Day Seven, the Capoteline

The Forum as viewed from the top of the Wedding Cake

There are some things that just must be experienced when you visit Rome. Last year we went to the Vatican Museum and were given a wonderful tour by a little lady who we dubbed ‘Yoda’s sister’ so we really had covered that well. This year, the most important museum on my agenda was the complex on the Capitoline hill. With this goal in mind we set out and caught the bus just on the other side of Piazza Zama that took us to the base of the Capitoline hill. Last year we had not climbed all of those steps up the left side to the church which sits in the temple to Jupiter Maximus but we were fresh and so I led Donna up what must number in the thousands of steps. Bummer, when we got all of the way up, the place was locked up solid and there was apparently no connection to Michelangelo’s square in the center of the Capitoline.

We did discover an open gate to the left that led around to the back side of the Monument to Vittorio Emmanuelle (we called it the wedding cake when we were kids). Since the last time that I had lived in Rome they have added a very cool feature to this monument. I had read about it in our guide book. They put an elevator on the back side of it and this elevator takes people to the roof of the darn thing, right up there with the two chariot winged victory statues. For 10€ each we went up there and I have to say, from there you get the most incredible perspective of Rome that there ever was. This is the true, new ‘E’ ticket ride in Rome! If you come, and you only have a day, I strongly recommend going to the top of the monument to Vittorio Emmanuelle which is also Rome’s tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Apart from the two statues which sit higher than the central roof, you basically get an unobstructed 360 degree view of all of Rome and you are standing above every other building for many miles around. I’m pretty sure we were higher up than the top of the Janicolo which used to be the prime viewing place in the City.

There are some high power binocular/ telescopes up there as well. With these you can count the nose hairs on a face miles away. These were very powerful. I took photos all the way around. At home I have a program that puts together photos into a panorama; we’ll see how that comes out. Eventually, we went back down and it turns out that if you continue around the back toward the Corso Imperiale, you can get over to the Capitoline from there. We loved the two museums on the Capitoline, they were truly inspiring. I guess that for the most part, I am into statues, and that is what these museums were dominantly about. Unfortunately, the Medusa head by Bernini was on loan to Capua, co we missed that but I went mostly to see the Dying Gaul because of the book Desmond did by the same name. A tunnel connects one museum to the other and crosses under the piazza so one ticket does both museums.

Finishing there we lazed under some Stone Pines and took in the view of the Forum. Looking down, on the side of the wedding cake we noticed that it was there that the ‘Tribute to Luciano Pavarotti’ was being exhibited, plus there was an Exhibit of Picasso’s work in the same building. We walked down, the Pavarotti exhibit was very interesting and incredibly moving and powerful. They had set up projectors that used a whole huge wall as a screen. On both sides were cycling black and white photos of Luciano, 16 at a time. In the center was floor to ceiling video of his more famous performances including one done in Sarajevo with a symphony orchestra, U2 and Bono. The side walls had grids of dozens of plasma monitors with video of other events with the great man. They said that they had 6 million meters of taped video of Pavarotti. That seems like a lot to me. The stereo system was excellent and the music was unfathomably powerful. Naturally they had other paraphernalia as well. A whole wall of all of the records and CDs of his music, many of the costumes that he had used in the operas he had performed in, etc., ect. I really enjoyed this exhibit; I only wish that I had actually seen him perform in real life. Next we went upstairs to see Picasso, he wasn’t there but there was a sizable amount of his work. I’m ashamed to say, I don’t really like most of what he did. The pencil drawings and the sculptures talked to me more than the paintings but I guess that my true love is rooted in antiquity.

Exiting the exhibitions we wandered around to the front and climbed the stairs in the front of Vittorio Emmanuelle enough to see the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They had a special cop on the steps whose job it was to blow his whistle and prevent anyone from sitting on any one of all of those steps. He explained that this is a military monument and you must not sit down out of respect for the dead soldiers. Five in the evening, tired and in need of a recharge, we headed off to the Ghetto. Most of it is closed to traffic so it is much more pleasant than it used to be. It hasn’t come into its own yet as a tourist destination but I can see that very soon it will be full of restaurants with tourist eating on the streets. We sat down at a bar to have a beer. After a while we noticed that a group of well dressed elderly women were starting to accumulate on the bench across the street from us. Four of them were sitting side by side on one bench. Then three men come over to our side and sit down at the outdoor table next to ours and start talking but don’t purchase anything. As time goes by, more women arrive; they bring their own folding chairs and set up around the bench with the original four women. For a while it becomes multi generational as a young girl comes to hang out with her grandmother. Meanwhile at the table next to us, there were more and more men joining this group. We must have sat down at the tables that they habitually occupy, they didn’t ask us to move or to leave but we started feeling surrounded. Now there were over ten men. Some were sitting next to and behind Donna and some next to and behind me. We thought that it was getting to pretty comical. All of the men grouped next to us and not one of them has purchased a thing from this bar. All the while, those ladies were over there on the other side, serious and watching the men on our side. Finishing our beer, we decided that it was time to move on. We abandoned our spot and the men spread out into our chairs.

Day Six- Tivoli

At the entrance to the Villa D'Este

Boy were we wiped out after all of that gallivanting around Rome the previous day. I don’t know how far that was that we walked but it did follow the walking of the previous day in Pompeii. These old bodies aren’t as resilient as they used to be. Thank God for Tylenol and IB. Well, today was to be a big adventure. Last year I couldn’t figure out how to get to Tivoli but did know that the trains went there. So, we set off, walked down to ‘Re di Roma’ to get the Metro and took it to Termi. We climbed up out to the track level, purchased our tickets and then learned that the train to Tivoli doesn’t leave from Termi, it leaves from Tiburtina, the guy also told us to go down to track one to the information booth. Silly us, we thought that there was something that we needed to know, so we walked all the way down to the information booth on track one, waited in line and then told the lady that we wanted the train for Tivoli. She says that we have to go to Tiburtina to get the train for Tivoli. So I say, “OK, how often do the trains run?” She answers that we have to go to Tiburtina to get that information too. So I guess that was all the information that they had for us at Termi. Back down to the Metro and a short ride got us to the correct station. The Metro really is quite wonderful in Rome, who would have thought. By the way, I just saw today that they are building a new Metro line ‘C’, supposedly it is going to go to all of the ancient ruins. I’m not sure how they are going to pull that off since there are ruins everywhere but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

View of Rome

Neither of us has a watch, so I have no idea how long it took us to get to Tivoli but it seemed like around an hour and Tivoli was beautiful. From up there, you have a fantastic view of the valley that houses Rome. We would recommend Tivoli as a good place for an overnighter as well. The town is very inviting and there are lots of things to explore. Arriving, I asked in the train station how to get to the Villa D’Este. The lady said, just down the road, about a ten minute walk. Well, it wasn’t exactly that, there were some turns and stuff but it wasn’t all that far and along the way we discovered that Tivoli had another attraction. I did not absorb its name and it was closed by the time we got out of the Villa D’Este but what it is essentially is a very, very deep compact valley with what are advertised as the most spectacular waterfalls in Europe. Since it was closed, we cast around for someplace to eat and did go into a place named after mom called, ‘Flo’s Bar’. We didn’t actually go into Flo’s which was at street level but instead followed the signs for the restaurant which led us down a few flights of stairs to a large terrace cantilevering over the above mentioned canyon. So, I did get a few photos of the waterfalls from above even if we missed out on the chance to walk in it.

Villa D’Este! What can I say, if you haven’t ever been there, you really must go and experience it for yourself. Some Pope must have really liked water, they re-routed two rivers to power the fountains of the garden and some of these fountains really have power! Dad, I took photos of all of the different runnels that went down the sides of staircases and in one case down the top of a railing. I remember that you wanted to somehow replicate these ideas at the Kensington property. Perhaps someday I’ll eventually have the opportunity to do one somewhere. Todd & Gail perhaps a PowerPoint presentation for the membership would be in order. I have literally hundreds of photos of the fountains and of the town.

As with all walking adventures, we eventually got pretty tired of waking and Renzo had told us that in Tivoli right next to the temple of the Sibili there is an excellent restaurant that is THE place to go have lunch in Tivoli. So we set off over the hill and off to the left of the center there was a Roman temple which an old lady confirmed was the temple that we were looking for. Next to it was a restaurant that proclaimed its name was Sibili. We figured OK and set off for it. Arriving, apparently after 3:00 p.m. the place looked extremely expensive but we went in anyway and asked for lunch. The guy inside was on the phone but he looked at his watch and said that the restaurant was closed. We took off a little concerned, the restaurant below ‘Flo’s’ was the next one that we tried but they told us their kitchen was also closed as they delivered a plate of pasta to this French guy who insisted on trying to talk to us about how he forced them to allow him to eat outside instead of in and read me an excerpt from his photocopied one hundred year old travel guide of Rome and its surroundings (in French) that explained how great the waterfalls in the canyon really were. This deck had its own private entrance into the canyon garden and Donna tried to tempt me but we went on to look for a place that was willing to serve us lunch. We crossed the street to the next restaurant and that one was closed (locked up) and went next door to the next one. This one looked very promising as there were still a number of different tables of guests eating lunch. We asked the owner to seat us; he looked a little worried and stuck his head into the kitchen returning to tell us that the kitchen was closed. Well, we had exhausted every restaurant in the neighborhood and the eating district was uphill, we asked the guy at the sidewalk gas station what time it was and found that it was less than ten minutes before the next train left for Rome. Off we went in a hurry and jumped on the train minutes before its departure.

Once in the neighborhood of where we were staying, we went into a place that I had found that morning that was full of whole prosciuttos, cheese and bread. We proceeded to buy two ettos of prosciutto, two balls of mozzarella di buffola and three soft, fresh rosetti along with some freshly made tortellini stuffed with ricotta and spinach. We also stopped at a roadside stand to buy some tomatoes and a head of finochio (fennel). For me, I was in heaven; I had one and a half sandwiches of prosciutto and mozzarella in roman paninos along with a finochio salad and some tortellini and a bottle of cheap red wine which in Italy is actually, pretty good. That was possibly the best meal I had in Italy because I missed it so much. I know that those of you that live in San Francisco can actually purchase rosettis from Il Fornaio but I never have found them in San Diego and both the prosciutto and the mozzarella seemed to be better than what I am able to buy at home. Renzo says that if I like it so much I should buy a leg of prosciutto and bring it back on the plane. He insists that it needs to be brought back as carry on and not be checked. Perhaps because if it is checked, someone will make off with it before it gets to San Diego. When he came home Renzo asked if I had eaten at the restaurant next to the temple of the Sibili, I explained that it was closed and that in fact all of the restaurants were closed. He looked at me and said, Bryan you grew up in Italy, you should have known. Restaurants close after the lunch hour. The other side of that is just try to get a meal in Italy before 7:30p.m., it just isn’t possible. The Italians have a lot of rules about when you can eat or at least, when they are willing to serve you.

Day Five (Monday)

French Church

F.Y.I. This is Italy, on Mondays; everything of historical importance is closed.

Piazza Navona is going to the Pigeons

We returned the car to the airport, by now I am getting over getting lost all of the time. We actually navigated to the airport with little to do. I only made two wrong turns along the way but immediately realized that I had tried to apply logic to the situation and was able to rectify my naiveté and apply counter logic to get me back on the correct course. Dropping off the car was painless and we proceeded to the train station at the airport to catch the train to Termi which is the main station in Rome. We arrived at the station, followed the throngs out the front and began our great walking loop of what I consider the must see at least once while in Rome spots.

Campo Dei Fiori

First to Piazza della Republica to see the fountain (Rome for me is and always has been all about its fountains). On the piazza is the church converted from part of the baths of Diocletian called Santa Maria degli Angeli e’ gli Martiri (Santa Maria of the Angles and the Martyrs) which was worked on by Michelangelo and many others. It was pretty spectacular and definitely worth a look. From there we went on to Piazza Barberini (for the fountain) but the flow was reduced from where it should be. On to the Spanish Steps. We approached from above and bummer the church was closed but what a view of the City. Down the steps and past the boat fountain, across to Via Condoti which occasioned an obligatory visit into one of its exclusive stores by Donna who eventually emerged with a package in her hand and a smile on her face. Down a side street called Via Mario Dei Fiori kept us off the larger congested roads and soon we emerged onto the piazza that houses the Fontana di Trevi (another fountain). The fountain was being repaired, no water flowed and a crane was parked to the side. Naturally, no one was working on the fountain. From there down the alleys of Via delle Murate toward the Pantheon. I didn’t go look at the fountain in front of the Panteon, the building is so overwhelming that all else is lost. We did however go to the Tasso D’Oro for a coffee while in the neighborhood. Next, on to Piazza Navona. Mom, the church of the French something was closed, I will try to get back there sometime. Wasn’t there a statue of the Madonna with the dying Christ (like the pieta) on that same street behind Piazza Navona somewhere? I seem to remember old ladies touching the feet when I was a kid. Anyone know where that was?

Arch connects the Pallazzo Farnese across Via Giulia to another Palazzo

In Piazza Navona they are still working on the main fountain a year and a half later if you can believe that. The place was happening as usual. Artists selling their paintings and the cafes and restaurants full of people. We stopped and rested and paid 14€ for two coffees ($21.00) but it was worth it. From there we went past San Andrea della Valle into Largo del Pallaro to see the old house. Donna values the historical importance of this site as well since it is built on top of the theatre of Pompeii (yes, that same Pompeii guy that I mentioned before) where Julius Caesar was assassinated. We went through the metal gates and stopped at that restaurant (whose name escapes me) and asked to be allowed into their basement. There we stood in part of the ruins of the theatre. It was heavy with history and very powerful for both of us. Into the Campo dei Fiori, the market was being disassembled. And on to the Villa Farnese, we sat and rested on one of the fountains. I dragged Donna down the alley to Via Gulia so that I could look at that wall fountain of the face again. We got to see into the back garden of palazzo Farnese from the Via Gulia side and then we went down Via Gulia toward the Ghetto, the Theatro Marcellus and the bus stop to get us back home for the evening. Almost every one of these places had been visited last time we came but I feel the need to reconnect each time I return. By the way, we are already planning when to come next year. Perhaps in June on the way to Greece?

Day Four, Pompeii and the Pope

Next morning was a lazy start, our goal for the day was to visit Pompeii. The distance was not far so we were not in a hurry. We had a relaxed breakfast out on the porch and Donna brought her pastels and did a drawing of the scenery while we ate. We packed, brought our suitcases down to the lobby and checked out. This time there was a strong guy standing around in the lobby to carry the bags down to the car. I was happy to see that and I know why he must hide when it comes time to carry luggage up those stairs. So he just tied all of our bags together with a rope, hoisted the lot over his shoulder and off he went down those stairs. We followed and when we arrived at the car, the guys there extracted the Micra and then gave us a bill for 42.50€ (around $60.00) for two nights parking. This really got Donna going, she was not a happy camper, she was even moved to climb all of those stairs to go talk to that lady at the hotel. The lady at the hotel said that the small print on their web site said that parking was not included so tuff shit. We intend to crucify this place on the web for being so deceptive that there was no mention at all of a parking fee until the second we were ready to leave (after we had paid our hotel bill). Anyway, now you know why it was that all of those well to do Italians were parking their cars kilometers down the main highway from the entrance to the town to save what amounts to a lot more than a few bucks to park their cars for free.

Down we went into the town and back up again. Turn left and shortly we were stopped by a police traffic lady on duty at this corner of the highway that was so tight that she needed to stop the northbound traffic to allow each southbound bus to get around the corner without killing anyone. We had seen four or five other traffic policemen standing around at various corners along the road the previous day in obscure locations. Watching this operation gave me new appreciation of just how narrow, sinuous and dangerous this road really is. Amazingly, we returned to the freeway without incident and without getting lost. Shortly later we arrived at the exit to Pompeii. The exit brought us off to the left of the freeway or to the west of the freeway, being a seasoned traveler by now and having cast off the last vestiges of my macho ego over the past few days, I immediately stopped to ask the Carabinieri who were standing on the center divider of the freeway exit for directions to old Pompeii. He said that the Pope was on his way into town and that he wasn’t sure that I would be allowed to go to the digs (Scavi) but I was welcome to try. Just go right, follow a while, go right again, up over some sort of rise, down the other side and go right again, no problem. So we take off, the place is crawling with Carabinieri. They are following us on motor cycles and going the other way too. There are lots of signs to the Scavi Pompeii and I only need to stop and ask directions one more time. I do however accidently take this right at a Y in the road that leads me into the parking lot of some mega market. Once in, just try to get out. We did eventually leave but it was a quite convoluted route designed to accommodate a couple of hundred people stuck in a traffic jam. Arriving outside of the Scavi, there was a restaurant that only wanted to charge us 5€ to park. It had only cost us 2.5€ to park at Ostia Antica but after what we had just paid in Positano that morning, this seemed pretty cheap. The Carabinieri were arriving, more and more every minute. We had trepidation that the Pope would arrive and they would close down Pompeii. Pretty soon there were two SWAT vans (the Italian version) and Carabinieri cars with machine guns all over the place. Anyway, we went on in, we figured once we were in, no problem, we would just hang out with the Pope inside the Scavi di Pompeii.

The Scavi di Pompeii are huge! This was a major city; the ruins go on for kilometers in all directions. It was very interesting to check it out but they should run bus tours through it. Donna discovered that the ancient city had fast food stands on all the main streets, turns out that fast food was not invented in the States. No point in going into any details except to note that Pompeiius Magnus came from Pompeii (for those of you that saw the Rome series on HBO) and that the city was conquered and brought into the Roman sphere of influence by Sulla who is everyone’s hero that read the Colline McCollough Series that started with the ‘First Man in Rome’ book. The guide book said that you could still see the dents made in the arches at the city gates caused by Sulla’s men who threw rocks at the walls as they stormed the city. Donna, being a newly anointed scholar of the late Roman Republic was thrilled by these observations and in being able to stand where these great men had also stood. Actually, sharing history with the ‘Greats’ and standing where they stood is a pretty powerful experience. I recommend to anyone that they will get so much more out of Italy if they study its history first. I included a photo of the pedestrian bumps that cross all of the streets. These were so that the pedestrians wouldn’t have to step into the open sewers that the streets represented. As time went on, we ended up at the opposite end of the City from the entrance. Now there was a helicopter hovering in the air near the other end of the city. It remained hovering for around an hour, in a way unfortunate because it went a long way toward breaking the harmony of the experience of catharting with Pompeii .

We were bushed; we stumbled out of Pompeii and down to the car. Ate at the restaurant and were soon on our way to Rome. Never did get to see the Pope, turns out he went to the new town of Pompeii and they just had extra Carabinieri hanging around for the fun of it. Boy did we get lost trying to get back to Rome, lucky we didn’t end up in Florence. Every highway in Italy seems to be called A1. Well one part of A1 bypasses Rome completely and goes on for 30 km without any exits. We missed the first exit to the ring road around Rome because it was a great deal less than clear. We finally got off of A1 way north of the ring road around Rome and returned south along a highway that paralleled via Salaria back to the ring road. By then we had analyzed the map and proceeded to go the wrong way on the ring road. We were headed counter clockwise toward Fumicino and would need to go three quarters of the circumference to get to where we wanted to exit. We exited, went right and ended up again going the wrong way. I decided to apply Roman logic to the situation. Whatever seems logical, ignore it and go with the counter intuitive solution to the problem. That worked fantastically and I got us out of this ridiculous clover leaf build under the freeway that had led us on a merry goose chase trying to follow logic since there really were no signs anywhere to tell us which way to go. We got back to Beatrice and Renzo’s house exhausted and greatly relieved. All I could think about was that tomorrow morning I was going to return that car in one piece to the rental place at the airport and I would not be getting lost again on this trip.

Day Three, we drive down the Amalphi Coast

Day Three:

By the way, Women hear this, in Italy the new ‘in’ color or is it the old ‘in’ color is now ‘in’ again- Royal Purple is it! Other purples and plums will work as well.

Donna had left her sun glasses in Rome when we left. This turned out to be somewhat of an emergency and she was determined to buy a new pair. Problem was, in Positano, you cannot get a pair of sun glasses for less than $150. We even went into a very small pharmacist that also had a rack of sun glasses in the window; I guess that the average Italian tourist wouldn’t be seen dead in a cheap pair of sunglasses. We departed after our continental breakfast, picked up the car and drove down into the village. At the bottom the road we met another two roads. We took the one heading south since that is the way we were heading. The other is the main road into and out of town. They widened is so that it is actually a two way road. However, I noticed that in order to widen the road, one lane was hanging out (cantilevering) in the air completely.

What can I say? The drive down the Amalfi coast was breathtaking. I became even more adept at pulling over to let faster traffic go by. This included buses and trucks. Everyone was in a hurry. I did however draw the line on the way home when these two guys on bicycles tried to pass me on a downhill grade. One can only take so much humiliation so I speeded up and lost them on an uphill grade. The drive was full of wonders. One incredible vista after the next. We wanted to stop in Amalfi but it was a zoo with buses everywhere and no place to park. We just pushed on and stopped in some other small town further down the coast. We walked on the beach, I got a Gelato, and we wandered into the town (uphill of course). I eventually found another Farmacia and went in to look for sun glasses. They had a rack with four sets of very dusty sunglasses on it. Donna liked one of the pairs and we went to buy them. How much we asked, the pharmacist said “yes” and called the lady from the back room who went over to the rack, ignored it and proceeded to rifle through a bunch of drawers full of sun glasses in packaging. She pulled out one pair after the next, how much we asked, “30€, no 20€ for you” she answered. Good price, but Donna wanted that particular pair that she had first selected and this lady would not sell the display model for anything. The lady pulled out one pair after another and Donna kept saying no, she wanted the pair she had originally selected. This was quite baffling to us. Why couldn’t we buy that pair? We weren’t getting anywhere fast so, pretty soon Donna and I are back there with this lady pulling out drawer after drawer of sun glasses in packages, opening them to check them out and putting them back. Again, Donna tried to get the lady to sell the dusty pair that had been in the rack and again the lady refused. This lady had rules and she was basically, inflexible. We did eventually get lucky and actually found a new, packaged pair of glasses identical to the pair that Donna had originally selected. Good thing too or we might still be there sorting out the contents of those drawers, there must have been over a hundred pairs stuffed into the drawers behind that counter. Up the street and around the corner we wandered into a tourist shop. Finally I had found what I was looking for. A tourist shop located in a small town with almost no tourists on a street unlikely to see many tourists because it was pretty much, way off the beaten path. The prices were much more reasonable than in Amalfi and that place that we had stopped along the ‘highway’ where all of those tourist buses had stopped as well. Donna selected the parts to make a tray with four (or was it six) espresso cups sitting around a small sugar bowl. All hand painted ceramic with some cobalt so it goes with all of the other cobalt stuff that we have in the Vista Casa. We also got a very nice signed reproduction of a typical hillside on the Amalfi coast with houses tumbling down toward the sea. I had a nice chat with the owner who seemed to think that I spoke Italian remarkably well for someone from San Diego, California.

One of the things that really amazed me was how these people had carved out this cliff for agriculture. In some places there were 20’ high retaining walls to create 8’ wide planted areas and this type of thing was all over the side of the cliffs. We decided we didn’t want to continue any further down the coast but that we had to visit Ravello which is a mountain town located essentially straight up in the air above the town of Amalfi. Well, what can you say about Ravello? Words just can’t even begin to do this mountain town justice. If you want to know what we experienced, you are just going to have to go there. You very definitely won’t be disappointed. We traipsed around the town for a number of hours, visited a castle type thing with a show on shoes and had lunch in a tratoria. I took hundreds of photos of architectural details. I think I want to start a business building new five hundred year old (mixed with two thousand year old buildings). The roads in and out of Ravello leading up that mountain may have been the narrowest that I have ever seen. On the way out we had to inch our way past a giant tourist bus with only inches to spare on either side of the car. A few minutes later as we slowly maneuvered past an Alfa Romeo in another tight spot, our mirrors kissed as we passed.

Thankfully, we made it safely back to Positano and that evening we chose to have dinner at a restaurant only somewhat down the street from the hotel instead of down by the beach so that the return uphill trip wouldn’t be so challenging. The collateral benefit of that is we sat next to a railing with the most incredible view of the town spread out before us. Donna thought the whole thing was very romantic. We ordered Spaghetti alla Carbonara and Donna Approved, it was very good.

For a lot more photos of this trip and especially Ravello, please visit my construction web site page on Antiquity Replication

Stairs and more stairs to the Hotel

First the ramp, then turn right

Then up a steep section to a landing with a good view

Another steep section, then a more gentle long stair/ramp

gets steeper along the way and we arrive at the hotel entrance with two stories worth of stairs to the lobby level

Another flight of stairs inside finally gets us to the level of our room

It was a long way up to that room in that hotel!

Day Two: Off to the Amalphi Coast and Positano

Today we leave for Positano on the Amalphi coast south of Naples, I decide to ignore the directions suggested by Google maps and got hopelessly lost trying to locate the freeway out of Rome. Thirty minutes later, we are on the right road (A1) out of town and do great until we leave the freeway south of Napoli. We need to exit because we have missed our exit somehow and are now rushing toward Salerno which is to the south of where we really want to end up. As we exit I consult with the toll collector and he gives me a long string of directions which escape me beyond the first left turn somewhere up ahead. So, we are lost all over again but basically, we need to go west since we are south of Naples and I know that the Amalfii coast is only slightly south of Naples too. We head past the signs to Pompeii and travel down a thin road through an old town that goes on and on. Eventually I feel the need to ask for directions at a gas station. I’m told that the freeway to Sorrento (near Positano) is only a few hundred meters ahead, just go right and then left. Well we go right and drive down a road that appears to be a main road, go around a corner and it dead ends. We turn around and examine a barrier that appears to be where the road used to go but doesn’t anymore. So I return up the hill the way we came and ask at another gas station. He tells me to take a left at the alley down the road. Sure enough there is a freeway sign pointing into this alley that is only 8’ wide. We go through the alley and come out the other end as it dead ends into a street. No freeway sign. We go left and pretty soon we are on our way to the Adriatic. This is not good, we want to be heading toward New York and instead we are heading toward Istanbul. We turn around again, return to the alley and this time continue the other direction. Success! Down, around a couple more obstacles and soon we are on the freeway which is where we are supposed to be on the road to Sorrento, we are actually back on the Google Maps directions again.

We had great fun once we are following the coast. This is one very thin road, barely as wide a one freeway lane with traffic going two ways above 500’ of vertical cliffs. On the way down, we are on the cliff side and giant tourist buses are going the other way. Naturally, they take the whole road and don’t really care much about the oncoming traffic. Good thing we have a car that is only six feet long and 4’ wide. Anyway, with careful navigation and luck, we arrive at the outskirts of Positano. There aren’t really any outskirts, but you do know you are almost there because this road that has been built out of the face of the cliff is now strung out with lots and lots of parked cars. Men in business suits are walking long distances down the highway toward town from their cars, very curious, we don’t understand why….. Well, according to Google Maps I could get to our Hotel called Copa D’Oro by taking the first right as we approached Positano. Note, this was not the main road and it really wasn’t apparent if I was looking for a paved road or a dirt road. Well, it was one way and that way was down. We wanted to travel slowly so that we could take in the sites and perhaps actually spot the hotel as we snaked downward toward the blue Mediterranean water below. I realized as this road went on and on down the hill that if we missed the hotel the first time, we would have to go to the bottom and then all the way back up to the top and then down again to find our hotel. Italians are always in a hurry and it took no time at all for someone to be riding my tail. As soon as possible, I pulled over and let the traffic pass by. As time went on and for the next few days that we were on the Amalfi Coast I became very adept at locating small niches in the road wide enough for me to pull over in so that someone could pass me. The roads of Positano make Lombard Street in San Francisco look like a freeway. It really isn’t safe to drive faster than 15 miles per hour but the Italians want to drive at 50 if they can and I won’t even mention the Vespas. Vespa drivers are the true daredevils of Italy. They are always going full throttle and don’t hesitate to pass a car or even a bus around a blind hairpin turn. At first I was wondering why everyone was in such a hurry on these thin dangerous roads but eventually I figured it out. It took a long time to travel very few miles between one town and the next along the Amalfi coast and up to Ravello. In fact, it would seem that a lot of the infrastructure in Italy was built by the ancient Romans when a road only needed to be wide enough for an oxen cart and a pedestrian. The roads have been widened slightly since then but aren’t any straighter now. If Italians only traveled at safe speeds, it would take forever to get around, thus the necessity is to drive like a maniac and to take your life into your hands at every turn. Dad, I now understand why you used to drive the way you did. You lived too long in Italy and absorbed their driving habits.

So anyway, down and down we go. It seems that we have come down the slope hundreds of feet as the road winds back and forth across this enormous cliff. The switch backs are incredibly tight and instant U-turns. The Micra handles the road like it was made for it but it wasn’t the first time that I wondered how I ever would have gotten around if I had been driving my truck. When I did internet searches for a place to stay in Positano, there had been perhaps twenty search results. Now that we are there, it appears that there may actually be hundreds of places to stay. When booking a room I was worried about finding a place with a view. Now I saw that it would be nearly impossible to build a house in Positano that doesn’t have a view. The buildings are practically built on top of the roofs of the houses below them. I did actually find a place on the internet that had some rooms with no windows at all so I guess it was possible to not have a view but just not very easy. We went around another corner where the cliffs hung out over our heads. There was a small scale replica village built into the base of the cliff and there in front of us, Donna spotted a sign that said parking for the Copa D’Oro. Wow, we had found our hotel. We pulled in, got out, were greeted by the parking lot attendant and as we opened up the back of the car, a very worried look came over his face. He said that there were a lot of steps leading up to the hotel. Then he emphasized that there really were a lot of steps leading up to the hotel. Then he got on the phone to the hotel and talked to the desk there. He told them that they needed to send someone down to get the bags but they did not have anyone so we were stuck. We took off toward the hotel, the first part was easy. Roll the suitcases behind us down the street to the corner and make a right down a step onto a cobblestone paved path leading away from the road. Ahead a sign indicated that the hotel was to the right. This is when things started to get tough. We should have repacked and condensed what we really needed for our three day jaunt down the coast of Italy, instead and because we had the car, we took everything with us. One largish suitcase for me, one smaller suitcase for Donna, my backpack with the laptop computer and another small roll behind for Donna plus jackets. Well, now I needed to carry all of this stuff up a vertical staircase. I have no doubt that by the time I was finished, and the luggage was in the lobby of the hotel, I had raised all of it up at least six stories worth of staircases twice. For each set of stairs that I climbed, I had to go back down to get the other half of the luggage and climb it again. To say that I was wiped out would put it mildly but I can’t complain too much since I really did need the exercise. I do wonder though how many guests have heart attacks trying to get up to the lobby of that hotel. The lady in the lobby welcomed us and said that we should have called up to the hotel and have them send down someone for the luggage. Yeah right. It was obvious that she was the only one there. She checked us in and we took an elevator to our room one more flight up from the lobby. She told us to leave the luggage and she would have it brought up. Guess what, she brought it herself. After all, she did have an elevator to use.

The hotel advertises a modest pool on the roof. When we checked in, the lady suggested that we would want to check it out. Naturally, Donna was disappointed that we hadn’t brought our bathing suits but never the less wanted to go check out the pool. I was a little skeptical because I had seen a photo on the web site and it only showed a small corner of it. Well, we get up there, and we find a Jacuzzi sitting on the deck. I experiment, push a few buttons and get the jets going but the water is cold. Donna wants to use the Jacuzzi so we go back to the desk to ask them to heat it and they tell us that it is only warm between 9:00 and 10:30 each morning. I think, yeah right 9:00 and 10:30 of alternating Sundays on leap years is more like it. So much for the pool/spa, whatever. The weather was perfect but this is the end of October after all.

The hotel was great, the view was stupendous! I had survived getting to the hotel, we showered and smiled as we sat out on the balcony and took in the view. Wow, Positano really is one of those very special places on the planet. It had been so long that I had forgotten how incredible this village truly was. So after a little rest, we put ourselves together and headed out. In Positano, there really is only one way to go and that way is downhill. The car was parked and the weather was great, and so we set out walking. As far as we had come downhill to our hotel, it seemed that we were still closer to the top than we were to the bottom. No matter, on the way down we did some window shopping, Donna looked at the clothes and eventually bought something at one of the places. I took lots of photos of alleys, the view of the town and the water; architectural details and this incredible cloud that was bit by bit enveloping the top of the cliffs above our heads. Eventually, we found ourselves on the beach at the bottom of the hill town just as it was getting dark. We found a restaurant right on the sand and had a long lazy dinner with a carafe of Vino Rosso. The restaurant had someone playing music and it really was quite idyllic. After dinner with a Gelato in hand we set off toward our hotel. No hurry, stop in the stores, check out an art gallery, after all, it is up hill all of the way, stop and admire the view, check out the wedding party in one of the restaurants along the way, and still, it is up all of the way. It had seemed a long way down, amazingly it was even further on the way back up and then, the stairs to the hotel. Well, they were terrible but after what I had gone through earlier in the day with the luggage, they were a breeze. We left the restaurant slightly inebriated and very full. When we were back in our room, we were sober and I have no doubt that we had burned off every calorie that we had taken in while getting back to the hotel but it was fun!

We return to Rome the following year... October, 2008 Day One

Preface, Before I left, I talked to Mahlon, he said that if I rented a car without a GPS, I would be screwed; see below….driving in Italy showed me how seriously challenging something can actually be…


Day One:

We arrive at the airport; there is no custom check whatsoever. So, we ask where the rental cars are, apparently, they are upstairs. Upstairs we are told that they are on the top floor, from there we are directed across the street to a parking garage. Inside the garage is a moving sidewalk, “follow the signs toward the Hilton” we are told, we travel from one moving sidewalk to the next and we arrive at a train station. Very cool, the train goes to the airport but the car rental is not here. I ask, they tell me to follow the moving sidewalks back the way I came. I want to argue, but my Italian escapes me so we return on the path we came. Turns out, the car rental was in one of those intersections behind the central post hidden from view as we came down the other way. Renting the car was easy, we got a Nissan Micra, a very small car but with four doors and larger then a ‘Smart’.

OK, so now we start the controlled destruction derby of driving in Italy. Remember, I never had driven here before. I obtained my driver’s license in the U.S. after graduating from high school. Well, it was a little harrowing and I soon learned the rule. Stop signs are just a suggestion, I’m not sure that I ever saw a car stop at one. It isn’t even like the ‘California stop’ where we role through the stop sign and intersections slowly. In this country they just don’t actually slow down at all as they go through the stop sign. OK, I can do that too. And if you put on your blinker to make a turn or change lanes, that is the same as challenging every vehicle within sight for that space. If a car doesn’t accelerate to close off the direction or lane you had intended to turn into, for sure at least one Vespa will. The goal is to get where you want to go without letting anyone crash into you.

What they didn’t know was that I have driven in Tijuana in my F-350 4x4 truck on many occasions. I realize that the truck is a little larger than a ‘Micra’ but the concept is the same, never let them see the fear that is in your eyes. .. We decided to go to Ostia Antica first since it was right next to the airport. The place was very cool; I got lots of photos of mosaic floors and other things. We had lunch inside the ruins at the taverna dei Slavi. Is that the word for slaves? Turns out it was Scavi (excavations). Ostia was very interesting but perhaps only half excavated, it may take them another hundred years to get it finished, we shall see.

Anyway, I had printed out directions from Google for getting to the apartment on Via Siria. The directions were probably good but the problem is that in Italy, labeling roads is a fine art specifically designed to miss-guide you and assure that you never find the location that you set out to find. We got hopelessly lost looking for Via Christoforo Columbo which must be the largest road in Rome. Really, it wouldn’t have been complicated if I had known that C.C. runs from E.U.R. to the center of Rome, after all, I could see that building in E.U.R. with all of the arches. If I had headed toward that, I would have been in like Flint. As it was, we were lucky that we didn’t end up on A1 on our way to Florence. We did eventually in a very convoluted manner end up on C.C. and followed it toward downtown until it ended in the piazza in front of the Termi di Caracalla. I hesitated for a second and ended up taking a sharp right onto the adjacent street, it was spectacular, walls on either side and cobble underneath. Tourists were walking along this seemingly secluded road which was puzzling until I figured out that we were on the Via Appia Antica. Well, soon enough we were beyond the city and on our way to Brindisi and the road was one way only. We stopped in front of the catacombs of San Sebastiano to figure out how to get home. Go left, left again and floor it, pretty soon we were back at the walls of the City. We made a right, followed the walls and began navigating by dead reckoning. It just felt right; this got me to within two blocks of Via Siria which isn’t bad! For those of you who know Rome but are confused as to where we stayed, here is the simple way, go past San Giovanni in Laterano, through the Porta di San Giovanni in Laterano and follow up Via Magna Grecia, there is a name change and it becomes Britannia and then Via della Concordia as it enters Piazza Zama. Via Siria is just beyond. We finally arrive at Via Siria 23. Renzo had been worried and waiting for us. He soon took off to fix a parking ticket that had been paid but they wanted money again. Italian bureaucracy at work.

I proceeded to plug in my surge suppressor for the laptop designed to only work on 110v I think I killed it. I also blew out the electricity for the whole apartment. Everything works on electricity or has an electric spark igniter. Cold showers, quite invigorating! Search everywhere, can’t find the electrical panel. We go out searching for a phone to Call Beatrice, by the time we return, Renzo is back, he resets the breakers and tells me that it is a good thing I didn’t blow the main which is down by the entry gate to the complex. Had I done that, it would have required the Utility Company to re-activate and a number of days for them to show up.