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Europe 2007 2008 Wednesday, November 14, 2007 The O’Grady kids, Sean and Meghan had off from school on Monday, Veteran’s Day, and everyone just sort of hung around the house watching TV and playing video games. Sean and Meghan each have their own set of games, but sometimes they played a video game together and sometimes one would watch as the other one played a video game. I also got my laundry done. Sean had injured his right thumb playing flag football at school, and has been wearing a cast for the past two weeks, but he had an appointment with the doctor today and the cast came off. However, he got a splint that he has to wear at certain times, like during activities when he might again injure the thumb, and when he goes to sleep.  Both
Sean and Meghan had school yesterday and today, but they have the next two
days off. I spent my time exploring other sights in Naples. I visited
Capodimonte, another fantastic museum featuring thousands of works of art
donated by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese who became Pope Paul III, as well as
paintings from the old masters of Europe, like Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio,
and Bottecelli. They even had an El Greco prominently displayed. El Greco is
following me around! The Capodimonte collection includes a special gallery
of “rare objects” that the Farnese family donated, and it includes a gallery
of medieval armor and weapons in excellent condition. A knight in full armor
mounted on an armored horse guard the display cabinets of gun, crossbows,
and swords. The Capodimonte Palace is in a park-like setting situated on a
hill overlooking the city of Naples. Back in the old section of Naples, I also visited a small, almost nondescript, church, the Cappella di San Severo, located on a narrow side street. The church houses a remarkable statue called the “Veiled Christ.” The statue carved from one solid block of marble shows Christ lying on his back on a magnificent marble bed; his body is entirely covered with a veil. Despite the fact that the sculpture is made entirely of one piece of marble, the veil appears translucent. So you can actually see the body of Christ through the solid stone! I can’t imagine how it was done. I walked along other narrow streets lined with tiny shops, stalls and street vendors. A couple of shops sold pasta and other Italian food specialties like olive oil and spices. The variety available in the tiny little stores presented me with a mind-boggling display. On the street, vendors were selling crèches made from moss-covered bark. People decorate the creches with nativity scenes during the Christmas holidays. I have never seen rustic crèches like these before. Traveling around and using the Naples transportation system is both similar and dissimilar to my experiences with the transportation systems in Greece and Turkey. By far, the Turks have the best, most modern and comfortable busses. Busses are also the best way to travel around Greece; however, the Greek busses are not as good as those in Turkey. Here in Naples, all types of trains seem to hold sway. In the city, the transportation choices include trams, metro-subway, busses, and funiculars. At first the transportation options can be confusing, but you can quickly get the hang of it. To ride public transport, you have to purchase a ticket before boarding. The tickets are sold at tobacco kiosks and at the bus or train stations. You can get an inexpensive city ticket good for 60 minutes, 90 minutes, and in other increments of time up to and including a day ticket. These tickets need to be time stamped when you get on the bus or before you enter the metro or train. There are little ticket stamp machines on mounted on posts at the various train stations and on the busses. Stiff penalties await people who do not have valid tickets, and I had to show my ticket to inspectors before leaving the train station several times. To go out of the city, you have to purchase a regional or long distance ticket, and they cost more, of course. The busses and trains that I have ridden are neither new nor comfortable. Everything is covered with graffiti; it reminds me of New York in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Like the graffiti, trash seems to be everywhere. As you travel, mounds of trash are randomly piled along the roads, and along the side of the railroad track lines. In the city, there are actually recycling containers, but as Gayle and Ron have told me, they don’t mean anything. The city of Naples and its suburbs are bleak. The buildings are little more than concrete boxes; some are painted, but the paint is peeling on many buildings. The windows, and doors have metal shutters, and small balconies are common. On side streets, where the buildings seem to close in on one another, the balconies have clothes hanging on lines to dry. In contrast to the grimy conditions in the city, people dress very smartly and in the latest Italian fashion. From what I have seen, young Italian women from say eighteen to forty years of age, could all be fashion models. Many men also wear elegant suits and jackets. The shoes and leather accessories for booth men and women ooze style. I haven’t had a full range of food yet, but Naples equals pizza, “authentic pizza,” of course. All over Europe, a plain cheese pizza is called a Margherita, named after Queen Margherita of Savoy. Authentic pizza has to have fresh mozzarella made from buffalo milk, and of course the dough has to be hand tossed. Quality extra virgin olive oil and sea salt goes into the requirements as well. The authentic pizza must bake in a wood-fired oven at between 215 and 250 degrees Celsius. The real Neopolitan Pizza, “la vera pizza napolitana,” earns an official seal of approval only by meeting all the official requirements. Finally, did I mention that the Neopolitan Pizza that I have tried is good? Well, it really is good. Thursday, November 15, 2007 Sean and I took the regional train to Pompeii today. It took us a few hours to get to Pompeii, south of Naples, passing Herculaneum and other towns and villages sitting under the gaze of Mount Vesuvius. We walked all over Pompeii, in and out of ruins. Sean and I got audio-guides and mapped out a great route through the large ancient city. Vesuvius has erupted many times; in 79 C.E., the eruption devastated large areas of the central coast; Herculaneum is under about 60 feet of ash, and excavation continues both at Herculaneum and at Pompeii.  Walking
through Pompeii, a city frozen in time, allows you to get a very good feel
for how people lived two thousand years ago, in a prosperous Roman
community. Twenty thousand people lived in Pompeii at the time of the
eruption; about two thousand died. The eruption of Vesuvius covered
Herculaneum in ash, but it covered Pompeii in burning cinders and pumice as
well as ash. Both Sean and I enjoyed listening to the audio-guides because
there is much that archeologists know about the ruins. They know, for
example, the names of the people who owned the houses at the time, although
it’s hard for me to remember all the Roman names. Some of the houses of the
wealthy citizens have all the amenities of villas and modern resorts. There
are inner and outer gardens, fountains, pools, baths, kitchens, bedrooms,
and parlors. Many have some of the original painting and mosaic decorations
covering the walls, floors and ceilings. In some houses, Sean recognized
mosaics that we had seen in the archeology museum in Naples. Some of the
mosaics have been partially removed and are exhibited at the museum. The audio-guides told us much about the superstitions and “evil-eye.” At the many outdoor food stores, like McD’s, the Romans had objects to ward off the “evil-eye.” We visited a commercial laundry where one of the main ingredients of their “detergent” was urine! I am not joking. They collected urine to wash woolen materials. They also used a fine clay to clean the fabric, and, of course, rinsed everything with clean water before hanging the clothes out to dry. The wash basins in the laundry were the size of large bath tubs. We visited the public baths that had an underground heating system, and running water in multiple rooms for washing, messages, drying, etc. The audio-guides explained the entire intricate process. Sean and I explored the three theaters in town, the large horseshoe-shaped theater and small horseshoe-shaped theater for plays had an outdoor gathering place where people could mingle and get snacks during intermissions! Not much has changed in two thousand years, I’d say. The oval amphitheater, largest of all, held the gladiators’ competitions. Sean and I climbed all over the amphitheater. According to the audi-guide, the people of Pompeii, reveled in the gladiators’ spectacles. In addition, we trekked over the necropolis, and the many temples. Some of these date back another thousand years or so to ancient Greek civilizations. I think Sean and I were the last of the visitors to leave Pompeii in the evening. We did not see it all, but we saw enough to have some sore feet when we go home that night. Sunday, November 18, 2007 I left the O’Grady’s yesterday to head down the Amalfi coast for Salerno, near the site of the 1943 American landing in Italy during the Second World War. There’s an American cemetery here, but not much else commemorating the event. I am staying in an Italian Hostel that used to be a convent. Every time I come into the place, Shakespeare’s line, “get thee to a nunnery,” pops into my head. The hostel is attached to a small church, and you can look down onto the pews from windows in the hostel. The nuns used to watch services this way. The people at the hostel recommended a small restaurant, Il Brigante, a few blocks away. I walked through the narrow old town streets and found the place, but not without a little bit of searching. No sign on the outside identifies the restaurant, but everyone in the neighborhood knew of it, and pointed me in the right direction. It was a very small place, family-run, and the menu was hand written on a sheet of paper. The handwritten Italian was not easy for me to read; cursive writing in Italy does not look like cursive writing in America. However, at a table near to me, a young Italian couple that spoke some English, helped translate the menu. The idea was to have three dishes for dinner, an appetizer, a first course and a second course. I ordered an appetizer of white beans in olive oil with basil and pesto on the side, very good. My first course was baked eggplant and pasta parmigiana, also very good, and my second course was a sautéed squid, with potatoes in a light cream sauce, excellent. I drank some naturally carbonated water, and red wine. This was the best meal I have had in Italy so far, and it cost only 10 Euros, roughly $15.00. Feeling sated, I walked down to the waterfront, stopping on the way to look into the cathedral, and then I continued walking along the pedestrian shopping street for a while. Then I went back to the hostel. This morning, although a bit overcast, I took the bus up the Amalfi coast from Salerno to Sorrento. The coast along this peninsula is perhaps the most rugged and beautiful in all of Europe. Jagged volcanic rock ledges drop hundreds of feet into the blue water of the Mediterranean, and small towns dot the coastline every ten kilometers or so. About halfway between Salerno and Sorrento is the town of Amalfi with its picturesque mosaic covered, Moorish style cathedral, and ceramic shops. Like the cathedral in Salerno that I visited yesterday, the crypts underlie the church. The crypts are highly decorated large rooms. Their ceilings are ornately painted, and an altar with statues watches over the dead. The Amalfi cathedral has a central courtyard with beautiful pillars, called the cloister of paradise, and the cathedral has a room full of rare, valuable, jeweled church objects like chalices, crosses, and a rare 13th century mitre encrusted with twenty thousand pearls, gold, and other gems. The mitre is a regal pole about five feet tall with a graceful curved top. I got to Sorrento around 3:00 p.m., and had a few hours to walk around. There are many upscale hotels and shops in Sorrento; couples go there for their honeymoon, or weddings, or just for a romantic retreat. Landscaped walks and parks have lush vegetation. I passed a shop that sold fine leather handbags and accessories, and another that manufactured a lemon drink called “limonoro.” Ron and Gayle O’Grady had some that I had tasted at their house. The lemon flavored drink is supposed to clear your palate and ease your food-swollen stomach after a large meal. However, I did not like the flavor, and decided not to stuff myself enough to warrant drinking it. 
The ride along the Amalfi coast road is
truly a “white-knuckle” experience. If you fear heights, and windy, curving
narrow roads with precipitous drops into the ocean, don’t drive this road.
There are sharp curves everywhere, and busses honk to warn oncoming traffic
that they are taking up the entire roadway as they round a bend. The road is
not as narrow as the “single track” roads I drove in Scotland, but two
vehicles cannot pass each other in many places. |
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other temples, one to Hera, and another called the Basilica are somewhat
smaller. The city once supported seventy thousand people. It was close to
the sea, on an easily cultivated flat plain. The surrounding area was
largely wetland swamp, and after the Greeks abandoned the city, and later
when the Roman empire collapsed, it was more or less forgotten until the
20th century. Now it is a spectacular World Heritage site.