Michele and Drew's Excellent Spanish Adventure: Italy Dec 29-Jan 6

Italy Dec 29-Jan 6

Sorrento port

Sorrento

Home of the famed Limoncello, is a lovely little seaside town on the Mediterranean, largely supported by the tourism. It is set high on cliffs, and affords lovely views of the Mt. Vesuvius and the bay of Naples. It’s the end of the local train line that goes to Naples. Many people use it as a base to explore the Amalfi coast.

another view of coastline from Sorrento

Nothing gives you a better first impression of a town than eating a phenomenal meal within an hour of arriving (see photo seafood delight). We liked our little pension nestled amongst citrus trees, complete with furry miniature horse. In the mornings we sat around a table shared with other guests from Italy and Budapest. The sustenance came more from the great conversation rather than the alimentation.

Sorrento was our base to explore the Roman ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Pompeii had been a thriving port town with its importance being trade, and Herculaneum had been a sort of vacation/resort town (funny to think of people living in the 1^st century taking vacations).

Herculaneum excavation- many meters of lava

mosaic in Archeological Museum of Naples

Herculaneum

They were both destroyed in the Mt. Vesuvius eruption of 79AD, but had very different experiences. Pompeii was already about 500 years old when Vesuvius blew its top, it apparently looked like a pointy pyramid before the eruption. Pompeii was buried under about 3 meters of ash and debris, then was hit by a surge of heated gas, asphyxiating any remaining people, followed by another 4 meters of ash. Herculaneum on the other hand was buried in a lava flow. These buried cities were long forgotten for centuries. Though discovered a century or two earlier, excavations didn’t start till the 1700’s. The king of Naples permitted the excavations with the stipulation that he got the best of the booty. You can imagine all the thievery and destruction of the site that occurred. Excavations stopped and started over many years. They are still in the process of excavating, but now use modern, painstaking preservation techniques. We wandered the sites, impressed by the incredibly colorful murals on the walls, intricate mosaic floors, the architecture of temples, baths, and local houses, the famed Roman roads with visible wear and tear from chariot wheels, the amount of intact jars/vessels, and bakeries with large grinding devices and ovens. I read something interesting online that puts the importance these archeological excavations into perspective for me…the discoveries had a huge influence on the popular culture of 1700 and 1800’s throughout Europe. Artists and architects of the day abandoned the popular Rococo style and came to embrace a new style, which we know today as Neoclassicism.

ancient chariot track and modern cigarette

view from Pompeii

bathhouse

We went into Naples by train specifically to see the Archeological museum, which houses many of the objects found during the excavations. To our dismay, the museum’s once stately building was pretty run down. Half of the exhibits were closed for renovation (not good for us, but I’m sure they needed it). More interesting (in that “glad I saw it, and don’t need to see it again” way) was the walk from the train station to the museum. In theory you can take the subway virtually from the train station to the museum. However, they had closed down many of the metro stations that day for “security reasons” we were told, due to a concert somewhere in town. So, we went on foot…we passed a burned out wrecked car, piles of trash, old pizza black with mold. We watched people drop trash while they walked, without a second thought. Buildings, once probably lovely, now were crumbling everywhere you looked…wires and cables haphazardly strung across them in a “this is good enough” sort of manner. I would have been into it if was “cool” gritty, but to me it was just dirty. Drew said he remembered parts of Philly looking even worse in the 70’s. I was anxious to get back to Sorrento. The train lines would shut down early for New Years Eve, and we were told it would be like “Vietnam during the war” with guns, fireworks, explosions...obviously more exaggeration. We watched the Naples skyline from across the bay in Sorrento, and saw nonstop fireworks for what seemed like hours lighting up the city. In Sorrento we enjoyed the crowds of merrymakers in the street. The next day we had a very interesting talk with a local about our observations. We got quite an interesting education on the various mafia organizations in Italy, their links to the trash business, Columbian drug cartels, how dirty money is “cleaned” via real estate investments (not just in Italy) etc.

Next stop Rome...