guy that people are waiting!!!!

All along the street, there are small shops, each with its own specialty poking out the doorway to the sidewalk. On our first block, we walk by four bakeries. Another shop sells “stuff to clean with” – dish soap, laundry detergents, mops, toothpaste, shampoo. There are antique dealers, fish mongers, lamps stores, newsstands and barber shops. It’s a very lively place. A gentleman sees Bob reading his map and stops to ask if he can help. He tells us to walk along this “not important” street, and we’ll get to the main avenue. We head down the narrow cobblestone street, full of cars on the sidewalk and laundry hanging from the balconettes. All along the sidewalks, we find memorials, statues of Our Lady, glass cases with flowers and engraved plaques. Some are bigger than phone booths, taking up whole sections of sidewalk, with life-sized statues of a saint, surrounded by plants and bouquets. We navigate our way between the statues and the clothes racks, trying to avoid getting knocked over by the scooters flying by us.

The main avenue into the city is Toledo Street, which becomes a pedestrian zone soon after we reach it. We stop into a church on the way, enjoying the luscious baroque interior, but disappointed in the electric candles for our offering. Toledo Street is very 5^th Ave., where you can purchase Lacoste shorts for your toddler to poop in for a mere 60 Euros. We feel right at home with all the African street peddlers selling sunglasses and hair ornaments from their cardboard displays. We enter the Galleria Umberto, a gorgeous, glass-covered arcade. It’s not at all crowded, and after the bustling streets, we enjoy the open plaza, with the requisite wedding photographer posing his clients at the center.

We continue our walk through the streets without much of a plan, and find ourselves in the university district. The streets are full of bookstores, one after another, and vintage shops, funky cafes and hipsters. Very cool, just what we like. We turn up one narrow, cluttered side street and find ourselves in the land of weird model dioramas. We have stumbled upon the Via San Gregorio Armeno, where one finds everything presepe, elaborate Italian Nativity scenes. This street is the Holy Grail for the more obsessive presepe modeler, with generations-old workshops creating Baby Jesus figurines and all kinds of accessories, down to the most minute detail – little ceramic rolls of bread or small chicks and eggs - for the fully articulated townscape. Some small figures are animated: women rolling bread dough or ironing, a man shoeing a horse, someone cranking a pail from a well. Some shops specialize in making the base strucutres, a collection of stages made of rough wood and moss, anywhere from a single small tableau to practically room-sized. It’s completely freaky, especially since we hadn’t heard of this before and spent some time marveling over the shops trying to figure it all out. Why, why, does this shop sell small clay heads???? We would advise any visitors to AVOID this street any time near the Christmas shopping season.

 1 Video Included

Naples Walk

Sept 10th, Bari to Naples

9/10     Tuesday

We get a double-decker bus to Naples, about a three hour ride. The country is just beautiful, more orchards, and mountains closer to the coast. We arrive at the city center and find our way through the station to the subway. Our host has arranged for someone to meet us at the subway stop in our neighborhood. There’s nobody around the stop as we emerge with our bags and backpacks, except for a couple guys standing on the corner talking to each other, who manage to figure out that we are the party they are waiting for. So they greet us, and before taking us to the apartment, one guy has Bob make a phone call to his phone to make sure we are the right American couple with backpacks that we say we are. Can’t be too careful, I guess.

The streets are raucous with traffic, but our apartment is just a block away, down a cobblestone side street to a private dead-end courtyard. We’re on the second floor, overlooking a small grove of trees. The place is predominately bright orange, with photos and decorations everywhere. It’s nice, in a busy, Italianesque way.

Back on the main street, we look for a café for dinner, trying to avoid any serious shopping. Everything is picturesque to us, like we’ve been dropped into a fifties foreign movie. The city has been making a major effort to clean up, renovate and improve it’s gritty reputation. Some of the high apartments around us are decorated with murals: modern, op-art, quirky and fun. As I’m taking snapshots, I notice a couple of mechanics in a garage behind me joking over me. They stand arms around each other, grinning and posing, “Hey, what about US!” This neighborhood doesn’t see a lot of tourists. We have a little laugh together, and ask them if there’s a pizzeria close. They wave in the direction up the hill. We do find a place there, but we aren’t happy with it. A little more exploration gets us to a market, and we figure we might as well get something to take home. We get a little more good-natured taunting from the guys in the deli, repeating our “OOKAAY, OOKAAY” and “YAH” as we point into the cases and select our purchases. Bob practices a little Italian on our way back, and as we pass our mechanic friends, he shows them our shopping bags and says “Por la casa!”

 1 Video Included

Bus Bari to Naples

Sept 9th, Igoumenitsa to Bari

9/9       Monday

We get up at the crack of before dawn to get on our ferry to Brindisi. There are cars and trucks lined up in the parking area, but no other walk-ons as yet. We head across the lot while the street dogs mill around. Suddenly, a new dog comes onto the lot and all the others run up to greet him. One big old hound gives him a “Welcome to my pack!” Another big old shaggy shepherd dog gives him a “Welcome to MY pack!” “Whoa, what do you mean, YOUR pack!?” says the hound. “You heard me, MY pack!” Now the two big dogs are barking at each other, showing their teeth, while the rest of the gang bark and jump around, trying to look enthusiastic without actually picking sides. The whole mess of dogs decide to stage this pissing contest with US as the centerpiece, and some of the shyer dogs have the mistaken impression that we can shelter them from the chaos. It’s all pretty unnerving, and we walk very slowly to the pier with the arguing, barking pack hopping around us. As we reach the waterfront, some of the dockworkers casually disperse the dogs and save us.

Watching the ferry pull in is really interesting. The huge ship is lit up in the morning darkness, and moves into place inch by inch, with the dockworkers catching the mooring ropes and lining up the gangway. Once it’s set, they wave us on and everyone hurries on to grab a good spot. We have reserved Pullman seats, in a private room that also serves as a small theater. There are only about eight others in the room, so we can take over the seat rows and get some sleep for a few hours.

Later in the morning, we go out to explore the ship. It’s more of a cruise ship than a ferry, with a big restaurant room and floors of private rooms that don’t seem to be in use. There are people camping out all through the ship. Three people have put up an inflatable mattress in a hallway, all of the banquettes in the restaurant are used for beds, and some people have just put their heads down on the tables. Gradually, everyone starts to rouse. We order some tea and latte from the barista, who hands me a cup of hot milk. “You asked for latte!” he deadpans. So what’s coffee with milk? “Cappuccino. You want cappuccino, no problem.” It is incredibly delicious.

After a very pleasant sea cruise across the Adriatic, we arrive at the port of Brindisi. We come into a new port terminal at the industrial side of the harbor, without many services. There’s a free shuttle to the main port terminal, but instead, we grab an overpriced cab directly to the train station in the city.

We get on a train to Bari, an hour or so north. The countryside on the way is filled with olive orchards for miles and miles in every direction. Most of the trees look like they could be five hundred years old, or more.

In Bari, we have a very nice, stylish hotel, The Hotel Victor, right near the Aldo Moro University. We walk to the pedestrian avenue to look for a restaurant.  It’s a lovely 5^th Ave. promenade, filled with all sorts of people, with giant palm trees down the center and designer shops. We’re surprised at how many people are out on the street. We’re also surprised that there are no cafes or restaurants to be seen. Nothing but a few gelato shops. Nothing down the side streets either. If we keep walking, we’ll come to the historic district of the city, but that’s farther than we want to go.

We circle back to our hotel block, heading up another direction, and find soon some tables on the sidewalk. We ask if we can sit, and do, although they’re not quite ready to serve us, they’re just getting open. We sit and relax at a table for four, and order some beer and pizza. There’s still nobody else in the restaurant. A woman and an older man come up the street and sit at the tables across from us. It’s a setting for six, but they take the end two, which is perfectly normal. The proprietor lady comes out and basically tells them to leave. Apparently she’d rather have the restaurant empty before she has people sitting at the wrong table. Somehow, we escaped her notice until it was too late to chase us away.

1 Video Included

Ferry and Train, Igoumenitsa to Bari

Sept 8th, Lazy Day

9/8       Sunday

            Hotel lazy day, we take a walk, have dinner, and prep for the ferry ride.

Sept 6th, Day Off

9/6       Friday

            We stay in, watch TV, and relax for most of the day.

Sept 7th, Thessaloniki to Igoumenitsa

9/7       Saturday

We had no trouble walking down the hill with our packs for a few blocks to the bus stop, and only waited for five minutes before our bus came along. At 7am, the bus was nearly empty. The bus station seemed so far away and remote when we arrived at night last Monday, but now we can see that it’s just outside of the city center, actually very convenient.

The trip across Greece goes smoothly, no stops. We are surprised at mountainous the country is, quite rugged and beautiful. The highway runs through one tunnel after another, some of them very long, and with only a few hundred feet to the next one. It’s like being in a subway. It must have been a long and difficult road to build.

When we arrive at the ferry port town of Igoumenitsa, Bob calls our hotel, Holiday Zigos, and the owner comes right away to pick us up. We’re just a few blocks away and right across the street from the ferry to Italy. We have a little apartment, not just a hotel room. Joanna, his wife, brings us a platter of fresh fruit and cold bottled water to welcome us.

We walk over to the port to scope out our ferry for tomorrow. We’re leaving at 6am, or 6:30, or 5:30, it seems to “depend.” One ticket agent tells us to come two hours ahead for our five am boat. We wouldn’t need our hotel after all if we were just up all night for the boat. Another woman tells us we can check in Sunday at 9pm, and be at the ferry for a 5am departure, a more manageable situation, despite the early hour.

So, that accomplished, we walk along the waterfront to explore our little city of Igoumenitsa. It’s ferociously hot and everything is shut down for the afternoon. We do find a pleasant waterside café for an iced tea break, but the hoped-for beach is too far off to even be seen. There doesn’t seem to be much available as a local bus or taxi, either. We give up and walk back along a block landward, where there are more shops (closed) and cafes, restaurants and bakeries. It seems like quite a tourist destination with dozens and dozens of tavernas and such, but there’s not a soul to be seem at the moment.

We just give up, totally overheated, and go home to our hotel to shower and wait for sunset. When it finally arrives, it becomes beautifully cool and breezy. There’s a nice restaurant near our hotel with wooden tables and checkered tablecloths, where we sit outside and enjoy a plate of grilled sardines for dinner.

  

  

1 Video Included

Bus Thessaloniki to Igoumenitsa